Categories: Christmas in France, Day-Trips from Paris, Paris

567 Navigating Paris: Tips and Surprises with Brian Revel (Oct 12)

 

[00:00:15] Introduction

Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 567 (cinq cent soixante sept).

Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

[00:00:31] Today on the podcast

Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Brian Revel about navigating Paris with ease. Whether it’s your first visit or a return trip, Brian shares his favorite tips, unexpected surprises, and practical advice to help you explore the City of Light like a seasoned traveler.

Annie Sargent: Join us for stories, hidden gems, and everything you need to make your Paris adventure truly special.

[00:00:56] Podcast supporters

Annie Sargent: This podcast is fueled by chocolatine, coffee, and the generosity of listeners like you.

Annie Sargent: You who book itinerary consults, take my VoiceMap tours, join the boot camp, hop in my electric car, or chip in on Patreon, and I am so grateful for all of that.

Annie Sargent: Want to keep me going and skip the ads? There’s a link for that in the show notes. You’ll find all my services and events at JoinUsinFrance.com/Boutique.

[00:01:25] Boot Camp 2026

Annie Sargent: I now have 28 reservations for Boot Camp 2026, taking place a year from now, from October 3rd until October 10th, 2026, of course.

Annie Sargent: We recommend you arrive a day early and don’t leave until a day after, because boot camp days are very full and you’d miss out. If you’d like to find out more about Boot Camp 2026 and actually join us in France, browse to JoinUsinFrance.com/BootCamp2026.

Annie Sargent: What is the boot camp? It’s seven days of hanging out with fellow Francophiles, visits to wonderful sites around Toulouse, and optional language classes with me and Elyse, of course.

Annie Sargent: You can listen to Episode 563, 498, or 445 if you want to hear what the previous edition of the boot camp were like directly from the people who participated.

[00:02:25] Subscribe to Newsletter

Annie Sargent: If you’d like a handy summary of my conversation with Brian, with all the useful links, subscribe to the newsletter at JoinUsinFrance.com/Newsletter. It’s the best way to stay in the loop.

[00:02:37] Magazine Segment

Annie Sargent: There will not be a magazine part of the podcast today because this recording ran long, but I do want to send my thanks and a shout-out to new patron Sandy, and thank you, Bunny Day, for increasing your pledge.

[00:02:50] Patrons zoom calls and videos

Annie Sargent: Last week, I published a short video of my doctor’s office so people who intend to move to France can have an idea of what it’s like, and also people who don’t intend to move to France, it’s interesting to see those things, right? I wasn’t planning on doing this, but since my appointment was at noon and the office was empty, I jumped on the chance.

Annie Sargent: And I will publish the links for our monthly Zoom meeting with patrons this week as well.

Annie Sargent: To join this wonderful community of Francophiles, go to Patreon.com/JoinUs, and to support Elyse, go to Patreon.com/ELYSART.

[00:03:32] One Hour Podcast for Radio Paris

Annie Sargent: Now, you might be asking yourself, why can’t the podcast run long? Because it gets aired on Radio Paris as well, and they just give me one hour. And also because I am grateful you hang out with me and my guests for an hour. I don’t want to abuse the privilege.

[00:03:48] Next Week on the Podcast

Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode with Elyse about Sarah Bernhardt, the actress, the amazing actress. I learned so much. Thank you so much for listening, and talk to you next Sunday.

 

Annie: Bonjour, Brian Revel, and welcome to Join Us in France.

Brian: Hi, Annie. Good to chat again.

Annie: Wonderful to see you again. And this time we can actually see each other. That’s wonderful.

Brian: All the wonders of Zoom.

Annie: Yes, yes. We recorded an episode a few months, years back about your trip to Nice with your dad. And you’ve been back to Paris. You kind of come back a lot, don’t you?

Brian: I try to get back every, yeah, three or four years at the most as I possibly can. I kind of have to get my foot back into, I’ll call it civilization, because there’s really no other way to call Paris.

Annie: And you do speak very good French as well, so that helps, it feeds your Francophile, I guess.

Brian: It helps, yes. I do the best I can.

[00:04:56] Travel Routine and Adjustments

Annie: So, we’re going to talk, this is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge of an episode where we’re going to talk about some things that you’ve noticed about France, things that you would like to tell people about, so, you know, practical tips in a way. It’s funny because you’re a bit of an owl because of your work. And so when you’re in France, do you switch to daytime hours or…?

Brian: Actually, it’s very easy. For me, it’s really easy because I work nights as it is. So my whole life routine involves going to bed at very strange hours, and I get on a plane and I fly for 10 hours. I land in Paris, and it’s 10 o’clock in the morning in Paris, and it feels like it’s time for me to get up at 7:30 at night.

Annie: Wow.

Brian: Yeah, so it actually works out really, really well. It’s almost like I was meant to live during the day in Paris. In France.

Annie: That’s great.

[00:05:51] Navigating Paris Public Transport

Annie: Yeah, because you work for the Vancouver Transit System, right? Which is fascinating in itself.

Brian: I do. And so every time I come to Paris, it’s somewhat of what we would like to call a busman’s holiday for me, because I just absolutely, and I have to say, excuse the pun, it’s not intended, but I just revel in the whole transit and public transport aspects that exist in Paris.

Brian: I mean, Paris was the city, if it wasn’t the first metro system in the world, it was definitely the second. And then the variety of systems and bus routes because I oversee, I work within what’s called the Transit Communication Center. So it’s a central office in, that oversees the bus system as a whole in Vancouver.

Brian: My next trip I’d like to go and visit the RATP version, which is just outside of the 20th, just outside of the Periferique.

Brian: I was perilously close to it actually on this trip when I went for my walk to Printemps, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Brian:

Brian: And then just to ride the buses and ride the trains and just see how it works and how it’s organized. It’s a lot of fun for me.

Annie Sargent: It’s interesting, yeah.  I visited the control center for the Toulouse Metro, and they do this, I’m sure they do it in Paris as well… like for Jour du Patrimoine, sometimes they open up for visitors, and it’s quite interesting to see all the computers, and all the screens, and the people you know, they’re very concentrated on what’s happening with the network,  even though in Toulouse it’s a fully automated system, they also have guys…

Brian: As the trains are here…

Annie Sargent: Right, right, and they have guys, driving the, the lines, staying close to the trains just in case something breaks down and they have to intervene really quickly.  Anyway, it’s a fascinating kind of network, and in Paris, I think they do, they do well.

