getting to Paris

[Guest]

So how long does it take to get from Honfleur up the Seine to gay Paris, how many locks are there, how big are they, is there a marina in the town center, is there any restrictions when the river is flooded ?

Thanks in advance,

Ian

 

[Guest]

I haven't motored up the seine. But I have visited the Arsenal marina which is handy and fairly central in Paris, by lock from the river and just upstream (east) from the two islands of Cite and St Louis.

But boats that can make the trip are hard to use as a base for ultrachic and smart Paris? Myself, I would go by plane or car - the trip by boat is is 200 miles rumble burble, and then you need a steel or cheap or old boat to continue through locks to the med, or turn around and all the way back. Much better fly or drive, book at the cheap but clean no-restaurant Hotel Notre Dame, room 52 with fab bedroom view of the catherdral 100 yards away, or the Royal St Michel on the Place St Michel nearby with no view but similarly central. Cafe Depart is on the corner of the Quai St Michel and Place St Michel, open 24 hours, and this area is livelier than bigger hotels which are less central. On arrival on midday Friday, cab immediately to pre-booked restaurant Jules Verne in the Eiffel tower, giving fab views and a flashy but not extorionate lunch, and you know you're in Paris. A cab toward the Louvre, and walk down Rue St Faubourg-St Honore past the shop which sells good fakes of Old Masters for 300 quid inc frame. Afternoon snooze in the hotel, then evening on a boat ride from Pont Neuf and/or dinner at les Bookinistes on the south bank, and snack and chat at Le Depart near the hotel till very late. Next day, take cheap cabs to rent toy sailing boats in the Luxembourg Gardens, or to Sacre Couer for a wander, or praps the Musee D'orsay. If you haven't done the Louvre, enter by the queue-free entrance in Rue Rivoli, not the long jap-only queue at the glass pyramid. Amazing lunch experience at the Train Bleue restaurant, actually inside the Gare de Lyon, with huge friezes of the exotice locations to which one could travel in style a hundred years ago. Place des Vosges is nearby, and worth a look at the stylish sixteenth century square almost perfectly preserved, with Picasso museum nearby. Consider the mad Greek/French plate-smashing restaurants just behind the south bank between the two hotels on Saturday night. On Sunday, there's time for a quick walk across to the Marche des Fleurs on the way to the must-see church of Sainte-Chapelle on the Ile de la Cité, be there on the upstairs level about midday for the full sun thru the south windows windows of the most amazing stained glass walls in the world, more window than wall, and make you feel as if enveloped in the wings of a butterfly. A short cab or a brisk walk takes you to the Brasserie Lipp on the Rue St germain for lunch, but make sure that you are downstairs at the back: if there before 1230 you may get the corner seat, and share a millefeuille for dessert. We've been every spring since 1987 when we fell in love and got married that autumn. It's very romantic.

 

[lanason]

Matts - now be honest - is all that your fair hand or has some copyright been rightly copied ?????
If is all your own work - well done the holiday has done you good !!!!!

 

[Guest]

Re: all my own work

Fraid the result of many many to Paris, and countless hours of very difficult research, hic.

 

[Guest]

Re: all my own work

I think that you have missed the point here, it's the challenge of getting there rather than what to do there. I am sure that there was some info in one of the recent MBM mags, but due to the Admiral cleaning up and moving things during the Christmas period I cannot find any.

Can anyone point us in the right direction i.e. what month issue etc.

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

It takes 3 days minimum and if you want to do it hassle free you do it on a MBM cruise-in-company.
Better to leave from crappy Le Havre than delightful Honfleur so you can catch the flood tide to Rouen. Pushing the ebb tide, despite the fact that the speed limit is quite high (about 15knots, I think), will not get you to Rouen in one day. There is nowhere to moor until the first lock just short of Rouen and since you want to avoid the sticky-up tidal bits and floating nasties like barges, its best to do it all in daylight so you're looking for a day with an early morning low tide at Le Havre.
Picking up fuel in Rouen is a must as its v. difficult to get into anywhere else.
Second day, you potter as far as you can go, maybe to Les Andelys. From memory, there are only about 5 locks between Rouen and Paris and they're not as hideous as some people say but take plenty of fenders and fender boards if you dont want to get your fenders filthy. Above Rouen, there is a choice of places to stop for lunch or overnight
Third day, you get to Paris, avoid getting mown down by les bateaux mouches and try and find the Arsenal marina. You spend ages waiting for a lock to get into the marina and then wipe your radar arch off on the low bridge just before the lock.
The trip can be tedious but its worth doing once although I would'nt reccommend doing it with kids unless you're willing to be blackmailed into visiting Eurodisney

