Paris, best neighborhood to stay in.

Although this area is considered to be somewhat "touristy" , I would recommend the 7th arrondisement in the area of the Eiffel Tower and Rue Cler. I am going to Paris in May on a RS Tour (have been to Paris twice before) and recommend Hotel de Champs du Mar, which is right next to Rue Cler. Prices are reasonable, reviews are good, and it is a small hotel. If you have never been to Paris before, it is a very pleasant neighborhood, lots of shops/restaurants with English-speaking waiters and shopkeepers. Give it a try (if it's not already sold out! ) .

What is you budget? Saying you have budget concerns does not tell anyone how much you are willing to spend so suggestions might be all over the place cost wise. I think locals do not really go to hotels that often so maybe when you say you like going where the locals go, you are referring to less touristy neighborhoods or restaurants, etc.

You’ll probably find it but just in case, the name of the hotel is Hotel du Champ de Mars.

Notre Dame is the center of Paris, while there are tourists in this area (in the 7th as well) it is for good reason. Do you want to walk along the river and to many sites? Closest to Notre Dame is ideal for that. The 4th (Marais and Ile St Louis), the 5th (Latin Quarter) and the 6th (St Germain) are my favorites.
If you really want to be away from tourists and most sites, choose the 10th-17th or the 19th-20th arrondissement.
Sacré Coeur is in the 18th and very touristy. You can tell what arrondissement a place is in by the last two digits of the postal code.

I highly recommend using Alcove and Agape. You can see what's available by area. We stayed in the 13th Arrondissement, about a 10 minute walk from the catacombs and our B&B was less than 5 minutes from the Metro. It was a nice, quiet neighborhood with plenty of restaurants.

We rode the Metro to wherever we wanted to go Notre Dame was 20 minutes by Metro away, as was the Arch de Triomphe. We are about your age, 68.

Our B&B was 100 Euro a night, but that was in October. June may cost more, but Alcove and Agape offers different price ranges.

With Alcove and Agape, you find the accommodation you'd like, then you fill out a questionnaire with information about yourself. This is forwarded to the owner and they determine if the time is available and they accept your offer. When you book, you pay Alcove and Agape a service fee (I think 20% of what the owner charges, so at 100 euro a night, it would be 360 euro total). You then pay your host in cash on arrival.

You are going to love Paris! Congratulations!

I was underwhelmed by Rue Cler, but that's where I HAD to stay on our first visit.

Now, I like the 10th Arr. and this hotel:

https://lecitizenhotel.com/en/

I like the Latin Quarter. It is more central to public transportation and within walking distance to many places. I have stayed in the very budget friendly Hotel Familia. If you'd like something a bit more polished, look at the Minerva, right next door. The two hotels are related and are Parisian style buildings.

You can take the mêtro wherever you want to go but it takes time, a lot of walking underground and a lot of stairs.
Bus takes time, but no walking and your’re above ground so you can enjoy the view.
I prefer staying where i can walk to most things but that’s just me.

I recommend getting a good map of Paris (i like Michelin laminated maps), see where everything is and get familiar with the layout.

I second jules m - The Familia Hotel was even more affordable 15 years ago than now, but it's still a great value, and perfectly located in the Latin Quarter (a/k/a the Left Bank). Nearby is the Cluny Museum, which should not be missed.

Also, my two (euro) cents worth: French cuisine is world famous, but it's extremely pricey in Paris. While there are many fine restaurants, there are a lot more pretty ordinary ones, considering how much they cost. This may not work for you, but when in France, we splurge on meals in other parts of the country (In Nice and Lyon, for example), and mostly eat cheap middle-eastern dinners in Paris, like hummus and falafel - there are great places a block to the east of the Familia and the Minerve hotels. Also, the Minerve includes a more extensive breakfast than their sister Hotel Familia.

With just three nights, please don't stay way the heck out in the 7th! I presume that if you have a boutique hotel in mind that the mention of budget concerns is not a huge factor. There are lots of nice, smaller hotels in the 6th and 5th in that I suspect will fill the bill.
I do not recommend an AirBnB or other rental for just three nights, you'll burn time meeting the manager and trying to understand how the washing/drying machine works.

Your short stay of only 3 nights is limiting in many ways. If you stay where you could expect to find more locals, you'll be well away from the main sights I assume you want to see and will loose a great deal of time to transport. Three nights is also not enough time, as others point out, to outfit an apartment without losing time available for sight seeing. Another thing to consider is your mobility. Metro steps and walkways are numerous and hard on knees.