Annie Sargent: The transition to the new ticketing system was a little bit rough at first, but now it works quite well, I think.   So, as somebody who works for transit, do you use the apps to buy your tickets, or do you just use the the card?

Brian: Oh, absolutely I use the apps. Nothing beats, if you have a smartphone, they don’t call it a smartphone for nothing.  There is so much power in using your phone to not only purchase the tickets but then you’re also, you have instant updates in terms of disturbances, perturbations.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Annie Sargent:

Brian: You know, if there’s a holdup on the line somewhere, then you’ll know about it, it’s instant, it’s there on your phone, and it also gives you the whole directory and assistance in terms of how you get from one place to another and it’ll tell you which is the best way. Sometimes it’s the bus, sometimes it’s the train, sometimes it’s a tram. So all of that is available right there.

Brian: I do want to say though, Annie, as there are two apps that you can use. There’s the one from Hello RATP, but there’s also the one from the now parent company, they’re having, as  all transit systems seem to have, they’re having funding issues, so there’s a whole lot of reorganizing going on, consolidation, and there’s a whole new layer of bureaucracy now called the STIF (S-T-I-F).

Brian: And there’s, you actually buy your ticket and your Navigo pass from the STIF app. If you are even using your RATP app, it will link you to an entirely different website. Follow it, it’s fine, it’s all good, and it takes you to the STIF (S-T-I-F) and there you buy your ticket.

[00:09:28] Don’t Buy Your Navigo Pass Too Early

Brian: And the other thing about that is, if you do buy a weekly Navigo pass, which is what I did, don’t buy it too far in advance. I get all excited when I’m coming to Paris and I get everything all re- organized, suitcases packed 10 days before I go, and the apps are downloaded, and I check to make sure that I’m logged in and everything’s fine, and I almost bought about a week before I arrived on a Tuesday into Paris, the Navigo pass. But if I had done that, I would have bought the Navigo pass for the previous week.

Annie: Right, until that Sunday.

Brian: You cannot buy your pass for the following week until the Friday.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: So if you’re like me and you get all excited about coming to Paris, Whoa, Nelly. Just hold back on the reins a little bit. Don’t buy your Navigo pass for the following week until Friday. And that’s Friday, Paris time, not Friday Vancouver time. Although that works out okay.

Brian: But if you’re calling, you’re listening to us from Australia, hold off until Friday Paris time before you buy the pass.

Annie: Yeah. Well, and you don’t really have to get a weekly pass either. You could just get a few tickets. It depends how much you use it, it really depends. I get away with just buying a few tickets and using those few tickets. I tend to walk a lot, so I just make my way into the city. Perhaps I’ll go back and forth a couple of times in the day, but not that much. I get away with just tickets. But having the pass is good.

Brian: True. That certainly works for a lot of people. I’m one of those types who it’s kind of like, “Do you know what? I’m going to just buy a whole week. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know how often I’m going to use it, but then I don’t have to worry about it. I’ve got it and I’m fired up, I’m ready to go.”

Annie: Yeah. You can just go.

[00:11:17] Rental Car Tips: Why You Should Get the Extra Insurance

Brian: It’s the same when I rent cars. If I rent a car here in Canada, my own car insurance is transferrable to the rental, I don’t ever have to worry about renting a car with insurance. but when I go to Europe where the traffic laws are different, the driving patterns are different, and I don’t really know all of that stuff, I buy the most expensive insurance I possibly can so that if I’m involved in an accident, and more likely than not, I’ll be the one at fault because I don’t know how everything works and I’ve run a red light when I’m not supposed to and, you know, all these kinds of things, the insurance covers me and I’m not coming home worrying about where I’m going to find $7,000 or $8,000 in a deductible or however it all works. Insurance is taking care of. You know, $30 a day for that kind of peace of mind, I would never drive overseas without the most fully comprehensive insurance I possibly could. So it’s the same sort of thing.

Annie: Yeah. In France, they still also look over the car very carefully. You know, last time I was in the US a couple of months ago and we rented a car and they don’t even look at the car. Like, you return the car, they don’t care. They just want you to leave the key in the right place. They don’t look at the car.

Annie: In France, they look at the car still. Imagine what it was like renting a car 10 years ago in the US, perhaps even 15 years ago. It’s about like that still in Europe, and so they will look over the car to see if there’s any new scratches or anything, so when you pick up your car in France, still walk around it, take photos of what you see, and then when you return it, expect someone to walk around it with you as well. All right.

[00:12:54] Eiffel Tower Visit Tips

Annie: Something that you mentioned is that you didn’t try to pre-book your Eiffel Tower tickets, because, well, I think people shouldn’t really try to pre-book Eiffel Tower tickets because they take a lot of visitors and you will drive yourself crazy trying to book those tickets. How do you feel about that?

Brian: We did everything sort of on the fly. It was sort of like, “Okay, what are we going to do today? Oh, you know what? Today is the day, let’s go to the Eiffel Tower.” Now, you know, I hear about a lot of people who talk about coming to Paris and they’ve been here three or four times and they’re already tired of the Eiffel Tower. Oftentimes you hear Parisians are tired of the Eiffel Tower.

Brian: My God, it is the thing to do in Paris. I mean, I’ve been to Paris now … I was counting them out. It’s got to be up towards of a dozen times.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: And every time I go, that’s the thing that says, “Do you know what? This isn’t Frankfurt, this isn’t Lyon, this isn’t London.” It’s the Eiffel Tower that stands out, literally.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: And this was my third visit to the Eiffel Tower. Very first time was the first time I ever went to Paris as … that’s a lifetime ago. And the second time was with my Dad, that was back in 20-something, but well before COVID. And then this time, I finally made it to the top. So third time’s the lucky. I finally made it to the very, very top.

Brian: And it was just, “Let’s just go.” So we had walked all the way from Canal Saint-Martin. I was already tired.

Annie: Wow, that’s a long way.

