Call it luck, chance or manipulation, but I recently suggested it was important that I collect my daughter after her six-week exchange in Lille, and since I had to be in France, five days solo in Paris beforehand felt entirely reasonable. Completely unscheduled, and the rare luxury of time I hadn’t planned for but was determined to use.
Thirty hours door to door. Brisbane to Paris, a 7 a.m. arrival at Charles de Gaulle. Jetlagged and cold, my brain lagged behind my body, which was ready to move. Straight into a car as the sun rose, then across the city to the Grand Pigalle Experimental in South Pigalle.
SoPi, as the locals call it, sits between the 9th and 18th. Once a neon-lit red-light district anchored by the Moulin Rouge, it has softened its edges. Now it hums with boulangeries, vin and fromageries, serious coffee, independent boutiques, florists and tiny museums, all orbiting the Rue des Martyrs.
It’s early December when I flit through, and I’m immediately filled with holiday joy. Too early to check in, I dropped my luggage and walked to Galeries Lafayette, mainly to thaw out and reset. As a certified Christmas tragic, I was desperate to take in the unmissable 16-metre Christmas tree that towers beneath the soaring glass couple, a listed historical monument in its own right. This year’s design, imagined by illustrator Jeanne Detallante (think Carven, Prada and Miu Miu fame), spills through the store to the window displays, her clever work stitched into decorations, gift wrap and bags that carry her Christmas cheer back onto the street.
The famous rooftop view was closed for ice skating, but one level down gave me what I needed. A first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. Enough to say: I am here.
A stroll over to the Palais Garnier came next, and man, did it hit harder than expected. Built in the late 1800’s, it remains staggeringly opulent. Now used mainly for ballet, the theatre itself, crowned by Marc Chagall’s spectacular ceiling floating above red velvet and gold, has been a historic monument since 1923. The marble, the staircases, the sheer excess of it all, paired with the thrill of day one in Paris, almost did me in.
Still inside the Palais, tucked into the Emperor’s Pavilion, I wandered into the Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra National de Paris. Almost empty, completely silent, with the faint smell of old paper. Six hundred thousand archived books and documents. It fed my bookish soul and brought me back to my senses.
The Musée du Parfum Fragonard was equally quiet. Ancient vessels, travel cases, and perfume history stretching back to early Egyptian times. Unshowered off the back end of thirty hours of travel, jetlag had flattened my sense of smell, so I skipped the olfaction rooms, noting them for another time. An early acknowledgement that I would return to Paris again.
My first Parisian meal in more than twenty-five years was at Duvin, on Rue Jean-Baptiste Pigalle: dried meats, cheese and a glass of Charles Heidsieck. Empty on arrival, Duvin was packed by the time I left. The long lunch remains very much a Parisian ritual, even on a Monday. Completely satisfied with day one, it was a slow walk back to SoPi and the Grand Pigalle. Four floors up, my room with its small French balconette overlooking Rue Victor Massé was ready for twelve hours of sleep.
The next morning was crisp and clear. I walked up to Sacré-Cœur, then drifted through Montmartre and the 18th. From Square Louise Michel, the city stretches out in layers. It wasn’t postcard perfect. It was a grey day, but the rooftops of Paris were doing their thing.
Espresso, quiet galleries. Back past the Moulin Rouge, then downhill again to the passages at the lower end of the 9th.
Passage Verdeau felt like a trove of curiosities: antique cameras, prints, postcards, books. Old timber shopfronts sat beneath the glass roof shaped like a fish skeleton, the air faintly scented with paper and age. Galerie Vivienne, over in the 2nd, was more polished. Stunning mosaic floors, small galleries, restaurants and hole-in-the-wall bars, elegant restraint, Paris reminding you it can be both.
The Marais delivered the emotional centre of the trip. A pause in the Jardin Anne Frank, then a happy accident: a visit to the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme and Denise Bellon’s exhibition, A Wandering Gaze.
Bellon was a Paris-born photographer who captured people and places with quiet courage. A Jewish woman working in a male-dominated field, she helped establish one of France’s first photo agencies, Alliance, and built a career that moved easily between everyday life and ambitious creative work. During the Second World War, she hid her identity in Lyon but continued to photograph, leaving behind rare images of life under Occupation. Later documenting children (including her own), refugees and communities across France and Morocco.
Closely connected to Surrealist artists and writers, her archive stands as proof of a woman who carved her own path and saw the world on her terms. I couldn’t have imagined a better way to spend an afternoon.
