I’ve been lucky enough to visit Paris quite a few times over the years, and every trip has felt a little different.
This particular visit was a whirlwind long weekend with my husband, built around one very exciting event: opening day at the French Open. We’d teamed up with friends to spend the day in a corporate hospitality suite at Roland Garros and decided to turn the tennis into a four-night Paris escape.
It was also memorable for another reason. It was the first, and possibly only, time we’d both left the country while our daughter stayed home with friends. We’re used to taking her almost everywhere with us, so heading off to Paris as just the two of us felt surprisingly strange.
But it was also rather lovely to date my husband for a few days.
Staying in the Opéra District
We stayed at Hotel Opéra Opal, in Paris’s Opéra district. Our room was tiny – very Parisian – but the location more than made up for it.
The Opéra district sits on the Right Bank, primarily within the 9th arrondissement, and is a wonderful base if you like being able to walk out of your hotel and immediately feel part of the city. There are shops, cafés, restaurants and beautiful buildings everywhere, with many of central Paris’s major sights within walking distance or an easy Metro ride away.
I’ve stayed in several different parts of Paris over the years, and Opéra has probably been my favourite so far.
We arrived exhausted from travelling, but with only a few days in the city, we weren’t prepared to waste much time recovering. Almost immediately, we met our friends for cocktails and started wandering from one bar to another.
That more or less set the pace for the weekend.
Long Lunches on the Seine
One of my favourite meals of the trip was a long lunch at La Plage Parisienne, overlooking the Seine. There is something particularly wonderful about having nowhere you urgently need to be in Paris and allowing lunch to stretch well into the afternoon.
We also discovered some great places for drinks, including a very cool outdoor rooftop spot near the Louvre called Roof.
Paris is a city that rewards wandering. Some of our best moments weren’t particularly planned. We’d walk, find somewhere interesting for a drink or something to eat, sit for a while and then carry on.
Given how tired we were, espresso martinis became something of a recurring theme – coffee with a little extra encouragement.
Shopping at Galeries Lafayette
Being based near Opéra also put us close to Galeries Lafayette Haussmann. Even if you aren’t planning a serious shopping expedition, it’s worth visiting. The enormous department store is a Paris institution, filled with fashion, beauty, accessories, homewares and food beneath its spectacular glass dome.
We wandered through the different floors, doing a little shopping and admiring the building itself, which is as much a part of the experience as the shops.
This part of Paris is particularly good if you enjoy combining sightseeing with shopping. You can easily move between the grand boulevards, department stores, cafés and some of the city’s best-known landmarks without feeling as though you’re following a rigid itinerary.
An Afternoon in Montmartre
We also made time for Montmartre. It’s one of those parts of Paris that can be crowded and touristy, but I still think it’s worth experiencing, particularly if you haven’t been before.
We wandered through the narrow streets and stopped at one of the little cafés tucked into an alleyway, where we ordered escargot. Snails in Paris felt obligatory.
We weren’t trying to methodically tick every Paris landmark off a list on this trip, but somehow we still managed to see many of the classics, even if some were only at a glance. The Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Concorde all made an appearance as we moved around the city.
With such a short visit, I actually liked experiencing Paris this way. Rather than spending hours queuing for every attraction, we walked, ate, drank, shopped and simply enjoyed being there.
A Day at Roland Garros
The main event, of course, was the French Open. We spent opening day at Roland Garros with friends in an incredible corporate hospitality suite, which turned the day into much more than simply watching tennis.
There was food, drinks, fantastic tennis and some fairly spectacular people-watching. One of the highlights was Martina Navratilova visiting our suite. Seeing one of the greatest tennis players of all time suddenly appear while we were sitting there enjoying the French Open was one of those wonderfully surreal travel moments.
Roland Garros itself has such a distinctive atmosphere. Even if you’re only a casual tennis fan, being there during one of the sport’s four Grand Slam tournaments feels special, and spending an entire day there with friends was easily one of the highlights of the weekend.
Pastries, Coffee and a Very Beautiful Starbucks
My husband was excellent at finding places we needed to try, particularly if he’d discovered that a famous pastry was available somewhere within walking distance of our hotel. There were plenty of those little detours.
He also took me somewhere that might not appear in a traditional Paris travel guide: Starbucks on Boulevard des Capucines near Opéra. Before anyone questions travelling all the way to Paris and going to Starbucks, this isn’t exactly an ordinary Starbucks.
It’s housed inside an elaborate 19th-century building with ornate ceilings, decorative details, marble and sweeping ironwork. It feels more like an old Parisian salon than somewhere you’d normally order a takeaway coffee.
And I need my coffee. We really needed coffee on this trip.
Paris, Just the Two of Us
Looking back, what I remember most isn’t actually one particular landmark. It’s the pace of the weekend – cocktails with friends, a long lunch beside the Seine, escargot in Montmartre, wandering through Galeries Lafayette, hunting down pastries, espresso martinis when coffee no longer seemed quite enough and an unforgettable day watching tennis at Roland Garros.
It was strange being so far away from our daughter. As busy as our lives can be, we’ve always tended to travel as a family and take her almost everywhere with us. For a few days, though, it was just the two of us. We ate when we wanted, stayed out late, walked for miles and packed far too much into every day.
Paris turned out to be a very good place to date my husband for the weekend.
Although I’ve visited the city several times, this is the Paris trip I associate with tennis, very little sleep, a lot of coffee and remembering how much fun it can be to travel together as a couple.
Mrs Globetrotter Tips
- Stay around Opéra for a short trip. If you only have a few days in Paris, I loved this area. We could walk to restaurants, cafés, shopping and plenty of sights, and it was easy to get around from there.
- Don’t worry too much about the size of your hotel room. Paris hotel rooms can be tiny. For a long weekend, I’d prioritise location over space – particularly if you’re planning to spend most of the day out exploring.
- If you’re going to Roland Garros, make a day of it. Don’t try to squeeze the French Open between other sightseeing plans. We spent the whole day there, and the atmosphere, hospitality and people-watching were as much a part of the experience as the tennis.
- Leave room for wandering. Some of our favourite moments came from simply walking, finding somewhere for a cocktail or coffee and changing our plans as we went. Paris is one city where I wouldn’t schedule every hour.
- Pack comfortable shoes. We covered an enormous amount of Paris on foot. It’s one of the best ways to experience the city, but this isn’t the trip for beautiful shoes you can’t actually walk in.
- Have at least one proper long lunch. Rather than racing from attraction to attraction, choose somewhere lovely, order a bottle of wine and let lunch take a couple of hours. Our lunch beside the Seine is still one of my favourite memories from the trip.
- See the icons, but don’t feel you have to “do” all of them. On a short visit, it’s perfectly fine to see the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe without spending hours queuing to go inside. We saw a surprising amount of Paris simply by moving around the city.
- And if you’re travelling without the kids, embrace it. Have the late dinner. Order another cocktail. Sleep in if you can. We adore travelling as a family, but Paris reminded us that occasionally travelling as a couple is rather lovely too.