Brian: Got to the Eiffel Tower. It was a long way. Got to the Eiffel Tower, and yes, the security perimeter was a little bit of a shock because the last time we were on the Champ de Mars and we just walked right up to it, and now there’s this … But do you know what I must say? It’s a security barrier, but it’s still classy. It was … It’s done in glass, so it’s not really…it doesn’t stick out that much. You access the place from the east, I believe, and we walked up to the line and there were two lines. The one line we walked and we followed the line all the way down to the end of the line. And at the end of the line, there was a sign that said, “If you have , muni d’un billet” I think is what it was.

Annie: Mm-hmm.

Brian: And everybody in the line all had tickets, but the other line had nobody in it at all. We literally were like the third or the fourth person before the security checkpoint. We all waited for a bit. I think there was a shift change. So everybody waited for about 10 minutes, and then we just waltzed straight in.

Annie: And then did you go wait in line to buy tickets, or did you buy them on the app?

Brian: No. Never even thought of that, to be honest with you. Isn’t it funny? I was just talking about apps. No. Then we went and we stood in line to buy the tickets.

Brian: And again, it must have been shift change because the line, I don’t know, we wound up waiting about 45 minutes, but by the time the line started to move, it was easily twice as long as it was when we joined it.

Brian: Now, once it started to move, I guess the people that were way behind us didn’t have to wait as long as we did, because we all had to wait at least half an hour before the line started to move again. And so it was 45 minutes to get the ticket.

Annie: Yeah. So here’s another tip. Well, two tips actually. Go to whichever security line is shortest, because the security people do not ask you if it’s true that you have a ticket or if it’s true that you don’t have a ticket. They don’t verify that at all. They just check you for dangerous things. That’s it. So just go to whatever line is shortest. That’s what I do.

Annie: And also, while you’re in line, you can buy your tickets from the app, and you don’t have to go in, you know… They always release tickets for the same day.

Annie: So buy the tickets you need from while you’re in line. That way, you know for sure there won’t be any returns. You’ll be able to know if that, at that time, they will let you go to the very tippy-top because very often, they don’t sell that until the last minute because they don’t know what the conditions are going to be like.

Brian: Right.

Annie: So yeah. That’s how I would say it works.

Brian: If only I had thought of that, Annie. I obviously wasn’t listening to your advice.

Annie: It’s the same with the Orsay Museum.

Annie: The Louvre, mm, it’s best if you buy in advance, because they don’t have that many tickets at the last minute. But the others, often you can just buy from the app the day of.

Brian: Do you know what, though? It was crazy.We might have had to wait 45 minutes to buy a ticket at the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre, we literally walked up to the pyramid and walked straight in the door.

Annie: Wow.

Brian: Straight in. Absolutely no delay. And that was… I think that was the one of the rainy days. I’m not 100% sure. We had spectacular weather while we were there. It was cold in November. That was when we were there, this past November of 2024. But I think one of the days that it was the rainy day was the day that we went to the Louvre, as we planned it, and literally walked in, down the stairs, and down into the central hallway.

Brian: Got to say, it was bedlam. It was pandemonium down there. But it was, getting in? Absolutely no trouble. But you know, we were there in November, and that might have had something.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. That changes a lot… Day by day, changes a lot.

Brian: Obviously will have had something to do with it.

[00:18:14] Disappointed by the Louvre

Brian: Hey, listen, I want to talk a little bit about the Louvre, if you don’t mind.

Annie: Sure.

Brian: The whole point for me… Now, I had lived in France back in the 1990s. I’d lived in one of the ski resorts during the Winter Olympics of Albertville in 1992. And I kind of… Then it was an impressionable year of my young, early adulthood.

Brian: And I picked up a lot of the sort of French attitudes about certain things, and one of them that I recall was, as a French person, you don’t go to the Louvre for just a day. What’s the point? You’re supposed to go for four or five days and take it all in, and take in the ambiance, and go and actually peruse every single piece of art. And that way, it’s sophisticated, and it is also very, very French, you know, to do it that way. And it was a bias that I have lived with my entire life. So all these times I’ve been to Paris, I’ve held off going to the Louvre until one day, when I have time, I’m going to do the Louvre as one must.

Annie: Uh-huh.

Brian: And this was the trip, because I was 24 when I was in Paris doing the thing the last time, and here I am more than double that, and I am now an adult. I can now go to the Louvre. And so that was what the point of this trip was. And I have to say, and I’m devastated to say this, I was profoundly disappointed by the Louvre.

Annie: Oh. Do tell.

Brian: It is the greatest museum on Earth. No question about that. And I hasten to say that I am so grateful that Emmanuel Macron now is prioritized now that the Notre-Dame has been restored to its glory, that he is about to undertake a multi-billion euro project to do the same thing, a multi-million euro project to do the same for the Louvre.

Brian: As far as I’m concerned, it desperately needs some kind of a renovation to make the experience more enjoyable. Since I’ve been there, I have listened to different podcasts and different interviews where the general consensus is that it is an overwhelming experience. We walked in the door. The lobby is beautiful, it’s spacious. It was very busy, as I pointed out. Got our tickets and we thought, “Okay, going to go and do the absolute must right now. Let’s just get it out of the way.” So the unmentionable. So we went up, me and my cousin and his friend. We were traveling as a threesome. We went to look at the Mona Lisa. And we walked into the room, and it was packed. I could not… you know… 400 people? 500 people in a single room? It’s crazy, and there’s incredible works of art.

Annie: And that’s November.

Brian: That’s November, that’s right. There’s incredible works of art in the same room, and it’s like, “Yeah, whatever.” It’s just part of the wallpaper. There’s so many pieces of art, and they seem to be hung in such a jumbled, you know, pell-mell sort of way.

Brian: Anyway, you stand at the back, and very slowly, you slowly move forward because the people at the front are given, I don’t know, 40 seconds to look at it. And then the security guard pulls the stanchion in sort of like … and then pulls everybody out, and you got to walk around in behind and you leave in a very Disneyland-esque kind of way of controlling crowds.

Annie: So eventually got to the front and got some nice pictures of the Mona Lisa and walked out. Got a couple of other pictures in the next room, the one of… I can’t remember the name of…Delacroix?

Brian: Yes, that’s the one.

