Paris

Land at Charles de Gaulle and take the RER B direct train or a private car to your hotel in the city — the first view of Haussmann's boulevards, the zinc rooftops, and the first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower from the taxi window never ceases to produce the specific excited disbelief that Paris induces in first-time and returning visitors alike. Check in, freshen up, and immediately go walking — Paris is best explored on foot, and a first afternoon wandering from your hotel through the nearest neighborhood, following curiosity down cobblestone lanes and into courtyard cafes, is the perfect unscheduled introduction. Tonight: champagne at a rooftop bar or terrace café as the Eiffel Tower begins its every-hour sparkling light show at dusk.

A private guide meets you at the Louvre's Richelieu entrance for a curated 3-hour tour that covers the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and a path through the Italian Renaissance rooms to the Mona Lisa — the guide's knowledge of the works and the building's own extraordinary history (a medieval fortress, a royal palace, and the world's largest museum) transforms what can be an overwhelming experience into an intimate encounter with great art. After lunch in the courtyard, cross the Pont Neuf to the Île de la Cité for Notre-Dame's ongoing reconstruction viewing, then Saint-Chapelle next door — whose stained glass fills the interior with electric color. End the day with a walk along the Seine at golden hour.

Reserved skip-the-line tickets take you to the Eiffel Tower's second and third levels in the late afternoon, arriving at the summit in time for the city to shift from blue-hour clarity to the shimmer of a million lights coming on below you. Paris from above is a revelation — the Champs-Élysées radiates like a spoke, the Seine curves silver through the city, and the Sacré-Cœur glows white on its Montmartre hill. Descend for your champagne Seine dinner cruise departing from the Pont d'Iéna just below the tower — the illuminated river at night is the most beautiful version of Paris, with floodlit bridges, the Musée d'Orsay, Notre-Dame, and the glittering Louvre Pyramid all drifting past your candlelit table.

The Marais is Paris's most alive neighborhood — the medieval Jewish quarter and LGBTQ+ hub has become the city's most stylish arrondissement, lined with concept stores, galerie courtyards, the extraordinary Musée Picasso, and the falafel shops of the Rue des Rosiers that have fueled every Parisian since the 1900s. Walk from the Marais through Belleville to Montmartre, ascending to the white domes of Sacré-Cœur for a view across the city's rooftops. In the evening, take a table at one of the small wine bars in the village of Montmartre proper — off the tourist trail, where Parisian wine drinkers actually drink — and order natural wines from the Jura and the Loire with charcuterie boards.

Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles is one of the world's great buildings — 700 rooms, the Hall of Mirrors, and 800 hectares of formal gardens that defined European royal taste for 200 years. Take the RER C train from Paris (40 minutes) and arrive early with your priority entry tickets before the day crowds. The Hall of Mirrors is a spectacle of gilded baroque excess even when crowded, and the private apartments give a more intimate sense of the scale at which the Sun King lived. After the palace, spend the afternoon in the gardens — Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon and the Hameau de la Reine (her private fantasy peasant village) are the most charming and personal corners of the entire estate. Return to Paris for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant.

Your Parisian cooking class begins at the Marché d'Aligre in the 12th — the most authentic and affordable food market in the city, where chefs and neighborhood grandmothers shop side by side. Your instructor guides you through selecting the best vegetables, selecting charcuterie, and choosing a proper cheese plate, then back to the kitchen to cook a full French menu: soupe à l'oignon, sole meunière, tarte tatin with Calvados crème fraîche. A long lunch around the kitchen table follows, with wine naturally. In the afternoon, the Musée d'Orsay — housed in a converted Beaux Arts train station — holds the world's greatest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art: Monet's serial Rouen Cathedral paintings, Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Van Gogh's bedroom, Degas's dancers.

A final Paris morning is best spent slowly: find the patisserie nearest your hotel and eat a croissant and pain au chocolat standing at the zinc bar with an espresso, the way Parisians have started their mornings for generations. Take a final walk through the Luxembourg Gardens or the Jardins du Palais Royal — the most beautiful public spaces in the city — and sit on an iron chair in the dappled light for as long as you can. Buy macarons from Ladurée and a bottle of vintage Sancerre for the flight home, and board the RER to Charles de Gaulle carrying the specific melancholy that Paris always induces on departure: the certainty that you haven't been here long enough, combined with the quiet satisfaction of knowing you'll come back.