Rear view of man with arm around woman in foreground, overlooking Eiffel Tower

Things to do in Paris for a birthday

Soak up the best sights in Paris, the best French cuisine and the very best bubbly to guarantee a joyeux anniversaire!
By Jo Cooke

Whether you’re looking for romance, fun, or simply chic celebrations, if you’re wondering what to do in Paris on your birthday, unwrap our ideas and tear the ribbon off our recommendations.

What brighter way to celebrate than by spending your birthday in Paris - the City of Light...of love...in short, a city that oozes as much style as it does cheese, chocolate and champagne?!

Breakfast in Paris

Why not start your day in style with coffee and the best Parisian breakfast you can find? Follow in the footsteps of famous writers, philosophers and artists; Oscar Wilde, Simone de Beauvoir and Ernest Hemingway, not to mention Sartre - and Picasso - were all regulars at Les Deux Magots, maybe the most famous café in Paris. Just across the Boulevard St Germain, Café de Flore is another legendary literary hangout. Sample their classic specialties or drop into nearby Café Louise for a top-class coffee and traditional French breakfast to set you up for a day of good things.

 

Learn how to make macarons

If you’ve a taste for macarons you could even try your hand at making your own, with a Macaron Pastry Class at Galeries Lafayette. Work with a French pastry chef to learn how to make the shells, the ganache and put it all together to create the perfect pastry sensation. Obviously you’ll have to sample a few along the way!

Over the river, Ladurée, shimmering on the Champs Elysée, is another contender for the best breakfast in Paris. Settle into the sumptuous 1950s decor and choose from specialty croissants and other sweet treats. Of course you can’t leave Ladurée without picking up a beautifully wrapped parcel of their world-famous macarons, 15,000 of which are sold every day! The delicious, disintegrating delight of these famous Parisian pastries make them worth every cent.

 

Shopping in Paris

Oh look! Since we’re already in Galeries Lafayette it would be a shame to not spend some of our birthday money on that favourite Paris pastime - shopping! As the undisputed fashion capital of the world, we can’t begin to suggest which are the best shops in Paris. But whatever your taste or budget, from opulent department stores to world-famous designer boutiques, via every style of independent outlet, your shopping dreams will surely come true here.

If you’re looking for French fashion tips, maybe drop into the exclusive mini fashion show at Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann store? This 30-minute catwalk of couture showcases ultra-chic French style to help you get ahead of the latest trends.

 

And, of course, no Paris shopping trip would be complete without a promenade along the Champs-Elysée, the most famous shopping street in Paris, running for over a mile between the Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Concorde. Historically the home of famous fashion names like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chanel and Balenciaga, you’ll also find mainstream brands including Gap, Zara and H&M. Don’t miss Galeries Lafayette’s four-story flagship store, featuring 600 brands and 300 designers in a stylish art deco building. Rather than traditional ‘departments’ it mixes items from different categories, encouraging shoppers to enjoy a fluid experience between fashion, food, accessories and loads more.

 

Lunch in Paris

All that retail therapy has given us an appetite, but, once more, we’re spoiled for choice, since Paris is famously a gastronomic paradise.

One special way to enjoy a birthday lunch might be to hit one of the many fresh food markets dotted throughout the city. Bag a baguette, some choice cheeses, maybe a punnet of cherries and some patisserie items - perhaps even a cheeky bottle of wine - and set off for a Parisian picnic. The tempting food stalls of the Marché St Germain are particularly well placed to pick up something to enjoy whilst sitting beside the Seine, along the Left Bank, or whilst lazing on the lakeside lawns of the Jardins Luxembourg

Or, if you’re pushing the birthday boat out for something a little more high-end, perhaps consider a gourmet lunch at Mordu. Also under the arches of the Marché St Germain, and acclaimed by the Michelin Guide, this popular restaurant serves classic French and Mediterranean cuisine with a contemporary twist. Settle down in the rich dark wood interior or, if the sun’s shining, on the wide outdoor terrace - and pop a celebratory cork to accompany your meal.

