Eye Prefer Paris is an ex-New Yorker's insider's guide to Paris. Richard Nahem writes his blog from his fabulous 18th century apartment in the fashionable Marais district of Paris
I’m sure many of you have experienced this scenario; you plan your trip to Paris and when you go to buy your Eiffel Tower tickets on the official website, they are already sold out for months ahead of time. Frustrated and pissed off, you go to an ancillary site which charges 50 to 100% more for tickets than the official site.
Here’s some good news!
It was just announced that the official Eiffel Tower website www.toureiffel.paris is dramatically increasing the proportion of available tickets. That means instead of paying up to 100% more a ticket from other websites that resell the tickets, you can buy your tickets on the site up to two months in advance and even up to three hours the same day of your visit, when available.
Now you have faster access to the Tower by curbing waiting time at ticket offices thanks to time-stamped tickets.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
Street photographers are a rare breed. (I consider myself part of the tribe.) We are constantly watching . . . always looking for compelling stories to tell. We are never really “off" the streets. Cameras and iPhones (and heart and mind) are invariably ready to engage and connect no matter where we are. From stealth moments to the best of personal interaction, we humans are fascinating folks. It is one of life’s pleasures to capture these memorable moments in images.
Meredith Mullins is a fine art photographer, photography instructor, and writer for OIC Moments and Bonjour Paris. Her work can be seen at www.meredithmullins.artspan.com or in her award-winning book, In A Paris Moment. She is available for private photography instruction/exploration in Paris and also teaches WICE photography classes. For more information, contact her at [email protected]et
Do you love cheese? I go for a cheese tasting at Beau et Fort, a restaurant and cheese shop in the 9th arr. on A Bite of Paris
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
Here is part one of the Art Nouveau doors from Antwerp, as promised from my blog earlier this month about the Art Nouveau mansions in Antwerp. I don’t want to spoil you too much, so will post the rest of them next month.
Do you have some favorites?
Do you love cheese? I go for a cheese tasting at Beau et Fort, a restaurant and cheese shop in the 9th arr. on A Bite of Paris
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
I’m taking a blogging break this week, so enjoy my summer reruns.
It’s an insider secret that the rooftop of Printemps has some of the best views of Paris. The access to the roof via the escalators going up to the ninth floor is free and attached to the cafeteria. There are also benches to sit on to enjoy the view. I hadn’t been in years and last Saturday I decided to go back and take photos. It was a picture postcard day with small clouds dotting the blue spring sky. I was able to get shots of the gorgeous gilded gold towers.
Here are a few fun facts about Printemps I bet you didn’t know. 1. Printemps was the first store to have elevators, which were installed in 1874 2. Printemps was the first store to have electricity, introduced in 1888 3. Their pricing strategy of marking set prices on all the merchandise, eliminating haggling based on customer appearance, was revolutionary. 4. When the metro opened in 1904, Printemps was the first store to have a direct metro entrance. 5. Printemps used to hand out bouquets of violets to customers on the first day of spring. 6. The famous cupola above the main restaurant was dismantled in 1939 and hidden in Clichy for fear it would be bombed during WW II.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
I’m taking a blogging break this week, so enjoy my summer reruns.
Inspiration sometimes strikes in the most bizarre places and circumstances. When I was Italy last December I was staying with my friends Laurie and Blair, who live in a tiny mountaintop village Roccamalatina in the Emigilia Romagna province.
One morning I went across the road to the supermarket to buy something. There was an early morning frost and as I was walking in the parking lot of the supermarket I noticed dead leaves on the ground encrusted with snow. There was something beautiful about the texture and color and I started to take photos. At a certain point, I picked up the leaves and placed them on the aluminum and plastic dumpsters alongside the supermarket.
I love the results and would love to get your feedback. Do you have any favorites?
LINKS EYE PREFER
NY Times: At a Nostalgic Restaurant, Food Takes a Back Seat to Fun by Lindsey Tramuta
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
I’m taking a blogging break this week, so enjoy my summer reruns.
I have a gripe about bathrooms in cafes and restaurants of Paris.