Annie: Liberty Leading the People is nearby and all that.

Brian: And then… You’ve been there a time or two. And then went over to the Denon wing and looked down the main gallery, and it was just hundreds of people again.

Brian: And again, the paintings are just hung by chains, hanging off the wall, and there are so many of them. It just looks like wallpaper as you look the, I don’t know, 200, 300 meters down the gallery, that straight, long gallery. The ceilings are high, which is nice, but they’re… It looks like fluorescent lighting. And it’s just, it was an incredible letdown.

Brian: So, you know, we sort of popped around a little bit. We looked at… I just happened to cross the Venus de Milo that just happens to be there. So then we went to look at the foundations of the original castle, going back to, you know, medieval times.

Brian: And then the one thing I wanted to look at were the Napoleon Apartments, because I’m fascinated by architecture and interior design. And they were closed.

Annie: Ah, they… Yeah, they renovated them.

Brian: Well, no, it wasn’t the renovation. It’s that there are sections of the Louvre that are closed on certain days of the week every week, and it turns out Thursday, the day that we were at the Louvre, the Napoleon Apartments were closed. Couldn’t see them. So I mean, I’m going back to the Louvre for sure, if only for that.

Brian: But I will say that,and I just have to find it in my notes here somewhere, there was a book, An American in Paris has just published a book.

Annie: Yeah, Adventures in the Louvre by Elaine Sciolino.

Brian: Yes.

Annie: You mentioned it to me before.

Brian: Yeah, she was on the Earful Tower podcast just after I’d been there. I was like, “Darn, why didn’t I hear this before?” And she really talked about how to make the experience less overwhelming. I suppose I could have got an audio guide. I suppose I could have done a tour. But that wasn’t really the objective for me. Mine was to sort of have one with the Louvre, and it just didn’t work.

Brian: So the good news… Oh, and the other one is, is that if I was going to go and visit the Louvre for four days, which is what the plan was, it’s 23 euros a pop. That was going to be almost a $200 visit for me over three or four days. And given how much of a letdown it was for me the one day.

Annie: You just gave up.

Brian: I’ll do it again. And the nice thing is, is that my entire philosophy in life is you got to try everything twice, because the first time might be a one-off.

Annie: Mm-hmm.

Brian: So I will go back. I will try it again.

Annie: You know, it’s an interesting perspective. Really, the… I think people need to be prepared for the Louvre, just on the sheer basis of its size. I haven’t ever tried, or I wasn’t raised with the idea that you should spend days there. I can’t spend days anywhere but at the beach, really. But I’m just happy to go in and try to discover a new section every time I go. I’ve seen the Mona Lisa several times, I do like the big historical paintings, because you’re right, it looks like they’re hanging there and you’re wondering, “What is this?”

Annie: But the Louvre is organized chronologically, by area and chronologically. So if you know that, it helps make sense of it a little bit. But it’s really a very, you need to be prepared, you need to know, “What am I looking at today?” and just go for that. For people who don’t have that sort of motivation, get one of the official guides from the Louvre, the… I think a guided visit, if you get one of the official Louvre guides, is maybe 16 euros extra or something like that. It’s not very expensive. If you hire a private guide, they charge a lot of money because there’s something called the droit de parole.

Annie: So if you’re an official guide, you can apply for authorization to speak in the Louvre, and you have to pay 300 euros just for that day. So, of course, private guides will charge a lot of money for the Louvre unless they have giant sizes, and that’s not ideal either.

Annie: So either you follow the tourist track it’s signed very well but you will be in rooms full of people, or you select a section that interests you. That would be my advice for Louvre visits.

Annie: But there are people who go back again and again.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

[00:26:20] Exploring Canal Saint-Martin

Annie: So, you mentioned earlier that you walked all the way from the Canal Saint-Martin. So is that where you were staying?

Brian: We were staying in the 3rd.

Annie: Okay.

Brian: We were staying off on Avenue Froissart, which is sort of halfway between Place de la Republique and Place de la Bastille, about a block or two off the Canal Saint-Martin.

Annie: Okay.

Annie: So it was, it’s kind of a nondescript area. Up at the top of Rue de Bretagne, it’s just sort of up at that, in that area. Kind of nondescript area. Nothing particularly touristy about the whole area. But it was quiet. I left accommodations to my cousin, and he does a marvelous job. He had gone and found, it was a short term, I don’t know how he managed it considering that apparently short-terms are no longer allowed in Paris. No, they are.

Brian: They are? Okay, well, anyway, he went to the Airbnb website and found this location, and then went and found the website of the actual provider. So he got a really good deal on the place. And it was relatively central for the Marais, which is, kind of a nice neighborhood to kind of hang out on, just on the outer skirts of it.

[00:27:31] Walking to Grimey Pantin

Brian: And so my cousin and I, we went for a walk up on the Canal Saint-Martin, and we walked the entire canal out to the Périphérique, out to the ring road around Paris, and then just a little tiny bit beyond. And we wound up in one of the suburbs.

Brian: First time I’ve ever stepped outside of the city of Paris on foot. We were in a place called Pantin, P-A-N-T-I-N. And I have to tell you, it was like stepping into a different world. It was, now Vancouver, everybody has this impression of Vancouver, where I’m from, as being this beautiful gilded city, lovingly sort of like lodged between the ocean and the mountains, and people come for that. But it has a bit of a seedy, grimy downside, at least in one of the areas. It comes as a shock. You’re safe. Nobody’s going to do anything because they’re all busy worrying about their own little worlds. But there’s a lot of homelessness in Vancouver given that it’s the end of the railroads, kind of like San Francisco a little bit that way. it was the same in Pantin. You go to Paris and you see these beautiful wide boulevards and everything is clean and everything is wonderful. There’s virtually no homelessness, so it appears, in Paris. But you step literally 100 meters outside of Paris and there are encampments under the Périphérique. There’s just general homelessness chaos literally 100 meters outside of the city of Paris.