 

Browse the best Paris museums

You don’t have to be a culture vulture to find something to fascinate in the Paris museums - and there are 150 to choose from, including the Louvre, the world’s biggest museum. Taking an outside tour of the Louvre’s surroundings will help you understand its buildings, history and significance, before you head inside to meet Mona and the other masterpieces.

You’ll find a more laid-back museum experience at the wonderful Musée de l’Orangerie, where you can almost drown in the beauty of Monet’s large-scale water-lily paintings.

Meanwhile the Musée d’Orsay is home to a wonderful collection of furniture, sculpture and especially Impressionist paintings, breathtakingly housed in a soaring converted railway station. Get up close and personal with works by Monet, Renoir, Gaugin, Cézanne and Van Gogh, then recover in the café alongside the giant station clock.

 

Explore Montmartre

For a relaxed afternoon, strolling the pretty streets of Montmartre makes for a perfect birthday outing. Take a walking tour, climb the steps to Sacre Coeur, peep through the gates of the only vineyard in Paris and soak in the history and culture of this atmospheric Parisian district, famed for its street artists. There are endless bars and cafés for snacks, drinks and people-watching. Or maybe get your portrait painted in the Place du Tertre as a lasting memory of a special day.

 

Have a drink!

With apologies to the tee-totallers, another popular Parisian hobby is wine-tasting! And when better to raise a glass but on your birthday? Perhaps unsurprisingly France produces more wine than any other country - around 550 million cases per year. Les Caves du Louvre offers a choice of 50 different wines available by the glass. Sample your favorites (and cheese too!) in an historic wine cellar and learn about the different wine-making regions.

If beer is your preferred bevvy there’s another tasting package available at authentic Parisian microbrewery Brasserie BAPBAP. Sample some of their 35 original beers and take home a goodie bag, including two beer glasses, as a birthday souvenir.

 

Perhaps you’ll opt for a cocktail in St Germain as an aperitif before your evening celebrations or, French style, mid-afternoon. Or, for the full romantic experience, relax on a sunset cruise on the Seine, spotting iconic landmarks and watching the city light up, with a glass of sparkling bubbles in your hand.

 

Dinner at the Eiffel Tower

As evening falls, take your tastebuds on tour to the Tour Eiffel. For the ultimate Paris birthday treat, jump the queues and ride the lift to the champagne bar on the top floor of the Eiffel Tower, where you can gaze at the spectacular city view as you sip your bubbles at an altitude of 276m. Alcohol free drinks are also available and the view is just as good.

For a birthday dinner you’ll never forget, book well in advance for the sumptuous Eiffel Tower restaurants. Madame Brasserie on the first floor offers contemporary seasonal dishes served with a panoramic view over the Seine and Trocadero whilst, on the second floor, the Michelin starred Jules Verne is an unbeatable gastronomic experience. And who needs birthday candles? There’s no more magical sight than the tower’s 20,000 lights, glittering every hour from dusk until 1am.

 

Visit a Paris cabaret show

To round off a birthday to remember, a famous Paris cabaret is a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. Both The Lido and The Crazy Horse are renowned venues with extravagant sets, costumes and choreography. But it’s the mesmerising Moulin Rouge that’s known the world over for its mixture of elegance and risque entertainment. Its Féerie show featuring 80 performers, including 60 high-kicking Doriss girls and over 1,000 costumes bedecked with jewels and feathers, is a jaw-dropping celebration of joie de vivre.

Can you see and do more with Go City? Yes you can can! The freedom to explore on your own terms is the best gift we can give you. Pick up an All-Inclusive Pass and you’ll think it’s your birthday every day!

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Main atrium of the Galeries Lafayette department store at Christmas
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What’s Christmas in Paris like?