Perhaps the best bet at this stage is to plug your budget constraints into a site like booking.com and see what's available but time is of the essence as June in a busy month in Paris

We're going to be in Paris 6/4/2019 to 6/9/2019. I've found the rooms for the high season to be filling up fast, and they're priced substantially higher than I usually like to pay. But it's all supply and demand.
We're going to be a couple of miles further south than I would like, but our accommodations are close to a couple of metro stations that can quickly take us to The Louvre and to the Eiffel Tower.

Also have budget concerns.

Any worthwhile or useful suggestion will require a budget window in euros.

Looking for a local boutique hotel

Boutique hotels tend to be rather expensive. For June, I should think that 250€ per night for two people would be the minimum one might expect to pay.

I travel I like to find out where the locals go.

Locals do not go to rue Cler, St Germain des Prés, the Latin Quarter or much of the Marias. I might look in the 8th, 9th, 13th, 14th, or 15th arrondissements for hotels but without pricing guidance, specific recommendations would be pointless.

I do not recommend an AirBnB or other rental for just three nights, you'll burn time meeting the manager and trying to understand how the washing/drying machine works.

Just to clarify, with Alcove and Agape there are rooms like we rented where you deal directly with the host. It took us 10 minutes to bring in our luggage and pay our host. They then invited us to the courtyard where we shared a glass of wine.

I was also trying to point out that if staying in the center of the action is too pricey, even outer neighborhoods are easily accessible via Metro. We found riding the Metro part of the Parisian experience.

I do agree that three nights (2 days) is way too short and the closer in to the heart of Paris you can stay, the better off you'll be. I did a quick check for hotels near Isle de la Cite and decent rooms were running $300-$600 a night.

Tocard, it’s Marais, not Marias. The thousands of Parisians that live in the Marais will be surprised to hear locals don’t go there.

In addition to the residents of Le Marais, I think the thousands who live near Rue Cler or in Saint Germain and the Latin Quarter will also be surprised to hear that locals do not go to those areas.

While it's factually correct that lots of Parisians live in the Marais-obvi-I think that the spirit of Tocard's remark speaks for itself; the goal stated by OP is to be around locals, not a high concentration of tourists.

I've done a lot of walking around the Latin quarter and I felt more surrounded by locals than tourists. I also think there is a trade off here. For a first trip, I imagine the OP would like to see some of the more famous sites. So being in a less convenient area to avoid tourists may result in seeing less. I'm not fond of being with crowds of tourists, but certain sites/areas become popular for a reason.

I agree with jules m.
I spend a lot of time in the Marais, Latin Quarter and St Germain, have done for 50+ years, and in the vast majority of those areas you will not see tourists.

Susan, my apologies for the Marais typo.

The fact remains that the Marais is continuing to lose local population. It has a negative growth coefficient. Much of the affordable housing in the Marais has been converted to Airbnbs for tourists. It has lost so many residents that administratively, the city wants to combine it into the 4th.

St Germain des Prés, as we all know is an area in the northern end of the 6th defined (by google maps for example) as between rue des Saints Pères to the west, rue Mazarine to the east, rue du Four to the south and the Seine to the north . It's not that no Parisians live here, rather it's that so few do. It's evident by the lack of services catering to residents. There are no longer any boucheries, quincailleries, just two boulangeries (owned by chains), nor are there any pressings. There used to be all of these services here. What was once a poissonerie is now a restaurant called La Boissonnerie.

The highest concentration of American tourist in Paris is probably found along the cafés of rue de Buci in the heart of St Germain des Prés. Arguably the tackiest tourist streets in the city are the Latin Quarter´s rue de la Harpe and the intersecting rue du la Huchette.

When a poster asks about being among locals, I prefer the term residents, these are not the areas I might direct someone. Rather, consider hotels near rue du Commerce a lively street in the 15th, rue de la Convention (the best Sunday market in Paris) also in the 15th, rue Delambre in the 14th, rue Montmartre in the 2nd, the 8th is full of interesting hotels and restaurants.

The high concentration of tourists in the Latin Quarter, Marais, rue Cler (for RS readers), and St Germain des Prés, for many, is a disadvantage for staying there. Given the fabulous and inexpensive public transportation in Paris, it's possible to stay almost anywhere in the city and easily reach popular tourist venues.

I really enjoy hearing others talk about the intriguing corners of Paris and the interesting hotels they have found which are not the same names we see here suggested over and over again.

Be careful relying on replies that make recommendation by numbers. There are bits of every arrondisement that you dont want to be staying in, whether because it's too busy during the day but totally dead at night (to the extent that you won't find somewhere reasonable to eat) or purely residential with no local colour.

