Planning a Paris trip? This is Day 2 in a series recapping our ten-year anniversary trip — neighborhood by neighborhood, meal by meal, with the honest version of what we planned versus what we actually accomplished.
What I Had Planned
Saturday was ambitious on paper. I had 9am Louvre reservations booked, which I was proud of — but one thing I hadn't fully thought through was that most Paris coffee shops don't open until 9am. Getting to the Louvre by 9am from the 6th meant leaving before caffeine was technically available.
Pro tip: make sure your hotel or rental has coffee ready to go! Thankfully, ours had a Nespresso machine.
The planned day:
- Musée du Louvre, reserved for 9am
- Jardin des Tuileries
- Place de la Concorde
- Palais Royal
- Lunch at Le Petit Vendôme
- Jade Genin chocolate
- Palais Garnier (10am–5pm, maybe)
- Hôtel de la Marine, reserved for 3pm
- Metro to Montmartre
- Basilique du Sacré-Cœur
- Food Tour booked at 5:15pm
- Wine bar after, possibly
The Louvre: A Love Story With Caveats
We made the Louvre by 9am. Reservations worked perfectly — we were inside in under ten minutes, which felt like a genuine win after our tired selves navigated from the 6th arrondissement to the 1st.
We may or may not have walked confidently in one direction, only to realize our google maps was telling us to go in the opposite direction.
We immediately made a beeline for the Mona Lisa before the crowds arrived, got the obligatory photo, and moved on.
She is smaller than you think. Everyone says this and everyone is right.
My personal favorite in the Louvre: the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
The dramatic staircase approach, the way the light falls on the marble, the sense of actual movement in a two-thousand-year-old sculpture — it's genuinely one of the most striking things I've ever stood in front of in a museum. It does not disappoint, and I'd go back to the Louvre for that one piece alone.
After that, we attempted to see the jewels, but the gallery was closed. Likely due to the Louvre upping the security so that amateurs can't waltz right in wearing a construction vest…it's our best guess.
So we made our way to the Egypt wing, which seemed cool and on the way to the Greek sculptures.
And then we were in the Egypt wing for what felt like an archaeological era.
A black hole of pharaohs.
We could NOT find our way out.
We turned our maps over, upside down, left and right. The maps were even in English!
The room numbers made no logical sense to our caffeine-deprived minds, and the further we walked, the more the Egypt wing seemed to expand rather than resolve.
By the time we emerged, blinking, into the sunlight, we were done.
The weather was too beautiful and the Louvre might entomb us forever if we opted to go down a different wing.
For the record, the Louvre is magnificent. The Louvre is also enormous in a way that requires a plan and, ideally, coffee.
My honest recommendation if you're going to Paris: Unless you have a specific must-see and know exactly how to get to it — and you've mapped the route in advance, not just trusted your instincts — your time is better spent at a smaller, more focused museum or a guided Louvre tour. Go to Palais Garnier instead.
The Louvre rewards people who know what they're doing, and gently traps the rest of us with the pharaohs, perhaps lost forever.
(Thankfully, after scrolling on Instagram…we aren't the only ones who can't "sortie" the Louvre).
The Tuileries, the Obelisk, and a Flat White
We walked out into the Jardin des Tuileries, which are stunning — the kind of formal French garden that feels nothing like anything we have in the US.
Iconic green chairs scattered throughout, gravel paths, perfectly clipped trees, and on a sunny March day, the whole place was glowing.
We did discover that they'd closed most of the gates and left only two open for entry into a very large garden, which made for some creative navigation involving a lot of walking along the perimeter before we found our way out.
Was there a theme for the morning? Escape?
Eventually we did sortie the garden and made a beeline for Café Nuances, which had a solid flat white.
On the way, we passed the Place de la Concorde with its Egyptian obelisk at the center. Worth a pause and a photo. Knowing that this was the site of the guillotine during the Revolution, it puts the beautiful fountain and the pleasant open square in a somewhat different context.
By 11am, hunger was urgent enough to justify beating the lunch rush at Le Petit Vendôme — and this, friends, is where I can offer you a data point.
I attempted to order a jambon-beurre (ham and butter) for Nathan in French. After all, we had fooled the flight attendant and the hotel concierge with how good our "bonjour" was sooo it was worth a try...
…and he received a brie-and-butter sandwich.
Oops.
Brie-and-butter is also excellent, so no real harm done — but my French is demonstrably limited to bonjour and pointing and an excellent French RBF. I had the patron sandwich. It was good.
But after the previous night's experience at Charcuterie du Cochon, I can offer you a definitive, scientific verdict:
If you're picking one sandwich shop: Cochon wins. At least from this tourist’s point of view.
