Paris Hotels: The First Arrondissement – A Guide
You’re nearly there – Paris! You can’t wait to start your journey. You’ve gotten your Paris flight , now you’re assessing some seemingly fantastic specials on a bunch of Paris hotels. Where you are staying in the city is always an important consideration for hotel accommodation in Paris, France even if you are looking at hotels in Paris city centre. Here’s a guide to Paris’s First arrondissement so you can learn more about whether this part of Paris is where you want to be!
Paris: The First Arrondissement
Paris’s first arrondissement is filled with the sort of elegance and grandeur that centuries’ worth of travelers have imagined when thinking of Paris, the City of Lights . Splendid boulevards, exclusive fashion shops , and manicured parks overlooking the smoothly flowing Seine River are all found in this neighborhood, a district mainly of office space and tourist sites. Les Halles, Paris’s unique take on a shopping mall, can be found here as well.
What You Need To Know :
What Is Good About The First Arrondissement :
Spending time in the first arrondissement has many advantages . When you walk under the 19th arches of the Rue de Rivoli arcade, you will be following in the steps of generations of dandies and duchesses: vanished members of an older Paris . You’ll be near some of Paris’s most beautiful tourist sites – the Tuileries garden to Chatelet -site of the Comedie Francaise, where Moliere once produced his plays – to the world renowned Musee de Louvre. And the shopping, on the elegantly understated Faubourg Saint Honore, is unparalleled !
The Negatives :
While daytime here provides access to some of Paris’s top sights within a few moments’ stroll , the business-like character of the area means that nightlife, by contrast, is limited within the arrondissement. So unless you go to the Les Halles/St. Denis area there’s not much to do. Les Halles/St. Denis’s low brow pleasures may appear slightly seedy to travelers over the age of twenty-one (that said, the section bordering the Les Halles mall is actually nice – a good place to stop after seeing a movie in Les Halles’s enormous cinema, which presents many US and British movies in their original languages. But avoid going towards Rue St. Denis/Blvd. Sebastopol unless you’re consciously seeking that sort of milieu.) In addition, this area can get very, very touristy – especially around the otherwise lovely Rue de Rivoli. So watch your purse and control your buying impulse for souvenirs until you’re a bit further off the beaten path.
What To Do:
Sites and sights abound in the First. Take a stroll down the Faubourg Saint-Honore, where nearly every famous fashion house of the world has a presence. Visit the Louvre or Tuileries Gardens near the Place de Concorde, see a play at the Comedie Francaise in the Chatelet area.
Places To Eat:
Finding untouristy food is hard in this area, but finding outstanding desserts is not. Angelina, on Rue de Rivoli, has lost some of its world renowned elegance, but the aging-grande-dame feel of the place makes the yellowed mirrors and creaky chandeliers worth seeing on their own merits. Plus, their famously rich hot chocolate and Mont Blanc desserts are among the best in Paris. For a more recent hotspot, Cafe Marley in the Louvre offers views not only of the museum’s art, but also of Paris’s current celebrity scene. For good food, the area right around Les Halles has a number of good brasseries, but, as said earlier, the area closer to Rue St. Denis and Sebastopol has a slightly sketchier character – not at all dangerous, but nevertheless unsavory.
Where To Shop In Paris’s First Arrondissement :
If the high fashion of the Faubourg Saint Honore is a bit out of your budget , go to the Les Halles mall. A surprisingly beautiful, art nouveau-inspired underground city (complete with street names, a swimming pool, park, and more), Les Halles proves that even Paris’s shopping centers have a Parisian flair. While the area around the mall is useful for super-cheap (think 3-5 euro) clothes and shoes, the mall itself has much higher quality items at pretty good prices.
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