Paris for The Curious Wanderers: a Friday-to-Monday weekend
Zinc roofs, limestone, and the long grey light.
No theme, just the city at its best. The sights that earn their reputation, a workshop or a market, one strange place nobody told you about, and dinner where the food is the point.
Friday: The passages and the alchemist
- Passage des Panoramas and Passage Jouffroy
The 1799 arcade and its 1847 neighbour, stamp dealers, the old engraver Stern's shopfront, and the glass roofs just before the lamps come on.
- Nicolas Flamel's house and Saint-Merri
The oldest stone house in Paris, 1407, with his inscription on the lintel, then the horned figure on the keystone of Saint-Merri's portal.
- Chez Georges
A bistro unchanged since 1964, handwritten menu, pavé du Mail, and the same waitresses the garment trade next door has known for years.
Saturday: Underground, then the unicorn
- Catacombes de Paris
Six million Parisians stacked in the old quarries; book the first slot and read the limestone inscriptions before the crowd.
- Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature
A hôtel particulier of trophies and curiosities, a ceiling of owl feathers and a cabinet devoted to the unicorn.
- Le Bistrot Paul Bert
Steak au poivre, a soufflé the size of a hat, and a dining room full of cooks on their night off.
Sunday: Flea and loom
- Marché Vernaison, Puces de Saint-Ouen
The oldest of the flea markets, a village of stalls where restorers work on the pieces they are selling.
- Manufacture des Gobelins
A guided visit to the state tapestry workshops, where a weaver completes a square metre or so a year on looms from the seventeenth century.
- Le Coupe-Chou
A warren of medieval rooms lit by candles and a fire, behind the Collège de France, duck confit on bare stone.
Monday: Taxidermy and butter
- Deyrolle
Taxidermy and entomology since 1831, drawers of beetles on the first floor and a polar bear by the stairs.
- Croissant class at La Cuisine Paris
Three hours of laminating butter into dough in a kitchen on the quay, and you leave with the box.
- Le Comptoir de la Gastronomie
An 1894 épicerie with a few tables at the back, foie gras and a glass of Jurançon before the train.