My girlfriend and I have always enjoyed traveling. Although we'd been on vacations with family and friends in the past, we'd never traveled abroad with a partner until recently.
28.07.2024 - 12:14 / lonelyplanet.com
Jul 26, 2024 • 7 min read
I go to Paris as often as I can. I think I’ve been about 10 times now, maybe more. I always get requests from friends and family on what to do there, where to eat and drink and what to see, and I thought with the Olympics happening now and all eyes on Paris, it would be best to throw all my recommendations into one comprehensive weekend itinerary for you too.
To start off, I've laid out the first day's recommendations at a gentle pace to help you get your bearings. As the days progress, the itinerary unfolds with more activities in popular neighborhoods and also in the lesser-visited corners of Paris that truly belong to Parisians. But before we get to the fun stuff, here are some things to consider ahead of booking your trip.
Morning: Start your day with a visit to Mokonuts Bakery for a coffee and sweet treat. It's a tiny, bustling cafe just off Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine that is well-loved by locals for its irresistibly chewy cookies in flavors like miso-sesame, olive-white chocolate and coconut-Aosa (dried seaweed), but you can keep it simple with peanut butter and chocolate chip too.
How to spend the day: Stroll across the Seine to the Latin Quarter, one of Paris's oldest neighborhoods, to browse the bouquinistes (open-air booksellers that have lined the riverbanks since the 19th century) en route to Shakespeare and Company, the iconic English-language bookshop. Entering feels like stepping back in time to an older, quieter Paris, despite the constant flow of visitors. What I love about this bookshop is that you're encouraged to linger, so find a cozy chair to peruse your book selections—preferably near wherever the resident cat is napping.
From there, walk to Notre Dame (which will be fully open to visitors by December 2024) or take a short stroll to Conciergerie. Most of us know it as the place where Marie-Antoinette and other prisoners of the Revolution spent their final days, but Conciergerie is also home to Europe's largest surviving medieval hall, Salle des Gens d’Armes, which regularly hosts art, culture and history exhibitions. If it's a sunny day, head next door to the tiny chapel of Sainte-Chapelle to see the world's largest collection of 13th-century stained glass sparkle in the sunshine.
Dinner: Recommending Septime, one of my favorite restaurants in Paris, is a bit of a gamble. The issue isn't the food (which is sublime), but rather the fact that they don't take reservations and it's always busy. You might get lucky on the night, but if not, add your name to the waiting list and pop over to their beautiful wine bar next door, Septime La Cave, until they call you. If you really don't want to wait, consider Bistrot Paul Bert (five minutes away), where you can
My girlfriend and I have always enjoyed traveling. Although we'd been on vacations with family and friends in the past, we'd never traveled abroad with a partner until recently.
The tonka bean, a wizened-looking South American seed, is beloved for its complex almond-vanilla scent, often appearing as an ingredient in perfumes. Outside the United States, it has also long been utilized by chefs, but studies have indicated that coumarin, a chemical compound in the plant, can cause liver damage in animals, and the Food and Drug Administration banned the bean in commercial foods in 1954. Now, with reports that the minuscule amounts used to impart big flavor are harmless (and the F.D.A. seemingly not particularly interested in enforcing the ban in recent years), tonka is showing up on dessert menus here. Thea Gould, 30, the pastry chef at the daytime luncheonette La Cantine and evening wine bar Sunsets in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was introduced to tonka after the restaurant’s owner received a jar from France, where it’s a widely used ingredient. Gould says the bean is an ideal stand-in for nuts — a common allergen — and infuses it into panna cotta, whipped cream and Pavlova. Ana Castro, 35, the chef and owner of the New Orleans seafood restaurant Acamaya, discovered tonka as a young line cook at Betony, the now-closed Midtown Manhattan restaurant. Entranced by the ingredient’s grassy, stone fruit-like notes, she’s used it to flavor a custardy corn nicuatole, steeped it into roasted candy squash purée and grated it fresh over a lush tres leches cake. And at the Musket Room in New York’s NoLIta, the pastry chef Camari Mick, 30, balances tonka’s richness with acidic citrus like satsuma and bergamot. Over the past year, she’s incorporated it into a silky lemon bavarois and a candy cap mushroom pot de crème and whipped it into ganache for a poached pear belle Hélène. “Some people ask our staff, ‘Isn’t tonka illegal?’” she says. Their answer: Our pastry chef’s got a guy. —
The Paris Summer Olympic Games are coming to an end this weekend, but there are still plenty of disciplines to go, including a new sport at the Games this year: breaking.
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For many, the last full month of summer—that means August here in the United States—makes way for one more family getaway before school starts. Otherwise, you might sneak in a cheeky goodbye-to-summer barbecue; don’t get too smug when you tell everyone how much money you saved by using points and miles this season. (Or maybe do. Be a good friend. Teach them our ways of traveling with points and miles.)
Aug 1, 2024 • 5 min read
With the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad (commonly known as the 33rd Summer Olympic Games or Paris 2024) now open, the State of Utah received official word on the eve of the opening ceremonies that The Beehive State has been selected to host the 2034 Winter Olympic Games, in its return to the United States. Utah was the last American location to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2002.
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Games wide open! The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are here—so, expect to hear the roar of that slogan in the weeks again. There’s simply no way to quantify, or perhaps, prepare for, the already-electrifying energy infiltrating the host city and the largest Olympic ceremony ever. Despite the Games’ 300,000 spectator capacity, Paris is expected to receive around 15 million visitors, including 2 million from abroad, in the coming weeks.