Brian: Now I’m not saying that, you know, if you walk another 500 meters it sort of all calms down again and now you’re into suburbs, just as I would expect it to be here in Vancouver. But that first 100 meters is pretty shocking. I didn’t feel unsafe, but it’s just, this is not the Paris I came to visit, that’s for sure.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that’s the problem with the area of the Canal Saint-Martin, and if you walk it all the way to Canal de l’Ourcq, it changes names a little further up, you will see some things that are not like touristy, you know? We do have a problem with homelessness in France, just like many other countries. I dearly wish they would come up with a solution to this. But apparently we don’t know how to handle it.

Brian: It’s global. It’s global right now.

Annie: But they keep moving them. So during the Olympics, they really cleared out a lot of people. They even sent them to, like, tiny villages and minor cities. They bused them out to other towns in France. And of course, what happened in those towns? People complained. “We don’t want any homeless.” But there are places, like when you’re in the Canal Saint-Martin area, if you stay close to where it joins up with the Seine, you’re fine.

Annie: But the further away you go, the more funky it’s going to be.

Brian: Colorful.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: Colorful.

Annie: And there are, it’s not dangerous per se during the day but there are a lot of drug users, there are a lot of businesses going on that are …

Brian: Illicit, let’s just leave it at that.

Annie: Yes. Yes. So you, yeah, you don’t wanna be in those area.

Brian: And I agree with you, it’s not dangerous per se, but it’s, you didn’t come to Paris to see that, right? So …

Annie: But it was three guys. If it was a young woman by herself, she should really not be there.

Brian: … Agreed. Yeah, agreed. Anyway, let’s move on.

Annie: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:30:57] Modern Paris and Coffee Culture

Brian: So we walked that one day, we then took the metro into closer to town. I wanted to see Les Halles.The last time I was in Paris, my dad’s mobility was somewhat restricted so we didn’t really move around. We stayed in Montmartre and didn’t really leave Montmartre the whole time. So we got to Les Halles, and it’s a modern shopping center. If you’re from North America and you’re sort of having a little itch for something that’s reminiscent of the malls from home, yeah, go and visit Les Halles.

Annie: It’s actually owned by an American mall company.

Brian: Not really? I’m not that surprised.

Annie: Yeah, I don’t remember what it’s called, but it’s an American mall company.

Brian: We went to Starbucks there. What is it with the Starbucks? The last time I was in Paris, there was a Starbucks on the Champs-Élysées and a Starbucks in Montmartre, and that was it. Now they’re everywhere.

Annie: Yeah, there are a lot of them. Small ones. They’ve opened a lot of smaller ones. They tried, you know, to take over the world. These big American companies, that’s what they do. They try to take over the world.

Brian: You know, fortunately there is a, there’s getting to be a real café and real global coffee culture in Paris now. So, you know, the Australians have taken over the Parisian coffee culture, so you can get a decent flat white. As a Canadian, that’s an entirely new thing to me, because we don’t have flat whites in Canada.

Annie: Is that a café au lait? What is it?

Brian: I can’t really describe it. I think the next time you have somebody from Australia on, you’ll have to ask them.

Annie: Okay. Well …

[00:32:26] Exploring Les Halles and Gare du Nord

Brian: Anyway, so we did Les Halles, and then from there we walked north along… what is that? Montorgueil. We stopped and had coffee on la Rue Montorgueil, I love that word. One of the many pedestrian streets in that area. And then we walked up to the Gare du Nord to meet my cousin’s friend who came in from London on Eurostar.

[00:32:45] Parisian Train Stations: Efficiency and Volunteers

Brian: And that’s for me as a public transit person, is just it blows my mind to go to Gare du Nord. It is huge. It’s massive. But you know what? It’s, in its grandeur, it is also well organized and it is easy to navigate that I got to say, that’s the one thing that is amazing. Wayfinding in train stations in France is second to none. It’s easy to get around despite its size.

Annie: Yeah, if you’ve never been in a big train station, it might be startling, though.

Brian: It can be.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: Absolutely.

Annie: It is very big. There’s so many people. There’s sounds and sights and people, and it can be overwhelming. But it is efficient.

Brian: Do you know what’s really cool, is that they have lots of volunteers now, or information staff.

Annie: Yeah.

Annie: They’re easy to find. They’re in bright red. They usually have a cap or a hat of some sort. They have a red vest. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah, exactly. And that typical sort of shrugging of their shoulders, “I don’t know” kind of attitude absolutely does not exist. They are more than helpful. I watched one of them. He was an information guy, and he was helping some elderly woman with her luggage. I had to do a double take. That was not something I was expecting to see in Paris, you know?

Annie: You wouldn’t have seen that in the ’60s or ’70s, no.

Brian: I wouldn’t have seen it five years ago.

[00:34:06] The Changing Atmosphere of Paris

Brian: And this speaks to something else to me that, just struck me so hard, and that is, is that Parisians right now, cross fingers it doesn’t change, Parisians right now, it feels like a happy city.

Brian: People were happier. People were helpful. Even the last time I was here, you’d frequently hear people shouting at each other, s’engueuler, as they would say in French. Nothing of the sort. They were friendly, helpful. People were volunteering to speak English.

Annie: You would rather speak French.

Brian: I would rather speak French. And they accommodated me, and then my cousin, who speaks almost no French, and his friend, who speaks no French at all, they were perfectly happy to speak English with them, and French with me. Which was a distinction that never happened, even, you know, three or four years ago.

Brian: As controversial as she has been, because change is really controversial, I am really impressed with what Anne Hidalgo has done, the mayor has done. As a transport person, the fluidity of traffic is really important to me, and I’ve watched how we’ve got cycling lanes that now make … complicate traffic in downtown Vancouver, and we get a little bit, as motorists, we get a little bit upset about that. But I know that in the long term, it’s for the better, and Paris has definitely improved.

[00:35:25] Paris’ Transition to Cleaner Air and Electric Vehicles

Brian: The city used to smell, used to have a slight, I don’t know, a certain je ne sais quoi of diesel in the air, in Paris.

Annie: Yes. Not my favorite odor, I must say.

Brian: No, but it certainly was one of those odors that sort of said, “Yep, you’re here. You’re in Paris.”

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: Doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone. The air is cleaner.

Annie: Much cleaner. The air has been cleaned up a lot.

Brian: Way, way, way better.

Annie: You’re entirely right. It’s because, when Dieselgate happened in America, French people were buying a lot of Volkswagens.