One of the big differences between Europe and the U.S. is how they treat electricity use. In Europe electricity is used more preciously and efficiently than the U.S. In France, one of the biggest differences is in almost all commercial and apartment buildings, the lights in hallways, vestibules and stairways work on a motion censor or a manual switch on a timer. Now this is a great way to save energy and clearly the U.S. could learn from this system and save whopping amounts of energy instead of having lights on 24/7.
Now there is a drawback to this system. If say you are walking down five flights of winding, narrow, uneven steps in a Paris apartment building after attending a dinner party where copious amounts of irresistible wine was consumed, invariably the lights go out while you are in between floors, throwing you into complete blackness like a cheap horror movie from the 1960s. Mind you the nearest light switch is eons away on the next floor and your are desperately groping the walls in the dark, trying to hold on so you won’t roll down five flights of stairs, looking like a crumpled mess with blood drooling out of the side of your mouth on the bottom of the stairway, again like a cheap 1960s horror movie.
The lighting system is the same for most bathrooms in cafes and restaurants throughout France. So you go to your favorite bistro and have a few glasses of wine or Champagne, you become a little giddy, a little silly, a little loose but all that drinking makes you have to go. You ask “Où sont les toilettes ?" (Where’s the toilet) in your best half French accent with a bit of a slur and the waiter tells you it’s downstairs or upstairs.
Again, you risk your life climbing up or down impossibly designed stairway so you can go do your necessary business. Since toilets are in compartments of their own, the area can be minuscule, with barely enough room to sit. In your half drunk stage you have a difficult time figuring out the physical maneuver in how to get your pants down or your dress up without hurting yourself or being a contortionist. You finally figure it out the hard way so you now have managed to sit down and are ready to go. It’s just about to happen when voila! The light goes out and you are pitched into blackness again. So now you are desperately groping in the dark like a cheap 1960s horror movie (didn’t I already say that twice?) for the light switch but you realize you forgot where it is. Is it inside or outside? So not only are you panicking about where the hell the light switch is but you are now afraid that your business might have landed someplace it wasn’t supposed to. Now I have a little secret that will save you in this embarrassing situation, which I discovered by accident. So I was in the same predicament a while back and I moved forward to get up on my feet and the lights went back on. My forward movement alerted the motion censor. Problem almost solved. Now I have to keep rocking back and forth much like a prayer movement in certain religions to keep the lights on; not the most comfortable position to be in. You finally finish what you have to do, struggle to get your clothes back on and mount the stairs again. Now your exhausted and feel the need to the visit the chiropractor because all of the physical maneuvers have made you pull a muscle.
So now I have three requests I want to put out to all owners of restaurants and cafes in Paris.
1. Can you please extend the timer for the lights in your toilet spaces for more than 30 seconds, perhaps three to five minutes? I know this could cost you more money for the electricity and it doesn’t help the environment, but it would sure make things go much smoother, saving your customers from possibly being in an uncompromising position. You can even add another 10 centimes to my bill and I promise to do something extra to reduce my carbon footprint to make up for the excessive electricity use. 2. Can you please put the light switch inside the toilet room, preferably with a backlit or fluorescent colored switch, so in case my business takes a little longer than expected, I know how to switch the light on? 3. Can you please extend the size of your toilet room just by a few centimeters? I am not your average skinny, compact Parisian and actually weigh over 120 lbs., plus the last time I visited your establishment I twisted my lower back trying to get out of the toilet area, resulting in two trips to the osteopath which cost me 180€.
Oh, and I have one other request I forgot to mention: Can you please install a paper towel dispenser instead of those hellish state of the art dryers that make you feel like hands are going to be ripped out of their sockets with blood spraying out of them, like a cheap horror movie from the 1960s?
LINKS EYE PREFER
A Safe Haven for Giacometti’s Restored Studio -New York Times
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
Last March I took a two-day trip to Antwerp, Belgium. Only 2.5 hours by train by Paris, it was an easy trip on the Thalys train from Gard du Nord.
One of the highlights of my time in Antwerp was a visit to Zurenborg and Cogels Osylei area on the outskirts of the city. In the period between 1894 and 1806, an abundance of Art Nouveau, Gothic Revival, Neo-Renaissance, Greek Revival, and Neoclassical mansions were built.