I like the area between Buttes Chaumont and Laumiere in the 19th (but mainly around rue Petit) and Lourmel - Balard in the 15th. Parts of the Marais are OK (but expensive) but here again you have to be careful - these days a hotel will claim to be in the Marais if it's anywhere between Calais and the Seine.

Also the 11th around Bastille is good - with a nice buzz during the day, and plenty of restaurants for the evening.

All of these place will be cheaper than single digit arrondiements, but you may find you're travelling 10-15 minutes longer to get to the centre of Paris (wherever that is...)

I highly Recommend Travel Sites List to finds the best Travels sites and booking platform.

Hmm, I'm pretty sensitive to "tacky tourist" areas. Avoid them with a passion. Haven't come across a tacky tourist street in the Latin Quarter. I know RS dislikes the Latin quarter but sometimes I wonder how deep he digs. He loves Rue Cler which is nice enough, but Paris has many markets, and that area does have a lot of tourists. I would never stay in the Rue Cler area again, not that it was bad, I just think there are better locations. So I've learned to research beyond recs. Where I stay in Latin Quarter, its an easy walk to many of the places folks want to visit. You can't beat that with public transportation. I would definitely recommend further away areas on a subsequent trip to Paris, but for a first trip, I'd want to be closer in. Also, not completely sure what OP is looking for. There are budget concerns but also a desire for a boutique hotel??

For your first time in Paris you should stay near the Eiffel Tower in the 7th Arrondissement! I love seeing the Eiffel Tower at the start and end of each day while I'm in Paris.

jules m, exactly. Well said.

Dear vduffy,
Alcove and Agape could be perfect for you. Your bed and breakfast hosts will be local residents who can advise you on neighborhood restaurants, bakeries, cafés that they themselves patronize and perhaps even make restaurant bookings for you, to be sure you are nicely welcomed.

Plug in your dates on the Alcove website and see which property and host sound good to you. There are people on this forum who met hosts that they still keep in touch with!

We will be staying in the The Rue de Bretagne area at the suggestion of Francophile friends. Here is a description of the area from our airbnb website:

The Rue de Bretagne area abounds with typical french food shops, like bakery, cheese shop, wine shop, fresh vegetables and fruits, delicatessens, groceries, library... There is a nice market in rue de Bretagne too (Enfants Rouges). Many trendy bars, cafés and good restaurants in the neighborhood.
Very nice area, close of Beaubourg, Notre-Dame, Place des Vosges, musée Picasso, le Marais.
Metro stations : Republique, Temple et Arts et Metiers
ato

This is in the Marais district, 4th arrondissement I believe
ato

I stayed similar area as ATO's apartment. It is a good location but sometimes wished I was a little closer after a metro ride after a really long day. However it was affordable and the market was great. Some wonderful vintage postcard s as well as any food you could want. Boulangerie, grocery, wine stores. Even in August when half of he shops were closed anything you needed was there. Unfortunately my apartment isn't renting anymore

Traylaparks,
How much does the le Citizen Hotel run, approximately? It looks interesting. And near the canal I’ve heard about.

jules m,

Do you have a specific hotel or street in the Latin Quarter you like?

Sharon

Of course everyone has different tastes, but I love Ile Saint Louis. It is small and walkable and close to many things. It is quiet at night and i love the quiet residential vibe. There are 3 small hotels all about the same price - not sure of your budget, but I have found it worth a bit more on my 4 trips to Paris. sue

I stayed on Rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter last April. I stayed at the Hotel qualys Apolonia. It is now called Paris Mouffetard Apolonia. Small, clean, very centrally located. Metro and bus station 3 mins away. Pedestrian street. Lots of restaurants and cheap food. Markets, boulangerie. 1 mile walk to Notre Dame. Found it cheaper than Rue Cler.

@Sharon, I typically stay at budget properties. They need to be clean and more centrally located. I have stayed at Hotel Familia a few times now. Some would say its "dated". I love the Parisian style building. Next to Familia is Minervia, a sister property that is a bit of a step up. You might look at both the websites.

Hi! I am an American who lives in the Marais, near Square du Temple and the Carreau du Temple.

I have owned my apartment since 2010 and moved into it permanently in 2017. I can assure that this is NOT a heavily touristed area (except during Fashion Week!).

Most of the people who live in my area and who go to the cafés and such are French. I do not hear much English when I'm out and about, even at the supermarkets and restaurants.

When family and friends have come to visit, they have stayed in Hotel Paris France (on rue de Turbigo) or the Hotel Americain (on rue Charlot). They are not overly expensive -- small, boutique-style hotels -- and the rooms are a decent size.

Thank you Mary S, my point exactly.
Welcome to the forum!

vduffy, would be nice to hear from you.