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Be chic and stylish in one of the world’s most romanticized cities.

What’s old will always be modern in the historic French capital, with its recognizable churches, its reinvented cafes and its resplendent beauty all living up to their presumed charm.

FRIDAY

We arrived in Gare de Lyon station just after noon after an event-filled, five-hour ride from Cannes on the TGV, which made an unscheduled stop in Marseille because strikes by railway workers meant there was only one train arriving in Paris from south France that day. (That chaos resulted in the theft of our camera and a wallet with plenty of cash, which significantly added to our irritation.)

After getting our bearings and grabbing lunch at the station, we headed across the city via the Metro to our hotel, now known as the Hotel La Comtesse (29 Avenue de Tourville), a few blocks from the edge of the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. Our first mistake of the journey was to go right to the Eiffel Tower during the middle of the day in the summer months; it seemed like a good idea to see the structure first, but the massive crowds meant we waited in line for nearly 90 minutes without progress before we decided we’d give up and come back another day.

We walked across the Seine to the Place du Trocadéro, where a number of street performers and vendors only helped set the scene as we look back upon a magnificent view of the Eiffel Tower. Another trip on the Metro — though we could have walked — led us to the Arc de Triomphe, the monument to those who fought and died for France. We chose to go through the lengthy underpass and go inside, where a museum and panoramic view down the Champs Élysées occupy the top level.

A 1.5-mile stroll down the Champs Élysées, one of the world’s most famous streets, led us to the Place de la Concorde, Paris’ largest square and the site of the Luxor Obelisk — a large monument given by Egypt to France in 1833. Our stroll continued through the Tuileries, a public park established by Catherine de Medici in the 1560s, toward the Louvre.

What To Know
Date of visit: June 13 to June 15, 2014.
Airport location: There are two main airports, De Gaulle and Orly, both of which are accessible by train or bus but take at least an hour to get to the city center.
Walkability: 3/10. It’s a massive, sprawling city that needs to be crossed by public transportation.
English: Widely spoken with judgment.
Must-See Attraction: The Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame are cultural icons, but consider a trip to Versailles, if not for the history then the splendor.
Traveler’s tip: It’s best to reserve tickets to several attractions, including the Eiffel Tower, in advance in order to cut down on waiting among the sizeable walk-up crowds.

Perhaps the world’s most famous art museum, visitors could spend days getting lost in the Louvre. We blocked off a few hours and explored much of it, stopping to hit some of the main highlights: the Great Sphinx of Tanis, the Venus de Milo, Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People and, of course, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, among others.

We spent nearly four hours inside and were beyond hungry when we emerged, so we headed back toward our hotel via the Metro and grabbed dinner at Bistro St. Dominique (131 Rue Saint-Dominique), which offered a variety of meat, seafood and pasta dishes in a comfortable, airy location just off a small square.

The sun doesn’t set in Paris during the summer until nearly 10 p.m., but with an exhausting day behind us, we struggled to make it that long and returned to the hotel.

SATURDAY

There’s so much to do in Paris that we felt odd escaping for part of a day, but we knew we couldn’t miss a trip to the Palace of Versailles, so we headed over to the Invalides station and caught the C line of the RER and headed an hour out to the suburbs. The ornate residence of three French kings, Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, it’s an awe-inspiring complex that takes some time to get around. We waited nearly an hour to get in despite arriving shortly after it opened, so prepare to wait if you don’t buy tickets in advance. And, make sure, of course, to see the king’s and queen’s bedchambers, as well as the Hall of Mirrors, where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919.

It was time for lunch once we left, and we grabbed sandwiches at a cafe on the nearby Rue de Satory, a pedestrianized street, before returning to the station and hopping aboard our train back to Paris. After surfacing, we stopped by Les Invalides, the park and complex that’s home to the Army Museum and the Museum of Contemporary History. We passed on both, instead choosing to stroll through the gardens and duck into Dôme des Invalides, a church that houses Napoleon’s remains in its crypt.

Returning to the Invalides station, we once again hopped on the RER’s C line and went two stops to Saint Michel-Notre Dame, crossing onto the Île de la Cité [City Island], home to Notre Dame. One of the most famous Catholic churches, the cathedral was originally built in 1160 and finished 100 years later, though it fell into disrepair in the 18th century and was only restored in the mid-1800s in accordance with the popularity of the recently published “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” We went inside, but because we were there in the mid-afternoon on a Saturday in the summer, the line to scale the towers snaked around the northeast side of the building and we decided to pass.

Keeping with the church theme, we took the No. 4 line on the Metro a half-hour north into the 18th Arrondissement for Sacré-Cœur, and we were fortunate: We arrived during the final 15 minutes of the Saturday evening service, which was in Latin. After the Mass finished, we explored the basilica, which was finished in 1914.

Dodging a variety of buskers and street performers on the way down the steps, we felt prepped and spiritually ready for our night’s entertainment — the internationally known Moulin Rouge (82 Boulevard de Clichy). The Féerie stage show, which has run since 1999, is not a cheap ticket, and, at more than two hours, it’s a long performance. Fortunately, because we chose to have dinner at the venue beforehand, we were seated right near the stage. And, since it was already late when we left and the theater isn’t in the greatest location, we hopped in a taxi to take us back to the hotel.

SUNDAY

Having learned from our experience two days earlier, we booked tickets in advance to get into the Eiffel Tower the first thing in the morning — and still waited nearly an hour to do so. Still, it’s one of the world’s foremost landmarks, and making a trip to Paris without scaling the 984-foot wrought-iron tower, which opened for the World’s Fair in 1889, would have been a missed opportunity.

Alas, our foresight and planning did not last long, as we took a short trip on the No. 6 line of the Metro and arrived at the Catacombs (1 Avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy) a bit out of luck. A series of former mining tunnels, they hold the remains of more than an estimated six million people that were displaced during the city’s 18th-century cemetery crises. Understandably, admission is tightly controlled, with preference given to tour groups; we didn’t know this until we had been waiting for more than 90 minutes, and once we saw the 60-person noon English-language tour go in that we had missed, we’d be standing for significantly more time.

So, regrettably, we headed off, knowing we had a 1:30 p.m. cruise down the Seine booked through Bateaux Mouches. One would think we would have started our Paris excursions with a cruise down the river, but instead, it was our last task, taking us from the pier near the Pont de l’Alma past Île Saint-Louis before looping around, making a pass by the Eiffel Tower and then returning to dock.

Our departing flight was out of Charles De Gaulle Airport, and we’re lucky we gave ourselves time to get there. Altogether, between the local transportation and the time on the B line of the RER to the airport, it took more than an hour to reach the airport before our flight home.

Verdict: Paris can be a difficult place to get around on a summer weekend, especially if your itinerary, plans and tickets haven’t been arranged in advance. It’s still possible to hit the main sights, but a significant amount of patience and flexibility are crucial.

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Disclaimers: All products, services and experiences were paid for and arranged by the author and the vendors named herein had no editorial oversight of this piece. All photographs were taken by and remain the property of the author; contact for republication rights.