Good Spots In Paris

To content | To menu | To search

Sunday, June 28 2009

Too hot to blog

By Léo on Sunday, June 28 2009, 15:22 - Mood

Sunset As you may have noticed the past week was quite poor in terms of blogging for me. The reasons are numerous but one of them may interest you : it's too damn hot to blog...and I'm not yet on holidays so it's even hotter because I'm suited up all day at work :( !

Just to give you some landmarks what I call "too hot to blog" in Paris is 30°C (around 86°F), even if it's a temperature we reach every summer I'm still not used to it here in town (as much as I love Paris when it's 30°C I'd rather be on the beach..and/or eating ice cream ;) !). So let me apologize one last time for not having blogged lately, I'll post more in the coming days as my others reasons not to blog vanishes (at least I hope they will ^_^ !).

And to conclude this very small post : Rest In Peace Michael Jackson :(

no comment no trackback

Sunday, June 14 2009

Guinness Tavern

By Léo on Sunday, June 14 2009, 21:56 - Tourist

Tavern My favorite beers are definitely Guinness, and I don't know for others country but, sadly, here in France not every bar serves Guinness. Anyway don't worry anymore (if you ever started to ;) ) I'll give you the address of one of my favorite places to drink Guinness in Paris, and it's called : the Guinness Tavern !

It's a nice pub in the center of Paris where you can drink Guinness (as well as 14 other beers) and listen to music (usually played by a live band !!!). The musical style is definitely "rock" from the 60's to nowadays so you may end up singing out loud with the bands because you know all the songs ;)

Well, I know their website looks a "little" messy but make no mistake : the pub itself is spick and span, and this website is useful as you'll find there which bands are planned when, the dates of their next "special theme nights" and, of course, their address :

31, rue des Lombards
Metro Chatelet RER Les Halles
75001 PARIS

2 comments no trackback

Wednesday, June 10 2009

After the Jolly Roger

By Léo on Wednesday, June 10 2009, 21:47 - Politics

Pirate Party Last weekend where the elections for the European Parliament. I'll spoil the results right now : the conservatives globally won. Now that this is spoiled I can talk about the funny thing I had in mind when writing the title of this article : what happened in Sweden :)

The Pirate Party ("Piratpartiet" in swedish), which is a Swedish political party vaguely related to the Pirate Bay and to cyberpiracy in general, had enough votes to send a deputy to the European Parliament !!! Sounds crazy, don't you think :) ?! Crazy but true : they do have a seat.

This party got arount 7% of the votes in Sweden , and is the first party among voters younger than 30. Funny thing : you can't tell if this party is right of left wing as they have absolutely no program for anything else than :

  • reforming copyrights law
  • protect privacy (both online and in everyday life)
  • improve transparency in the state administration.

And do you know the more astonishing about it ;) ? It's that nobody talks about it in the traditional media in France. You can find articles about it everywhere online, but turn on your french TV to see the news : all that you'll hear about the elections is that the right wing won and the left wing lost hard...Maybe we should see there a political will to deny the existence of "piracy" in the internet...shameful :(

PS : the title "after the jolly roger" refers to the fact that after having used a jolly roger for some times the Pirate Bay adopted a stylized "P" that the Pirate Party adopted just after, you can see it at the top of this article ;)

no comment no trackback

Monday, June 8 2009

The bar you may be looking for

By Léo on Monday, June 8 2009, 22:00 - Tourist

Black Dog I've already talked about a bar I like, but I realized only this morning that one bar is very few (especially as my blog's entitled "Good Spots in Paris" ;) ). So here goes a new little article to introduce you to a special bar I've spent some months to find : a bar where you can listen to metal music !