Annie: My heck, I was driving a Volkswagen diesel big old thing for years. And then we realized slowly that, yeah, diesel is a problem, and that if you’re going to be burning gas, you’re better off burning unleaded than diesel. It’s not ideal, but it’s better, and so a lot of people went to unleaded, and now were trying to go into electric. And there’s also a lot ofinvestments from the city of Paris to put chargers, There are a lot of chargers for city charging for EVs in Paris as well.

Brian: I only saw a couple of them, but they must be in the underground parkades then. They must be.

Annie: Right. So most people who have EVs right now can charge either at home or at work, and so that’s where a lot of charging happens and you don’t see that.

Annie: But, they do have EV charging stations in a lot of locations. Almost every street, well not every street, but every few streets in Paris you have a Belib is the name of it, but they’ll change that a million times.Those companies get bought over by different companies and they consolidate and blah blah blah, and they rename it and they rebrand it, whatever. But I think in another five years you will have a Paris that doesn’t smell and isn’t as loud because EVs are not as loud.

[00:37:16] A Day Trip to Strasbourg

Annie: I would like to… you to mention your kind of day trip to Strasbourg from Paris.

Brian: Yes.

Annie: That was just a day trip, right? You didn’t even spend the night in Strasbourg.

Brian: Spur of the moment. We were like, absolutely spur of the moment, my cousin Keith, he said, “You know what would be nice to get out of this city? Have you got any ideas?” And I was racking my brains. It’s been since I lived in France, and I’d been to Lyon, and Lyon is really accessible by TGV, and I thought, “Okay, we could do a high speed trip to Lyon.” And then the second one that came to mind came from a podcast that you have recently done when you went to Strasbourg with your husband.

Annie: Uh-huh.

Brian: And so when my cousin mentioned Strasbourg I thought, “You know what? That sounds like a really good idea.” So, we went on to the SNCF website.

Brian: Or the SNCF Connect actually. It was the app on the phone because I had downloaded it and you never know if you might need it, and just right then and there going through the  InOui version, I bought tickets for the three of us, I shared those online tickets. I keep all of those little kind of tickets in my Apple Wallet, so I still have them. I shared those with my companions and then the three of us, we walked up to Gare de l’Est the day of, got on the train, well, actually it was the next day, got on the train, and we went to Strasbourg for the day. I mean if you were to do that in North America, that… How far is that? That was probably, it was about two hours by TGV, so 600 kilometers.

Annie: Yeah, it’s a ways, yeah.

Brian: 600 km. You couldn’t do that in North America for the day, but that’s what we did.

Annie: No, not for a day trip. No. You’re right. That’s a very good point.

Brian: It’s crazy how far you can go in a couple of hours. Yeah, we went to Strasbourg again, beautiful day, the Winter Market was the first weekend of the Winter Market, I think, pretty much, so it was even new for the Strasbourgeois. Got off the train and we walked onto the island because the “interesting”, I put in air quotes, the interesting part of Strasbourg is actually an island.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: And we went onto the island and started to sort of explore, and we went to… so this was sort of a standard touristy day.

Brian: We went to almost the first thing we did was we went for lunch because we arrived into Strasbourg about 11:00, and we went to a great little restaurant called Restaurant La Nouvelle Poste, which is sort of out to the eastern edge of the island. Alsatian fare.

Brian: I don’t know about what it was about me this particular trip, but I had this thing about steak frite. There’s nothing like a good honest to God French steak frites, so I had steak frites instead your more Alsatian fare… whatever. Whatever. It was still a really, really good meal. And then we went down to the cathedral and,it was interesting because while I was in Paris you had your podcast with someone who had been to the Winter Fair the year before or had been to Strasbourg anyway and you went, you guys had this long discussion about at, before noon or 1:00, just before the clock is about to do its thing because it has one of those really ornate Gothic clocks, they shush everybody out of the cathedral so that they can charge extra for it. Didn’t happen. I was there going, “Yeah, but that didn’t happen to us.”

Annie: Must have been a special day, you know?

Brian: Or they forgot. Or I paid for it in advance. I don’t genuinely remember now. But anyway, clock did its thing, was impressive.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: Walked around, it’s a big space, it was dark. I remember it being a bit somber.

Annie: It is a dark cathedral, yes. Yes.

Brian: And then out into the brilliant sunlight. It was, again, a glorious day. Cold. It was probably in Centigrade it was probably about one or two degrees in Strasbourg that day. And then straight into the market. And the market is enormous.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: I guess I’m being a bit of a curmudgeon here and that is, it was great. I would do it again, no question about it. But once you’ve seen the first 20 booths, they’re all the same.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: However, it’s all about the ambiance, it’s all about the people. And we were there until about, mm, I’m going to say about nine o’clock, just before nine when the train left to go back to Paris. So it was a good long day. We were there when it was dark. It got darker and darker and the lights came on. The Christmas lights are amazing.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: Spectacular.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: We were in the main square. We didn’t know that there was going to be a Christmas tree with the official lighting up every day and everything. We happened to be there. It was really impressive. It was a lot of fun. Lots of oohs and ahhs. And then we made our way back towards the train station. We stopped at a place called Au Coin des Kneckes, which is a funky brasserie, a bierstube probably is a better term for it.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: And had pizza. Again, not particularly Alsatian. But it was… it was good.

Brian: And then the train home. And we had a good sleep on the train, like a snooze on the train. It’d been a full day.

Annie: So you were on an InOui train, right?

Brian: Yes.

Annie: Did you go for first class or regular?

Brian: Absolutely. Oh, why not? I’m on vacation.

Annie: Yeah. The first class is fun. I mean, it’s nice, right? You have this nice seat that reclines and you have your thing to put your feet on, and I like it.

Brian: Oh, it’s a lot of space. Absolutely. Yeah.

Annie: I like it.

Brian: And when we were there, we walked around the island, and that’s the one thing, you know, you see pictures of the canals and the water mills and all of that stuff about… of Strasbourg, like, that’s because it is the Venice of Eastern France and, yeah, it definitely lives up to its reputation.