Brightening the otherwise dark days of December, Christmas in Paris is an experience you won’t want to miss. It’s a time when the French capital very much lives up to its nickname of the City of Light, with central boulevards glowing with festive street illuminations and shop window displays. Christmas markets provide an alternative place for last minute gift-buying and a little indulgence of the culinary variety. Ice rinks pop up across the city for some additional winter fun, whilst many churches host hauntingly beautiful seasonal concerts. If you want to discover everything there is to know about Christmas in Paris, you’ve come to the right place! Let there be lights! Forget the art nouveau stylings of the city’s metro system, with Christmas around the corner you’ll actually be eager to do battle with Paris’s legendary traffic jams from the window seat of one of its buses instead, in order to take in the wondrous festive lights after dark. Jump aboard bus route 80 to the École Militaire from Montmartre and your journey will take in the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, Champs-Élysées and views of Faubourg St Honoré before crossing the River Seine at Pont de l’Alma to the Champ de Mars opposite the Eiffel Tower. To be even more certain of seeing its landmark attractions so elegantly lit, a Hop-on Hop-off sightseeing bus tour is another great option. They have the added bonus of most classic routes passing through the Place de la Concorde, where you’ll find one of the largest Christmas trees in Europe. The Jardin des Plantes botanic garden also gets in on the seasonal action with its annual Festivals of Lights. The 70 acre site is taken over by monumental yet intricately detailed lantern displays based around a different theme in nature each year. Delight in a range of shopping experiences The crowds may not descend onto the streets in a fervor of Christmas shopping like they once did, but Paris at Christmas remains one of the most exciting places to shop anywhere in the world. The broad avenues of the Champs-Élysées and Boulevard Haussmann take some beating. Their big department stores like Le Bon Marché, Au Printemps and Galeries Lafayette – whose central glass-domed multi-level atrium is also renowned for its Christmas tree – go all out on their streetside window displays. But the cobbled side streets of Montmartre are well worth exploring too, perhaps as part of a Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur walking tour. Wherever you end up, you can be sure you’re never too far away from a Christmas market. Somewhere between 15 and 20 appear across the city each year, with stalls offering a blend of gift ideas, tree decorations and foods unavailable at any other time. If you’ve ever fancied sampling freshly-roasted chestnuts, warming mulled wine or France’s version of Yule Log – Bûche de Noël – you can do far worse than the market which takes over the Tuileries Garden beside the Louvre. Other enigmatic locations include the square outside Notre Dame Cathedral and Place des Abbesses in Montmartre. Ice rinks and funfairs Christmas market visits aren’t the only activity to take place during December. Many of the city’s famed locations also become home to temporary ice rinks. Accessible whatever the weather is the indoor rink at the Grand Palais on the Champ de Mars, which is also one of the largest in Europe. Meanwhile, previous years have seen the rooftop of Galeries Lafayette and the viewing platform of the Grande Arche de la Défense match a turn on the ice with exquisite views over the city. Filling the gap between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, the Musée des Arts Forains (Fairground Museum) in the Bercy neighborhood hosts the Festival du Merveilleux (Festival of Marvels). During this short window of opportunity visitors are able to ride their collection of vintage fairground attractions, some of which date back to the 1850s. The event is made all the more special by the appearance of magicians, dancers, puppeteers and musicians. When it comes to adrenaline, there’s only one place to head, and that’s the Christmassy makeover given to Parc Asterix on the outskirts of the city. As well as buckling up for a wild ride on the theme park’s roller coasters, there’s a whole host of special add-ons, from themed shows to indoor toboggan runs. Chocolate and carol concerts Those who enjoy a slower pace won’t be disappointed with Christmas in Paris either. Although most outdoor café tables sit dejectedly in forgotten corners, Paris’s coffee houses are still a prime place to absorb the ambience of the city. So why not linger over a steaming mug of hot chocolate and a pastry at the Lindt café by the Paris Opera or at Carette’s on Place du Trocadero – two of our favorite places to spend an hour or two away from the hustle and bustle of the streets outside. Another place to escape the crowds are in Paris’s religious spaces. Its churches are decorated with nativity scenes from the start of Advent (four Sundays before Christmas Day) alongside a schedule of Christmas concerts. Tickets for those at the Church of Sainte-Chapelle are well sought after given the combination of stirring sounds and the 16 massive stained-glass windows that dominate the chapel’s appearance. But churches including those in the Saint-Germain des Prés area and the American Church in Paris are popular alternatives with Parisians looking to get in the Christmas spirit whatever their religious leanings. Celebrating Christmas in Paris As a visitor, you’re not going to be disappointed by all the things to do in Paris at Christmas. A plethora of lights provide the necessary festive backdrop whether you’re keen to tick off the last of the gifts you need, take in the Christmas markets, grab a pair of ice skates or delight in a seasonal concert. At the same time, don’t forget about the landmark attractions that have made Paris a bucket list destination since before bucket lists even existed. Explore with Go City and you can visit many of them whilst making great savings on admission compared to purchasing on the day, alongside other advantages including pre-payment – helping make your vacation budgeting all the easier!
Ian Packham
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This Black Friday win a helicopter tour over Paris and Versailles, plus lunch at the Eiffel Tower