This bar is the "Black Dog" (I did not translate its name from French, it's really called the "Black Dog" ). In fact the "Black Dog" is a bar AND a restaurant. The "Black Dog" is quite well known in Paris (at least from people who listen to such bands as "Dimmu-borgir", "Children of bodom", or even "Mettalica") so if you get lost searching for it there are quite good odds that asking to people passing by gets you back on track ;)

The bar has a decent amount of beers, but that's not the most important as they serve beverages I used to find only in my world favorite bar which is not in Paris (if you wanna know everything it's the "Troll Farceur" in the city of Rennes, West of France) :

  • Moretum/Hypocras
  • Hydromel
  • Chouchen (even if they write it "Souchen" on their menu)

If you have never drunk any of those, you should definitely try them out ! Of course they also have more common drinks ( "White Russian", "Mojito", "Irish Coffee", Vodka, Tequilla, and so forth and so on ;) )

Regarding the restaurant they have at least one VERY well known dish : "Tant Pis Si j'en Crève" (which I'll have difficulties to translate but should sound a bit like "Hell if I die from it!"), it's basically a ONE KILO piece of meat (35.27 oz). In the same spirit they also serve the "Levrette" (this one is easy to translate : "Doggy style") which is a "light" version of the "Tant Pis Si j'en Crève" as it's only 400g (14oz). As you should have guessed now : their specialties are based on meet (their cuisine is inspired both from Argentina and France).

With this article I hope I saved the trouble I had finding this kind of places in Paris to some of you...and to make the odds a bit higher here's the addres :

26, Rue des Lombards
75004 Paris
Subway station : Châtelet / Les Halles

no comment no trackback

Friday, June 5 2009

Hotels in Paris

By Léo on Friday, June 5 2009, 22:41 - Tourist

Hotel As I promised : here's a little post about how much a hotel may cost you if you plan a trip to Paris :) You'll see the cheapest ones (and were you should avoid going anyway), the average ones (which are usually good spots, where you'll have a good quality for the price you pay), and of course a quick tour of the "upper class" hotels without which Paris would not be Paris ;) !

The cheapest

Before I really starts lets make it clear : by "the cheapest" I mean "the cheapest hotels", you can find places where to sleep for fewer bucks, but those are no more hotels but hostels ("backpackers" for our Australian friends ;) ).

In France the most famous brand in the "cheapest hostel" industry is "Formule 1". As it is a famous brand you're sure it's cheap but clean. Only problem : they are "cheap" oriented, and because of the real-estate average price in Paris they have no hotels within the city so you'll have to be around Paris, not in it (no big deal, there are still public transports and others easy ways of reaching the center of the town). So, the price for this : it starts between 38€ ($53) and 48€ ($68) for a night. I checked other cheap hotels, they are in the same range of price (but some are in the inner-city)

To sum it up : A cheap night is worse a little more than 42€ (around $60)

The average

If you plan to go to Paris with your beloved one you might want a bit more than "the cheapest decent hotel in Paris", so let's have a look at what's more average :) I know two major brands for "average" hotels : Ibis, and Mercure (in fact those used to be two different brands but now that's the same big firm...well we don't care, the brands are still here!).

What you need to know is that "Mercure" is upper class then "Ibis". Knowing this you won't be to much surprised when I tell you that you can find Mercure hotels in the very center of Paris, but no Ibis ones (make no mistake : you can find Ibis hotels in Paris, not like Formule1, but they are not located in the very center of it, that's all). As I told you those are average hotels (meaning two and three stars) so they're more expensive than the "cheapest hotels" we just saw earlier (which are barely one star) : count between 60€ ($89) and 90€ ($127) for Ibis, and between 110€ ($155) and 200€ ($283) for Mercure. As a matter of localisation : Mercure can be found everywhere (even in the very center as I told you), and Ibis are everywhere but in the center. Both are usually in cool spots you'd like to hang out :)

To sum it up : An average hotel night is worse 75€ ($106) for a two stars hotel or 150€ ($212) for a three stars one.