One of the pleasures of solo travel is eating only when you remember. Lunch slid into an early dinner of pâté and champagne at Café Ventura on the Rue Des Martyrs, chosen as much for timing as for appetite. Outside, the Christmas markets around the vintage carousel were coming to life. Rue des Martyrs at night in December is its own reward, lights and garlands strung between boulangeries, fromageries and vin at every turn. Later in the week, I returned to La Meringaie and bought a meringue the size of my head for lunch. Because I could.
An evening walk to La Madeleine, the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, in the 8th. Her construction in 1764 stalled by the French Revolution, then reimagined by Napoleon as a Neoclassical monument to the glory of his armies. It eventually returned to its original purpose and was completed as a church in 1842.
Another joy of solo travel is arriving early, happy to wait. I claimed a front-row seat at La Madeleine for an evening performance by the Orchestre Hélios, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with Schubert and Pachelbel woven through. The seats were brutally unforgiving, but they kept me upright through jetlag long enough to tear up at Ave Maria, imagining how much my mum, back in a Sydney Summer, would have loved to be sitting beside me.
Day three began with a quiet stroll through the Jardin Nelson Mandela in the 3rd, then a long, unhurried morning at the Bourse de Commerce and the Pinault Collection. The major exhibition Minimalism traced the movement from the 1960s through more than a hundred works. Historically significant without feeling heavy.
The building itself is extraordinary. Layered around a 16th-century column and an 18th-century circular grain market, the vast glass dome and sweeping staircase pull centuries of history and contemporary art into a single space. One of my standout Paris moments.
From there, I walked across the Pont Neuf and along the Seine. A brief stop at Notre-Dame. Newly reopened and marked by repair, it carries itself differently, though the crowds remain. I skipped Sainte-Chapelle and the Louvre and headed instead to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
The exhibitions delivered: One Hundred Years of Art Deco was crowded but spectacular, and the Orient Express homage took me straight back to my teenage love of Agatha Christie. Paul Poiret: La mode est une fête (Fashion is a Feast) closed it out, a celebration of the couturier who reshaped early-twentieth-century fashion and a reminder that fashion can be playful, radical and generous all at once.
At dusk, I found a tiny window seat on the top floor overlooking Rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries. Below, the Grand Bassin Rond anchored the garden. The Eiffel Tower glittered in the distance, and I quietly watched another Christmas Market come to life. One of those moments you can’t plan for, and one I was not going to rush.
A planned visit to the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain earlier in the trip had failed spectacularly; they had moved. I reset with a glass of champagne at Le Select at 10 am, waiting out the rain, then wandered Boulevard Raspail from Saint-Germain to Montparnasse. A sneaky purchase at Le Bon Marché. A long walk along Boulevard Saint-Germain and a beef tartare at Café de l’Empire. By the time I was perfectly positioned for people-watching, there was a queue out the door. Another happy accident.
Wrapping up back at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, I finally made it to the Fondation Cartier’s new home at Place du Palais-Royal. I took in Exposition Générale, a look back at forty years of contemporary art in one quick sweep with works by Bruce Nauman, Yue Minjun, Ron Mueck, Damien Hirst and even Patti Smith.
It was an easy decision to drop €20 on the Tuileries Ferris wheel for a carriage to myself. From above, Paris stretched out in layers: rooftops all the way to Sacré-Cœur glowing in the distance, Montmartre and beyond on one side, that sparkling Eiffel tower on the other. Back on the ground, a lone cellist played in the Cour Napoléon. I walked home to the 9th as the city settled in around me.
On my last day in Paris, I took the train north to Lille to collect my sixteen-year-old daughter, Luca. Lille surprised me. Capital of the Hauts-de-France region, close to Belgium, the laid-back sister to Paris. Easier. Less monumental. The cobblestone streets and la Grand Place were lit for Christmas. I picked up a couple of bottles of French gin from Birdie at the Christmas Markets. An unassuming souvenir from a city that doesn’t try too hard.
Lille felt like an exhale. I reunited with the teen, and the following day we spent one last night together in Paris before catching a train to Spain. That’s a whole other story.
This trip wasn’t about ticking off Paris. For me, it was freedom. Five days without a plan, without negotiating timing, meals or movement. Answering only to instinct.
I walked close to 120 kilometres and let the city meet me where I was. I ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was tired. It wasn’t an escape, so much as a release. At this stage of life, that feels like the point.