Ever since I moved to Paris, I have become enamored with all forms of Art Nouveau design including houses, doors, objets, furniture, and artists (Alphonse Mucha, one of my favorites). I’ve seen much of the Art Nouveau in Paris, frequently reporting my findings on Eye Prefer Paris, and my wonderful Art Nouveau discoveries in Prague and Nancy, France.
Walking through Zurenborg and Cogels Osylei, I was truly astounded. Never had I seen such a prodigious concentration of buildings in such a small area, maybe 10 blocks square. Each corner I turned, I would be overwhelmed yet again with the stunning details on the doors, stairways, windows, and building facades. I learned the houses sometimes had themes such as a series with flower names such as tulip, sunflower, and rose. One series of four houses facing each other on one corner similarly designed, depict the four seasons and two on another street represent night and day.
Has anybody been to Riga, Latvia, which has the highest concentration of Art Nouveau buildings in the world? It’s on my travel wish list and would love to know more about it.
Look out for a collection of fabulous doors from Antwerp later in the month on my Door of the Month feature.
Click hereto read the article I wrote about Antwerp for Travel Agent Central website.
For episode 9 of A Bite of Paris, I went to Comme a Lisbonne, where they servepastel de nata, an amazing custard tart from Portugal.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
Passing it so many times since I moved here, I’ve conjured up elaborate stories about the fabled restaurant, perhaps the most famous in the world. I imagined at the turn of the century the best-dressed women in Paris wearing extravagant ball gowns topped with decadent hats sitting on the red velvet banquets, discreetly taking out ivory fans from their jeweled evening purses, to fan themselves from the heat. Men would be wearing dapper evening suits and top hats, escorting their wives or have their latest mistress on their arm.
I finally had the chance last Wednesday night to enter into the world of Maxim’s, receiving an invitation to a press conference for my friend Diane Pernet’s film festival A Shaded View on Fashion.
The press conference took place in a large room on the second floor, decorated with Art Nouveau style chairs with carved wood backs and red velvet seats, red glass wall sconces, Tiffany lamps, flower patterned carpet and gorgeous etched glass screens. The room was the very essence of the decadent Belle Epoque era of the late 1800s and the figures of my made up story began to fill the room.
After the press conference, there was a cocktail reception on the next floor, with full access to all the rooms. The fading daylight filtered through the tall windows, highlighting the handsome dark wood floors, gold leaf moldings and the sumptuous aqua blue and pistachio green colored walls.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to photograph the dining room on the main floor. Perhaps I will be invited back to Maxim’s another time to dine.
In the 1970s sex siren, Brigitte Bardot caused a scandal when she entered Maxim’s barefooted.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
In an ongoing photo exploration of the cemeteries of Paris, I visited Montparnasse Cemetery last month. It’s a personal favorite and I’ve visited the cemetery many times and include it in my Montparnasse tour. Although it’s the second largest cemetery in Paris, it feels smaller and more intimate than Pere Lachaise and the list of writers, poets, performers, actors and artists buried in it is stellar. Close to the main entrance is the shared tombstone of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and if you walk through the remainder of the cemetery you will encounter the graves of Susan Sontag, Baudelaire, Nicki de St Phalle, Brancusi, Jean Seberg, Jacques Demy, Guy du Massapant, Marguerite Duras, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Charles Garnier (architect of Opera Garnier), and pop icon Serge Gainsbourg, whose grave is one of the most visited, rivaling Jim Morrison's grave in Pere Lachaise.
Opened in 1824, it was named Cimetière du Sud. It’s geometrically laid out on a 19-hectare lot. It contains 40,000 graves with over 750 trees and plants, making it one of the largest green spaces in the city. Divisions #5 and #30 are designated for Jewish burials.
Please remember to hit the LIKE button if you like it and SUBSCRIBE button to subscribe to my channel.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours.
Tours start at 225 euros for up to 3 people, and 75 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you, my insiders, Paris.
Come experience Eye Prefer Paris live with Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I personally lead. Eye Prefer Paris Tours include many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes, food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks and gardens and much more. In addition to my specialty Marais Tour, I also lead tours of Montmartre, St. Germain, Latin Quarter, in addition to Shopping Tours, Gay Tours, Girlfriend Tours, Food Tours, Flea Market Tours, Paris Highlights Tours, and Chocolate & Pastry tours. 
