Margie Rynn - Frommers EasyGuide to Paris 2015

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ISBN 978-1-62887-080-0 (paper), 978-1-62887-081-7 (e-book)

Editorial Director: Pauline Frommer

Editor: Pauline Frommer

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AN IMPORTANT NOTE

The world is a dynamic place. Hotels change ownership, restaurants hike their prices, museums alter their opening hours, and busses and trains change their routings. And all of this can occur in the several months after our authors have visited, inspected, and written about these hotels, restaurants, museums, and transportation services. Though we have made valiant efforts to keep all our information fresh and up-to-date, some few changes can inevitably occur in the periods before a revised edition of this guidebook is published. So please bear with us if a tiny number of the details in this book have changed. Please also note that we have no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy or errors or omissions, or for inconvenience, loss, damage, or expenses suffered by anyone as a result of assertions in this guide.

A foreword to this
Easy Guide to PARIS

by
Arthur Frommer

It always happens. Toward the end of every TV, radio, or newspaper interview, I am asked, If you could vacation in only one place in the world, where would it be? And I disappoint the questioner by responding not with an exotic or colorful choicesuch as New Guinea or Montevideobut simply with the city of Paris. And while the deflated interviewer changes the subject, I go babbling on about how Paris never fails to enchant.

Let Me Count the Ways

Its trueI can never get enough of the City of Light. To me, Paris is on the frontier, the leading edge, of every touristic activity. It rules the roost not only in cuisinewho could deny that?but also in art and museums; in concerts, dance, and opera; in political discourse and intellectual debate (scan the newspaper headlines if you doubt that); in monuments and history (from the Pantheon to the Tomb of Napoleon); in fashion and shopping; in its cafes and bars (where you can spend the entire afternoon sipping a single glass of wine and not be asked to move on); in the availability of its civic services (get sick and a roaming ambulance with a doctor on board will almost instantly be at your side); in its luscious-looking open-air markets; in the excitement of its student life; in literature and economics (its resident novelists, philosophers, scientists, and scholars are legendary); and in every other field and endeavor I can name. Return to it for the second time or even the fiftiethit still seems new.

So obviously, a guidebook series such as ours must have an important volume devoted to Paris. And this one, by American-turned-Parisienne Margie Rynn, is surely among the leading examples.

Margie came to Paris some 14 years ago, and she never left. She married a kind and understanding Frenchman (they have a delightful, 12-year-old son who knows every corner of the French capital), and while enjoying the delights of her adopted city, she proceeded to carve out a career as a distinguished travel journalist whose writings about Paris and France have appeared in numerous prestigious magazines.

Although her Easy Guide to Paris devotes more-than-sufficient space to organized commercial tours of Paris (including the fabled Bateaux Mouches riverboats), its clear from the text that she primarily regards Paris as a walking city, to be explored on your own, often while wandering at random. Here, after all, is a metropolis so built to human scale, so lovely in its architectural design, so lined with small shops with their dynamic proprietors, that there is never an uninteresting block in it. Let me repeat: You can walk its ancient streets for hours and you will never be uninterested.

I hope that your decision to carry a light-and-manageable Easy Guide will greatly assist you in your enjoyment of Paris, and that Margie Rynns own special perspectives will make your visit full of joyand memorable.

Cordially,

Arthur Frommer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margie Rynn has been living and writing in France for more than 14 years, mostly in Paris. The author of Pauline Frommers Paris, she has also written features for several travel publications, including Budget Travel Magazine, EasyJet Inflight, Ryanair, and Wizzit, as well as other magazines, such as Time Out New York, The Amicus Journal, and Yoga Journal. In a previous New York life, she acted in a Broadway play and performed her own one-woman show at the HERE performance space. Margie is married to a kind and understanding Frenchman, and they have a lovely 12-year-old son.

ABOUT THE FROMMERs TRAVEL GUIDES

For most of the past 50 years, Frommers has been the leading series of travel guides in North America, accounting for as many as 24% of all guidebooks sold. I think I know why.

Although we hope our books are entertaining, we nevertheless deal with travel in a serious fashion. Our guidebooks have never looked on such journeys as a mere recreation, but as a far more important human function, a time of learning and introspection, an essential part of a civilized life. We stress the culture, lifestyle, history, and beliefs of the destinations we cover and urge our readers to seek out people and new ideas as the chief rewards of travel.

We have never shied from controversy. We have, from the beginning, encouraged our authors to be intensely judgmental, criticalboth pro and conin their comments, and wholly independent. Our only clients are our readers, and we have triggered the ire of countless prominent sorts, from a tourist newspaper we called practically worthless (it unsuccessfully sued us) to the many rip-offs weve condemned.

And because we believe that travel should be available to everyone regardless of their incomes, we have always been cost-conscious at every level of expenditure. Although we have broadened our recommendations beyond the budget category, we insist that every lodging we include be sensibly priced. We use every form of media to assist our readers and are particularly proud of our feisty daily website, the award-winning Frommers.com.

I have high hopes for the future of Frommers. May these guidebooks, in all the years ahead, continue to reflect the joy of travel and the freedom that travel represents. May they always pursue a cost-conscious path, so that people of all incomes can enjoy the rewards of travel. And may they create, for both the traveler and the persons among whom we travel, a community of friends, where all human beings live in harmony and peace.