Our Black Friday Giveaway has now ended. Win a helicopter tour across Paris and lunch at the Eiffel Tower An amazing opportunity to see the city of lights from its sunny skies and indulge in some classic Parisian cuisine. The lucky winner plus one guest will board a six-passenger Airbus H135 helicopter and take a 25-minute ride across the capital, taking in views of Parc des Princes, Bois de Boulogne, the Longchamp hippodrome, the Saint-Cloud park Château de Versailles and the Roi Soleil’s gardens. You’ll touch down just behind Versailles at Saint-Cyr l’Ecole, where you’ll be served drinks while your knowledgeable pilot gives you an intro into the world of aviation. They’ll explain exactly how the chopper works and you’ll even get the chance to explore other scenic destinations through an immersive VR headset! Your return journey back to Paris is equally breath-taking – be sure to watch out for La Defense quarter, bridges over the Seine, Trocadero, Tour Montparnasse and of course a stunning view of the Eiffel Tower. When the adrenaline settles, you’ll head to Madame Brasserie on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, for a beautiful Parisian lunch with views over Place du Trocadéro and Bois de Boulogne Forest. With two Michelin-starred chef Thierry Marx at the helm, you are in for something special - this is seasonal French fare at its very best. How to enter For a chance to win this incredible prize, all you have to do is purchase any of our Paris passes between 9AM Tuesday 22 November 2022 and 11:59PM Tuesday 29 November 2022. Once you’ve purchased, you’ll be automatically entered into the giveaway. Easy! If you’re the lucky winner, we’ll contact you by email by December 15, 2022, so look out for us in your inbox. Click here to view giveaway terms and conditions
Jessica Basi
A couple face the Eiffel Tower in Paris in February
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How to spend an amazing Valentines Day in Paris