The upper class

And now : the upper class ! But let me warn you already. I'll be very brief (and incomplete) on this topic for two reasons :

  • I don't know a lot about those hotels (I'm not that rich :p )
  • It may be a good idea for a future complete post ;)

So, let's just talk about a couple of "upper class" hotels

First the Crillon. Very nice hotel, 770€ ($1090) for a night. To give you an idea of the spirit of this hotel let me tell you that for events such as the return in France of the national soccer team (world champion in 98 :p ) the private party takes place there :)

Then the Georges V, near the Champs Elysés, starting at 730€ for a night.

One I can't skip : "Le Bristol" starting at 750€ for a night

The famous Plaza Athénée, even if they did not dare putting the price on their website (and I did not dare calling to ask ;) )

And now, even if there are many more of them (after all : Paris needs room to supply shelter to the celebrity herd that rush into the town from time to time) I'll stop here. Maybe there'll be more in a coming post ^_^ !

no comment no trackback

Tuesday, June 2 2009

The price for living in Paris

By Léo on Tuesday, June 2 2009, 22:46 - Tourist

Key Looking for a flat took quite a lot of my time lately (and it will surely keep taking some in the coming months) and as it really took a LOT of time I posted fewer articles on this blog. Today, as I was still searching for a flat, I realized I could make blog post out of my search :) ! After all, when I look for a flat I definitely go for a walk in the neighborhood (even if I've been living for more than 20 years in Paris there are still some area I barely know) and that would make quite a good post topic, don't you think ?

For this first article about buying a flat in Paris I won't do a specific neighborhood review but I'll just start drawing the big picture. First figure : the average price for a meter square in Paris is 6360€ (which is $833 per sqf). As a comparison :

  • in New-York City it's $1193/sqf
  • in Miami it's...$132/sqf !!! Damn, I've always believed it was a super expensive city O_O
  • Los Angeles is $251/sqf
  • San Francisco is $510/sqf

(all figures for the USA are from here )

Of course this average price includes areas in Paris where I will never ever accept to live (North East of Paris mainly). If we now take a more targeted look the average price in the areas I'd like to live are between 7000€ and 8000€ per meter square (which are $917/sqf and $1048/sqf)...and believe me : it's not the most expensive areas :( (just for fun let me tell you the average price for the center of Paris : 11830€/m² in the area of "Odéon" ...it's $1549/sqf ...more than 10 times the Miam price :( )

So, what's the conclusion of all this :

  • Living in Paris is very expensive, but don't worry : I know that only very few of you may consider buying a flat in Paris someday, so I'll make a blog post about the price of hostels soon, and the next posts of this serie are definitely going to talk about the spirit of neighborhoods more than about their precise prices ;)
  • I'm not rich enough to buy a decent flat, and as any penny is good to take I added a new ad spot in the left sidebar of my site using this ad network. Who knows, I may earn enough bucks to buy me a coffe some day (if it ever happens I'll let you know ^_^ !)

no comment no trackback

Friday, May 22 2009

Holiday (tiny one)

By Léo on Friday, May 22 2009, 03:24 - Mood

Jesus Christ Today was a day off. It's a national holiday in France to commemorate the Ascension of Jesus. Lucky us : today was also one of the warmest day of the last pasts weeks so it was VERY pleasant to hang out in the town (and I sure did !). That was the good part of this post ;) For the sad one : I will not blog during the coming days.

Don't worry, "the coming days" means until Monday only :) ! So no reason to freak out. It won't change you a lot anyway as I barely post more than once a week lol. In fact the only thing that changes is this very post :) Usually, instead of this pathetic little post of apology, you should have had a normal post (i.e. longer, with facts and good tips in it). Oh by the way, I apologized about not posting anything interesting instead of this little text but I did not tell you why I haven't the time to post a real thing here. Let's do that :

As we (me and my friends) knew ages ago that this day was holiday we planned a lot of things to do. In fact we planned so many things that I'll have less free time than when I work lol ! By the way I should go to bed now because we have a 48h non-stop planing starting tomorrow, I'd better be in good shape lol.

Once again sorry for this very little thing (at least you'd have learn that the Ascension of Jesus is a day off in France ;) )

2 comments no trackback

- page 1 of 5