City guide
The Paris worth your three days: where to actually eat, which museum to skip, and the neighbourhoods that reward walking.
France8 min readUpdated August 15, 2026
Almost everyone's first Paris is the wrong one. They queue for the things on the postcards, eat badly near them because everywhere near them is bad, and go home saying the city is overrated. It is not overrated. It is just organised against you unless somebody tells you where to stand.
This is arranged the way we would actually spend three days: eat well, sleep somewhere with a lift or knowingly without one, and treat the museums as a short list rather than a checklist. The city is genuinely walkable, and the Métro covers what your feet will not.
One warning. A great many Paris restaurants close Sunday and Monday, and August thins the city out considerably. Check before you build a day around any single table.
The rule that saves a Paris trip: never eat within sight of something famous. Walk five minutes in any direction and the quality doubles while the price halves.
Saint-Germain
Yves Camdeborde's bistro, and the room most responsible for the modern French bistro as everyone now copies it. Lunch is walk-in and chaotic. Dinner is a set menu and books out months ahead.
Local tip: If you cannot get a table, the terrace serves a shorter menu without a booking. It is nearly as good and nobody tells you that.
Ask the concierge to book thisThe queue is the price, and the queue is worth it.
11th
Seafood, no reservations, small plates, natural wine. The sister room to Septime next door and considerably easier to get into.
Ask the concierge to book thisMarché des Enfants Rouges
A man makes you a sandwich in a covered market and takes a long time doing it. It is the best sandwich in Paris and the wait is part of the performance.
Local tip: Go before noon or accept forty minutes in line.
9th
A cavernous 1896 dining hall serving classic French food at prices that look like a misprint. Nobody claims it is the best meal in the city. Everybody should eat there once.
French technique with a Filipino accent, run by two sisters in a corner room with good light. The kind of place Parisians recommend to each other rather than to visitors.
Ask the concierge to book this11th
Location beats square metres here. A small room in the 3rd or the 11th will give you a far better trip than a large one somewhere you have to commute from.
2nd
An 18th-century building done with real confidence, wrapped around a glass-roofed courtyard restaurant. Central without being touristy, which is a narrow band in Paris.
Local tip: Rooms facing the courtyard are quieter than those on the boulevard, which is not a quiet boulevard.
Ask the concierge to book thisA courtyard restaurant you will not want to leave.
A converted textile factory in the middle of the best eating and drinking in the city. Good value for what the 11th normally costs.
Ask the concierge to book this11th
A neighbourhood hotel that behaves like one, with a ground floor locals actually use. Pigalle has changed a great deal and this is the change.
Ask the concierge to book this9th
Loud, art-covered and unserious in the best way. Walking distance to the Canal Saint-Martin, which is where you want to be in the evening anyway.
Ask the concierge to book this10th
Paris lost the coffee argument for about forty years and has spent the last fifteen winning it back. The bread never went anywhere.
10th
A 19th-century bakery near the canal with a painted ceiling and a pastry called an escargot that has ruined other pastries for a great many people.
Local tip: Closed at weekends. This catches out more visitors than anything else in this guide.
1st
A small, serious counter that helped start the specialty scene here. No laptops, no fuss, very good coffee.
3rd
A former cobbler's shop the size of a hallway, kept exactly as it was found. Three seats, one window, and the most photographed façade in the Marais.
6th
Sourdough from a wood-fired oven in a basement, largely unchanged since 1932. Buy a quarter loaf and an apple tart and eat both in the Luxembourg gardens.
Paris does not do late in the way some cities do. It does long: one bar, one table, several hours. Pick the neighbourhood and let it happen.
A cocktail bar using only French spirits, behind a deliberately grim fly-posted door. The rule sounds like a gimmick and turns out to be a very good bar.
Ask the concierge to book this10th
A narrow natural wine bar with a few small plates and no reservations. Arrive early, stand up, stay longer than planned.
11th
The Ritz's small wood-panelled bar, absurd in price and entirely worth it once. Order whatever the barman suggests instead of reading the menu.
Ask the concierge to book this1st
An enormous, plant-filled hangar off the canal that resists description. Go once, early in the evening, and see what mood it is in.
10th
Two museums properly beats six museums badly. These are picked to be finishable, and the last two are outdoors.
7th
A converted railway station holding the Impressionists, on a scale you can actually finish. If you only do one museum in Paris, do this one rather than the obvious alternative.
Local tip: The top floor first, then work down. Everyone does the reverse and the best rooms are busiest by the time they arrive.
7th
A mansion and a large garden full of bronzes. The garden ticket alone is cheap and, on a good day, the better half of the visit.
Île de la Cité
Fifteen windows of 13th-century glass in a room that takes twenty minutes to see and considerably longer to stop thinking about. Go on a bright day or do not bother.
20th
A hillside cemetery that functions as the city's strangest and most peaceful park. Free, enormous, and easy to lose two hours in.
10th
Iron footbridges, plane trees and a long stretch of people sitting on the quayside with bottles. The best free evening in Paris.
All reachable by train in under two hours, which means none of them needs a car or a full day of planning.
A château with a serious art collection, a vast park, and far fewer people than Versailles. The better choice if you have already done the obvious one.
château · quiet · half day
Ask the concierge to book thisMonet's house and the water garden he painted for thirty years. Closed in winter, and best early in the day before the coaches arrive.
gardens · art · full day
Ask the concierge to book thisForty-five minutes on the fast train puts you in Champagne, with a gothic cathedral and a great many cellars that can be visited properly.
champagne · cathedral · full day
Ask the concierge to book thisOverwhelming, over-visited and still worth it. The gardens are the reason to go and most of the crowd never leaves the building.
gardens · half day
Local tip: Go for the gardens first and the palace second. The reverse is how people end up exhausted and disappointed.
Ask the concierge to book thisEverything above, on one map. Colours mark what kind of place it is; tap a dot and its details open beside the map, and you keep your place. Day trips are left off, they sit well outside the city.
Pin positions are approximate: neighbourhood level, not street addresses.
A large share of the good restaurants shut for both. Bakeries often take one weekend day. Build your Sunday around a market and a walk rather than a booking.
Entering a shop or restaurant without greeting the room reads as rude here in a way it does not elsewhere. It costs one word and changes the service you get.
Traffic is bad and the network is dense. Buy a carnet or use contactless, and stand on the right on escalators.
Parisians leave, and a lot of the best small places close for two or three weeks. Charming if you want empty streets, frustrating if you had a list.
Paris rewards booking ahead more than almost anywhere, and punishes not doing it. If you want a table at any of the places above, a room held, or a car to Giverny before the coaches, message the Simly concierge and a real person will arrange it.
Message the conciergeEverything in this guide assumes a working phone: maps between neighbourhoods that follow no grid, ride-hailing instead of flagging taxis, a menu handwritten in Arabic. A Simly eSIM activates before you land, so you step off the plane already connected.
Get a Simly eSIMParis, France