Brian: It was, you know, every so often you come across this little tiny clump of buildings that, you know, with a, what do you call it, you know, the old classic wooden building from that part of France. And then you walk a little bit more and there’s a beautiful bridge. It was really scenic, definitely. Level, easy to walk. So yeah, Strasbourg definitely a great place to visit.

Annie: Oh, it’s a lovely town. And you know, if you are not crazy about Christmas markets, a day is plenty. Like you mentioned, you’ve seen 20 booths, you’ve seen them all. They’re nice, but it kind of repeats, you know, there’s only so much you can do. But it’s a lovely place.

[00:43:39] Dining at Bouillon Republique

Annie: Okay, last thing I want us to discuss briefly, you went to Bouillon Republique, and this is not one I’ve been to. I’ve been to several Bouillon, but not that one. So I want to hear about it.

Brian: Well, this is, yeah, so this was Keith’s idea. He said, “I really want to go back to, I want to go back to a place that I had been to when I was younger,” that was him, and that was to go to this thing called Le Bouillon Chartier, and he took us straight there.

Annie: Yes.

Brian: I’d never heard of Le Bouillon before. It was neat. You hear of all of this, you know, you go to Paris for Le Haute Cuisine, and you have to go and have a Michelin star restaurant experience and Le Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon is, you know, it is the thing to do. I don’t know, I guess I’m a little bit more of a working class schlub, you know what I mean?

Brian: And Le Bouillon is a basic working man’s restaurant. There’s nothing glamorous about it. I’ve gone back and I’ve looked at the reviews of it and a number of visitors to Paris who have been to Le Bouillon are disappointed because, you know, it’s not fancy, the food isn’t spectacular, it’s not Instagramable kind of…

Annie: No.

Brian: That’s not the experience, what you’re going for…

Annie: It’s not Instagrammable food for sure. They just put it on a plate.

Brian: Exactly. You know, and this is the thing, we hold what happens in Paris in such high esteem. There’s an expectation that if it’s from Paris it’s perfect, there’s something almost ephemeral about it because it’s, you know, it’s from Paris.

Brian: Paris is a working city like every other city that exists in the world. And there are rich people and there are middle class people and there are working class people. And everybody has their place and everybody has their places to be.

Brian: And Le Bouillon is a working man’s restaurant. It is big, it is chaotic. They pack you in because it’s not about the experience, it’s not about charging an arm and a leg. And the profit is in the charging of an arm and a leg. It’s about numbers. It’s about pumping people through there as quickly as they possibly can. Low margin, low… like I say, it’s not Haute Gam kind of food.

Annie: No.

Brian: It’s working class. So what did I have? I had my steak frites and it was the best steak frites I had, as much for the fact that steak frites is a working man’s kind of meal too. And that’s exactly what we had.

Brian: The reviews are, you know, go there, be prepared to wait because the lineups are long. We walked in there, there were, I don’t know, we waited 10 minutes for a table.

Annie: Yeah.

Brian: But they go down the line and they go, “How many people in your party?” We’ve got, “Oh, we’re three.” “Okay, no problem.” They have a radio. They call ahead to the front counter and they, obviously they go, “Yeah, we got a table,” and they hoik us out of the line and we walked up to the, right into the restaurant…. and we sat down at a table for four. So we weren’t sharing a table. But I could see, right next to me, there was…

Annie: I’ve shared tables.

Brian: Yeah, exactly. Right next to us, there’s a table for six, and there’s two parties of three sitting at that table. We just happened to be sitting at a table for four, and nobody, no singles showed up, so we had the table to ourselves.

Brian: But you know what? So you sit down with somebody, it’s Paris, the odds are you’re going to talk to somebody from Paris or you’re going to talk to somebody from Senegal. You don’t know, but it’s going to be a life experience, and they’re there open for that kind of an experience as well.

Annie: Yeah, when I went there by myself, they sat me with a lady who spoke pretty good French, but she was from Holland, but lived in Brittany.

Brian: Oh.

Annie: And I was so surprised that they asked me to sit with this woman I didn’t know at all. Thankfully, it wasn’t startling because she was about my age and, you know, I was like, “Okay, I’ll just sit with you. Well, hello ma’am.” You know, and we just chatted. It was lovely.

Brian: But you know what? You go into a restaurant with the attitude that it is a social moment, even if they had sat you down with, I don’t know, somebody young enough to be your daughter or even your granddaughter or grandson, what the heck? They’ve got an experience to share too, right? And…

Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would have been fine. Yeah.

Brian: It would have been fun. It would have been fine. No problems at all. And we walked out.

Annie: But don’t expect Instagramable. Sometimes the building itself is interesting, like Bouillon Racine has a beautiful room, but it’s not really a Bouillon. It’s more expensive than a Bouillon. It’s still called Bouillon Racine, but it’s not really a Bouillon.

Annie: But the Bouillon Chartier is definitely the basic Bouillon. I had langue de boeuf and it just came witha little piece of langue de boeuf plus a bit of mashed potato, and I think it was 10 euros for that. If I had just had that, it would have been 10 euros. Many people, that’s enough, they don’t need any more for lunch. That would be fine.

Brian: Langue de boeuf?

Annie: Yeah, langue de boeuf, yeah.

Brian: Beef tongue?

Annie: Yes.

Brian: Right? Like, working class stuff.

Annie: Yes. I love this stuff.

Brian: But it’s the best stuff. Do you know, I learned, just as an aside, I learned that a lot of the fancy cuisine that you hear about, like frog’s legs and snails, escargot, and stuff…

Annie: I never eat that.

Brian: … that came from years ago, what was it? During the Paris Commune, when there was the great, you know, the city was on lockdown and it was under siege and you couldn’t get out. There was nothing to eat, so what did you do? You found whatever was in the middle of the street and you made it presentable, and low and behold, that’s haute cuisine now, you know?

Annie: Yes.

Brian: It’s crazy. Anyway, we walked out of the Bouillon and the line up, I swear to God, was down the street and around the corner. It had to have been two hours. So if you’re going to go to a Bouillon, at least the one that we went to, figure out what time it opens and be there in the first 15 minutes. Or 20 minutes. We just lucked out on that one, because if we had shown up an hour later, we wouldn’t have gone in. It’s just the wait wouldn’t have been worth it.