If Paris is a day in the year, it’s surely Valentine's Day. Few other cities can match its reputation for romance, with imagery of the Eiffel Tower inevitably tied with thoughts of marriage proposals and romantic candle-lit dinners. Thankfully, Valentine's Day in Paris isn’t all hype over substance – the City of Love hardly ever disappoints. And that’s despite the high expectations of Parisians and visitors alike. But to make the most of the big day, nothing should be left to chance. Follow our guide to what’s hot and what’s not for the perfect way to spend La Saint Valentin. Morning There’s probably no better way to start Valentine's Day in Paris than by waking up next to your significant other. Treat them to one of Paris’s top hotels, and you’ve also got the possibility of admirable views across the city, and maybe even the Eiffel Tower, once the lazy February dawn has roused itself into being. Cement your union in the most modern – and Instagrammable – of ways, by taking a selfie beside the millions of padlocks that have been attached to the Pont des Arts. Otherwise known as ‘love lock bridge’, it’s an act few can resist. You’re now well located to marvel at the marble statuary forming a key component of the collection of the Louvre, or better yet, take in the bridges of Paris from an alternative view by joining a romantic Seine cruise with Bateaux Parisiens. Lunchtime hours Such a trip will put you in prime position to scale the Eiffel Tower. Climbing its 674 steps to the second stage is sure to generate the appetite you’ll need to fully enjoy the Michelin-starred cuisine at Restaurant Jules Verne. Alternatively, keep your powder dry for the top, where the views extend for miles and a champagne bar does a brisk trade. If you’d rather save Paris’s ‘Iron Lady’ for sunset, head straight to Montmartre. Views from the Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur may play second fiddle to those from the top of the Eiffel Tower, but as the highest natural point in the city, they are still sublime. What’s more, as Paris’s traditional enclave of artists and bohemians, romance seems to seep from every cobblestone lane, as you’ll discover on any walk around Montmartre. Stop by the 612 individual blue tiles of Le Mur des Je t’aime (the Wall of I Love Yous) or catch a classic Hollywood love story at a matinee screening at Pathé Wepler movie theater. Afternoon Drifting south and east, make your way towards a museum like no other in Paris – the Gourmet Chocolate Museum Choco-Story. As you might expect from a museum dedicated to the world of all things chocolate, there’s plenty of opportunities to sample what you see being made before your very eyes. Then make a date with the city’s artistic institutions. Wander through the elegant side streets of the second arrondissement and it won’t be long until you find yourself face to face with the 16th-Century exterior of the Louvre, possibly the world’s most famous gallery. The 35,000 objects on display include the unmissable Venus de Milo. If you ticked this off earlier on in the day, you can instead swing by the Place de la Concorde on route to the Rodin Museum. Not only can you take in The Kiss here, but enjoy time in the tranquil and extensive gardens which envelop it. Early evening Any restaurant with even the slightest chance of an Eiffel Tower view is sure to be booked up months ahead of time in Paris on Valentine's Day. However, Paris has such a reputation for romance, you probably won’t need any help from the ‘Iron Lady’ to maintain the mood. With most Parisians opting to dine between 8PM and 11PM, you’ve got the chance to sneak in for an early feast should you choose, although the atmosphere may be a little lacking at this time of the evening. You might prefer to spend the earlier part of the evening with a daiquiri at Bar Hemingway at the Ritz, or with a sidecar at Harry’s New York Bar. Laying its claim to being the oldest cocktail bar in Europe, there’s an atmospheric piano bar in the basement. But if speakeasy-style bars are somehow not your forte, another option with plenty of romance attached would be a snuggle up together beneath a blanket as you tour Paris by horse and cart to see its landmarks lit up after dark. Late evening No blankets are needed for nights at the Moulin Rouge and the other well-known cabaret club names back in Montmartre. An extraordinary display of talent at any time of year, these clubs go all out on Valentine's Day. They put on special nights incorporating all the glitz and glamor you would expect, alongside a fine dining experience, tinkling champagne glasses and the chance to slow dance on their hallowed stages between courses. In addition, the opera houses of Paris are also at full strength on Valentine's Day. So why not dress up in all your finery and experience the magnificent tones of its opera stars or prima ballerinas, two artforms where the meaning is transmitted through the emotion rather than the language? Here’s to a successful Valentine's Day in Paris! Spending February 14 in Paris can create a huge amount of expectation. After all, it’s the most romantic day of the year in the most romantic city in the world. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in the City of Love for Valentine's Day, you’re sure to want to make an extra special effort for your partner in crime. But that doesn’t have to mean splashing the cash unnecessarily. Spend your money on what matters by saving on admission to many of Paris’s top attractions. Explore with Go City and you can do just that, without losing any of the flexibility you’ll want for those lingering romantic walks or café visits.
Ian Packham

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