 

[Guest]

wow....thanks for that Im moved.

 

[jfm]

Re: Paris in MBY

Mr Max (which spookily is my name in real life) there's a detailed expl in the letters page of this months MBY (the new issue with Mr Matthew's guide to exec jets).

Matts, a most exact account (I assume, I know the place but not in that detail) so plse send invoice for £750 to usual address. A question however, have you mastered the art of reserving a table at Moulin Rouge (for 2) and getting your OWN table, rather than having to share with say the people you mentioned were queueing earlier by the glass pyramid? Can you share this knowledge?

 

[david_bagshaw]

Allow 5-7 days up, there is a quite usefull landing stages half way up the tidal section,at caudebec & elbeuf,

Marina at Arsenal has a ristricted headroom bridge, so care is needed when the river is above normal.

It is a delightful trip, butcare is needed with commercial traffic, watch out for crockery breaking speedboats, oh and the flood up from honfleur is fast, and ferrys lurk on the occasional bend .

Have fun

David
www.yachtman.co.uk

 

[Guest]

All the most recent magazine articles give me the impression that the trip is not worth it. No moorings, no fuel, much floating debri, unhelpful lock keepers.

I have had this plan that when I retire I would take my boat through the French canals to the med, and bum around for the rest of my life. But I am thinking it may be better to transport my boat to the med and then start to have fun.

 

[Guest]

this is wonderful advice for a visit to Paris. I've been going since the mid seventies, and 2001 was our first year of not going at least once. As a new boat owner, (Boundless-a 49ft Hinckley center cockpit ketch), I elected to spend as much time on her (in Maine) as possible this summer, then spend Christmas in Paris. 9/11 changed my girlfriends perspective, but I managed to change her opinion from a hard no to a soft yes, then the plane crashed in New York and that soft yes became a hard no again, but never giving up, I started moving her in the soft yes direction, then the Swiss air plane crashed and I gave up, called the Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida, and booked a room. So no Paris for us this year, but I really did enjoy your monologue re things to do and would like to post it (with credit to you) on my Architectural Tours web page http://www.bryceandpalazzola.com/archtours/arch_tours.htm
I await your permission.
Bob Bryce
rrbryce@hdo.com

 

[Guest]

Re: more fame

You may need to edit it a little! But no problem at all, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Guest]

Re: Moulin Rouge, nice tables.

I got a table no problem at all at The Ivy, but for someone else. I called them from a mobile in Trafalgar Square, and told them I was calling from the Australian (or was it Canadian) Embassy, technically quite true.

Book for three, get the menus, spread out, and then say oh what the hell we'll order with out him. Smoke a monster cigar, sneeze a lot, laugh intolerably loudly for no particular reason, or take a baby bucket with handbag hidden under fluffy blanket, and nobody will want to share anyway.

Also I have circulated the very wonderful complaining presentation.

 

[Guest]

Re: cripes, Bob. and paris 3* michelins

i have just been to your exhaustive site. It makes uk architects sites rather thin reading! And you're definitely an architect - a visit to a 3-star michelin gets a dozen or more pics of the architectural detail!

I am impressed at your quest to vist all Parisian 3-star michelins. I was going to attempt the feat myself, but stopped after they changed quite rapidly, and also found that they were soooo expensive and not blisteringly good - 1-stars who are "going for it" seem to try harder. The Tour d'Argent was poor (now 2*) and Arpege is just weird - caramelised peppery tomatoes for dessert? hmm. We did manage to get to visit Paul Robuchon before he retired, where the utter accuracy of his spaghetti, each strand laid exactly where it should be, was astounding.

