When I was planning our trip to Paris I had no idea in where to stay. The last time I had been in Paris was twenty years before and a lot had changed. That time we were staying at Paris Disney and commuting in to the city after the kids tired of the park. Yikes, what an embarrassing admission! I remembered eating dinner one night in Place des Vosges, a beautiful square lined with stately homes and hotels, a playground in the center where children were enjoying the late afternoon sun, and a wonderful waiter who treated my young children like little adults worthy of his splendid attention. So when I looked on the map I saw Place des Vosges was in Le Marais, an area I knew nothing about, but when I found the hotel below I was sold. My husband and I become a united well-oiled machine when we travel. I make plans, he executes them. I take care of the dream stuff, he takes care of practicalities like phone cards. And we both enjoy hotels that are small, quaint, and authentic, not a large less personal experience.
The Caron de Beaumarchais was everything I was looking for. Very French, check. Small, only three rooms per floor, check. Charming and personal: the concierge gave us our best restaurant recommendations of the trip. And when I walked in the room and saw that they had Annick Goutal shower accessories in Eau de Hadrian, I knew I was in the right place!
Le Marais is where you will find some of the oldest buildings in Paris and walking down the narrow winding streets you can imagine you are back in time two hundred years ago. This is what most of Paris used to look like, a labyrinth of twisty cobblestone narrow streets. The stately Haussman buildings and wide boulevards are beautiful and impressive, but the Marais gives us a glimpse of the past. The hustle and bustle of the more touristy areas and their busy streets, where often I heard more Americans speaking than French, could be blissfully left behind when we arrived back to the Marais district each evening, searching out a new bar to unwind and have a drink before dinner. It is an area that is home to the Jewish community, the Chinese community (less evident), and the LGBT community. It feels relaxed, fun, and cool.
www.AParisGuide.com
What was a complete surprise to me is that it is awash with niche perfumeries. There were so many I found it impossible to visit even half, and even more frustrating was that I quickly ran out of skin to spray and I've never been a fan of smelling paper strips. So many bottles of perfume and so little time! Although Arrondissement 1 has the designer boutiques and some wonderful shops, Le Marais seemed to me to have a larger number of shops in a condensed area than I saw elsewhere.
No reviews today; I'll just show you some store fronts, and remember, this is just a small number of the stores represented there. And scroll past the photos for my favorite happenings in the Marais.
Atelier
Diptyque
Frederic Malle
Annick Goutal
Kiehl's
The newish company Parle Moi De Parfum
A local perfumer
Acqua di Parma
Histoires de Parfums was closed when I went by. I was disappointed as they were one that I really wanted to visit.
I found the Caron shop the last night and was too late to get in.
We really became attached to this neighborhood and came back every night to eat dinner here. I've read Parisians are unfriendly but in the Marais we found the opposite to be true. Two incidents: one afternoon we had landed back in our neighborhood after putting in 20,000 steps touring. We saw an inviting little cafe but all the outdoor seating was taken up with what looked like locals. We were about to sit inside when one of the men urged us to join their table. It turned out they were a group on gentlemen who gathered here every afternoon, and he spent the next hour telling us great stories about his arrival to Paris twenty years before from Ethiopia, the changes he had seen in the Marais neighborhood, and his opinion of all the tourists, which was pretty benign. Our last night we were at a bar having a drink and my husband found a kindred spirit in a local who arrived on motorbike. This is them chatting on the street. The Caron shop, sadly closed for the day by the time of our arrival, is right behind.
Historically the Marais was the area of the Jewish quarter, and there is still a small quadrant where reportedly the best falafal sandwiches are sold in Paris. On the weekend the wait can be over an hour so we tried it during the week.
I could post more, about the museums in the area, the fabulous restaurants, the proximity to the river and Notre Dame, the beautiful hidden parks, but I'll close with a photo (not mine) of one of the restaurants we tried. I hope you have enjoyed my tour of Le Marais.
www.NYHabitat.com
To read more about perfumed travels in France, start with Travels In France, Part One, here.
All photos my own unless otherwise indicated.
No comments :
Post a Comment