If you're already in the 1st or 2nd arrondissement and need lunch, Petit Vendôme is absolutely worth it. It was 8 or 9/10.
But if you're choosing between the two for a single visit, make the walk to Cochon.
Palais Garnier: Closed, and a Lesson
We had extra time before our 3pm Hôtel de la Marine reservation and decided to try our luck at Palais Garnier. Sadly, it was sold out and closed until the following Tuesday.
This was information I did not have, and I offer it to you now as a gift: check all possibilities before you go.
And then check them again the week before you go.
Book ahead.
Paris very much rewards pre-planning and politely punishes those who show up on a whim, which I learned three separate times on this trip. Of course, despite having an already solid spreadsheet.
We pivoted to the Arc de Triomphe instead, taking the metro for the first time.
Our Paris Museum Pass got us in and let us skip the main line. We waited maybe ten minutes versus a much longer wait for those without the pass. Worth the investment just for this.
The climb was manageable, 284 steps which didn't seem that bad. And the view from the top was one of the most satisfying moments of the entire trip.
There's a map at the top showing which streets radiate out from the Arc, where the major monuments are positioned, and a full 360-degree view of the city laid out below you.
As someone who loves understanding how cities are organized — the logic of the grid, where things are in relation to each other — being able to see the whole system from above was genuinely thrilling.
You can identify the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Seine, Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre, the Dorsay, the Louvre. All of it, at once.
I'd put visiting the Arc higher on the priority list than most travel guides do.
And if you had to choose between going up the Eiffel Tower and the Arc, I'd choose the Arc! Why go up inside the thing you're trying to see?!
The Eiffel Tower, Hôtel de la Marine, and a Very Good Glass of Rosé
Because the weather remained absurdly beautiful, we decided to walk the 20–30 minutes to Trocadéro for the Eiffel Tower view rather than take the metro.
Note: pickpocketing is reportedly common around the Trocadéro and Champ de Mars areas. Hold your bags close, keep an eye on your watch, and keep moving. It's still absolutely worth going and it isn't unsafe — just be aware.
We saw it, snapped a photo, and found our way to another metro station.
We arrived at Hôtel de la Marine about an hour early, so we sat in the central courtyard café with a glass of rosé, a glass of red, and a very girl-dinner-forward plate of fries. The courtyard was a peaceful retreat and felt like a reward for the day.
The tour (covered by the museum pass) comes with an audio headset that tracks your movement and plays narration as you enter each room, like a very elegant audio drama.
About 45 minutes, genuinely worthwhile but not a must-see for me.
The Food Tour in Montmartre
After a quick metro ride up to Montmartre, we had an hour and a half before our 5pm food tour with Do Eat Better. So, we found a bar with outdoor seating, sat like true Parisians, and ordered drinks. The people-watching alone is worth the price of a drink! I had a cucumber ginger beer. Nathan had a regular beer.
Quick note: Free public restrooms are rare in Paris. Use the restaurant or museum restroom every single time you're in one. This is not optional advice.
We met our group in front of the Moulin Rouge, the most reliably impossible-to-miss landmark in Montmartre, and our guide walked us through the neighborhood with several planned stops.
Biscuiterie de Montmartre for madeleines first. I had the raspberry, Nathan the pistachio. We each thought ours was better, which is the correct result. The raspberry filling was tart against the sweet madeleine in a way that felt considered rather than accidental. A bonus coconut treat via the guide's relationship with the shop owner converted me entirely on coconut (I usually don't like it). I'll accept that.
Pierre Hermé for macarons next. The display case alone is worth seeing — rows of perfect rounds in every flavor. We were steered toward the unusual options because that's the whole point of being there.
Nathan, who famously does not like olives, tried the tomato leaf and olive macaron and declared it delicious. Progress. He got a rose-flavored macaron and it was also a delight.
Café Adélaïde for the main dinner stop: boeuf bourguignon and red wine. Good, solid, traditional, though not the highlight of the trip. I think Julia Child's recipe honestly wins out.
I follow this recipe for the Instant Pot. Likely sacreligious, but still delicious.
La Mère Catherine for cheese, where we were surprised with a candle (a torch, really, it was quite intense) to celebrate our anniversary. A genuinely sweet touch that made us feel like less of a tourist group and more like people who'd wandered into a celebration.
Crepes near the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur to close out the evening, and on the walk there, we caught a view of Sacré-Cœur and the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the distance.
We did not get back to the hotel until about 10:30pm. Plan for a late night if you book an evening food tour!
We liked the tour and had no regrets going, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it if you already have a long list of food places to hit yourself.
Next up: Monet at the Orangerie (a pilgrimage), the best lunch I've had in recent memory, and the museum where we discovered that Napoleon had very specific feelings about his legacy.
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