We've also been to Lucas Carton: this is the one you described as "much cheaper than Alain Ducasse". Argh. By contrast this is the one (for us) where I checked the fixed price menu several times, but whichever way I added it up it was 300 quid each, or a la carte. So we saved money, had just a main course (70 quid each) and ran off.

I note also that you stay at the Ritz. How fab. I had lunch there at the restaurant - the Espadon. It is there that I had the most succes with off-menu dessert trick: they turn up with whole swathes of desserts, and I made a request with the magic words - "une farandole, s'il vous plait". Upon hearing the magic words, they assembled two plateloads for each of us, on which were small portions of everything. Out of my league to stay though: on a blisteringly hot June day they said I could swim, but the swimming costumes cost 70 quid each, and membership of the sports club would be another 250 quid, and I thought that perhaps 600 quid for a swim for 2 of us somewhat prohibitive....

So what other 3* have you visited? Do tell.

 

[Guest]

Re: cripes, Bob. and paris 3* michelins

lucas carton, taillevent, alain ducasse, and paul boucuse (lyon) so far re the Michelin three stars.

I mis read the menu at Lucas Carton, and assumed the wine pairing, or matching of wine to each course was an additional $100 per glass. I was soooo mad when each course arrived and they only poured a splash of wine in the glass. AND on top of that, I didn't feel that it was a very good matching of wine to food and didn't even finish most of the wines. When "l'addition" arrived, I was pleased to realize that it was a total of $100 extra not $100 per glass.



It's a life long goal to savor a wonderful meal at them all. Not just Parisian three stars, but all of the Michelin three stars!! One a year for the next thirty years might do it, since, as you say, they keep changing. Alain Ducasse, for example, just lost one star in Monaco. That happened back in 1997 too, and he regained it for a while, but now, sadly, he's lost it again. His restaurant in New York is really pricy. $1,500.00 for four. Lucas Carton was our first and still remains our favorite. Agree that the Ritz is pricey too, but I love their reply to anything that we ask for: ..."but of course!" We spent the Christmas holidays this year (2001) at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida where our rooms were almost twice as much as the Ritz (depending on the value of the franc) and the architecture was not any where as nice, but our private concierge (flagler level) was equally as willing to assist our every desire.


One fellow (at the Breakers) had his family with him, his married daughters and their hubbies and the daughters' kids. He had a total of four rooms and they stayed for two weeks. That translates into $64,000. The winner was Mrs. Silver, however, who took the royal suite at $3,000 per day and has lived there continuously for the last 25 years.

 

[tcm]

Re: michelin 3star

I'm impressed that you sat there, as (in your mind) the stack of $100 charges racked up, with each glass taken away before totally drained at $100 a pop!

We've visited Tour d'argent, Arpege, lucas carton in paris, paul bocuse in lyon, (=4 , but tou d'argent lost a star) and in uk also 4, but 3 lost their stars or moved on. So, my live total is 4. like yours.

in the UK, there are just one or two 3*, whereas in France 2000 there were 22. My 2001 book is somewhere else. I had though of asking to become a reviewer, but once went to a 1* for lunch and a 2* for dinner, and couldn't do the 2* justice,

I will report back any notable stars during this years trip to the city of light, booked only jules Verne, may try Amboisie and report back.

I did go to one 3* with a friend who casualy mentioned that they perhaps needed reading glasses to see the menu....a selection of which were then brought to the table.

cheers

 

[Guest]

Re: michelin 3star

love the reading glass story!!!!

we stayed at the Ritz in London and ate nearby at @venue and Che. both excellent, yet I doubt any stars.

I'm doing a multi million dollar private wine cellar now, and have traveled at the client request to some nice wine cellars in several countries and done some pretty expensive tastings but still don't have the confidence to send a bottle back. I've never had one "off" that far actually.

One client opens several $18,000.00 magnums during his parties and I am still quite happy with the $9.00 Rieslings that the gf brings.



bob