Annie: Yeah, and they opened a Bouillon in Toulouse, Place du Capitole in Toulouse, one of my favorite places to go, it was a brasserie before, they just turned it into a Bouillon. And the line is ginormous every day. Bouillon Capitole is what they call it. And I haven’t eaten there because…

Brian: I can hardly wait. One day, I’ll get there.

Annie: Yeah. I can’t go because the last time we were there with Elyse, we looked at each other, “Well, we could try that, but we’d have a half an hour wait, so let’s go to the Bibent instead.” Which is the posh restaurant where you don’t wait much. It’s more expensive, too. Anyway, so we, you know, French people, we have this kind of image of fancy everything, but we don’t have fancy everything, no. Some of us are just working class folks.

Brian: I had a friend of mine who came up from… she lives not far from Toulouse. I worked with her when I was in France, and she and her husband came upto see me while I was in Paris this time. It was really neat to see her. She’s kind of a country bumpkin, so she didn’t really know… She didn’t have a place for her to stay or, like, her sister lives just outside of Paris. But they don’t have the big city experience.

[00:50:47] Affordable French Cuisine at Galeries Lafayette

Brian: So Paris is as exciting for her as it is for me, but she didn’t have any places of choice, so I said, “Okay, tell you what, let’s meet at Le Gallery Lafayette on Haussmann.” So it’s just… it’s central, it’s easy to find, and we met in the café on the sixth floor, Café Lafayette. Again, working class, I mean, you think of a department store cafeteria, but it is French.You can buy wine, you can buy beer, and it’s French food, it’s French fare.

Annie: Mm-hmm.

Brian: But it’s affordable. I sort of throw this out here, there’s another affordable place. Again, presentation, well, it’s as good as you- what you make it, because you’re the one that’s putting it on the plate, but it’s good, basic, healthy, honest to God French cuisine for a really, really reasonable price. Completely enjoyed that.

Brian: We were in there for several hours before we started wandering the streets, just sort of reminiscing and reconnecting. But it was a… it’s a good place, and if you have a window seat, you’re looking right across at Opéra Garnier, so you’re looking across at the old opera house from the back. But still, you know, there’s that. I looked at, before landing on that as the place to meet, I went over to Le Printemps and looked at the one in Printemps, and I thought, “No, I prefer Gallery Lafayette.”

Annie: It’s fancier, yes.

Annie: So Printemps, it’s a sit down restaurant, but you are under the dome, it looks like you’re under a beautiful.., you know, it is gorgeous. But the Gallery Lafayette, it’s more like a cafeteria. You can have your quarter chicken with fries or with green beans or whatever, you know?

Brian: Yeah, 100%, for 10 euro.

Annie: Yeah, for 10 euros.

Brian: For 10 euros. You know, it’s really easily accessible, it’s affordable, the signage is good, so if you don’t speak French, whatever, I’ll have that, and you can point to it and, you know, they deal with people who don’t speak French all day, every day. No problems there.

Annie: That’s very true. That’s very true.

Brian: And then we had a little wander through the store, you know, the cupola with the stained glass was really impressive with the Christmas tree hanging from the ceiling. And even my friend, Sylvie, she was just like completely agog by the whole thing.

[00:52:54] Souvenir Shopping in Paris

Brian: The one thing, I was just going to say because it’s probably time that we said our goodbyes here but souvenir shopping. One of the things I think is really funny is right across the street from the main Galeries Lafayette on Haussmann is their grocery store.

Annie: Ah, yes.

Brian: And I love going through, just going into a grocery store and looking at, you know, not only the price of things, but what you can buy. And downstairs is their gourmet section, so you can buy lots and lots of different kinds of foods. I’d been, you know, looking, “Okay, I got to take home a little souvenir for this person, a little bit for that and everything.” The funny thing is, the biggest hit was a little, tiny trial sample selection of mustards.

Annie: Uh-huh.

Brian: They’re little, tiny, you know, in like individual jam jar, little, tiny, little things. I’m trying to describe it but it, obviously you can’t see my hand when I’m … but tiny, mini ramekin.

Annie: Yeah, you have like two, three ounces.

Brian: Not even. An ounce of mustard. And there’s like a selection of three of them.

Annie: Uh-huh.

Brian: 1.95 Euro

Annie: Oh my goodness, that’s really cheap.

Brian: And it was the biggest hit. I took four or five of them brought them back to Canada just sort of like, “Who am I going to give these to?” Like, you know, I give somebody a mug and it’s like, “Oh, that’s nice. It’s a Paris mug.”

Brian: But the 1.95 Euro mustards, it was like, “Holy smokes.” And I have a friend of mine, she loves to bake, so I bought her a French version of a Betty Crocker, you know, cake mix kind of thing.

Annie: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Brian: It was from France. It’s French. She is still … I mean, that was November. We’re talking middle of April, you and I right now. She still hasn’t made that cake. She’s waiting for just the right day to use French butter that she’s going to find from some place in order to make it. It is going to be a big deal for her. How much was that? 2.35 Euro.

Brian: It’s amazing. Those kinds of things really connect with people, and they’re cheap. And you don’t have to do it at Galeries Lafayette. You can go to the Monoprix.

Annie: Any grocery store.

Brian: Because they have, you know, grocery stores anywhere.

Annie: Yeah, any grocery store. Wonderful.

Brian: It was phenomenal.

Annie: Yeah, people like to get little foodsampling and gifts from France. That’s for sure.

[00:55:21] Final Thoughts and Farewell

Annie: Brian, you’ve been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much for sharing all those tips. And when you come to Toulouse, you have to let me know. I will make sure that we go at least have a coffee.

Brian: We’ll go to the Bouillon.

Annie: Oh, that’s true. We need to try that Bouillon Capitol. Exactly.

Brian: Okay.

Annie: Yes, sir.

Brian: We’ll do that. We’ll do that.

Annie: You’re on. Merci beaucoup, Brian.

Brian: Merci.

Annie: Au revoir.

Brian: Au revoir.

 

[00:55:52] Copyright

Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

 

 

Subscribe to the Podcast

Apple Google Spotify RSS

Support the Show

Tip Your Guides Extras Patreon Audio Tours

Read more about this transcript

Episode Page 

Categories: Christmas in France, Day-Trips from Paris, Paris