Paris

Neighbourhoods with a strong identity

Le Marais holds Paris's oldest buildings and a Jewish history still visible today in the falafel shops on rue des Rosiers, while also being the centre of the city's LGBTQ+ life and small art galleries. Montmartre, up on its hill, keeps a village feel around Sacré-Coeur, but the steps up to the basilica also draw the three-card monte game with its "guaranteed" win — a con well known for years, worth recognising before seeing it in person. Saint-Germain-des-Prés keeps the literary café tradition alive; Canal Saint-Martin, further from the tourist centre, is where younger Parisians picnic along the water on summer evenings.

Bread, markets, and the metro

The difference between a croissant and a pain au chocolat is just shape — the dough is the same, but a good bakery shows itself in the croissant's crisp layers. The Marché des Enfants Rouges, Paris's oldest covered market, tucked into the Marais, sells food from a range of cuisines meant to be eaten on the spot. The metro covers the city densely, but many older stations have no lift, a real problem with heavy luggage or limited mobility.

Museums, airports, and getting there from Tirana

The Louvre now runs timed entry to manage queues; the Musée d'Orsay, in a former railway station on the Seine, holds just as much Impressionist art with noticeably shorter lines. Direct flights run from Tirana to both Charles de Gaulle and Beauvais — but Beauvais isn't really "Paris": it sits roughly 85 km outside the city, and the shuttle bus into the centre takes over an hour, a detail that gets lost when comparing flight options. Charles de Gaulle connects to the centre by the RER B train in about 50 minutes. August is when many Parisians leave town and some family-run restaurants close for the break, which catches out visitors who don't expect it.