Paris Hotels: Where to Stay in Paris - A Guide to The First Arrondissement

You're nearly there - Paris, France's crown jewel and capital city! You can hardly wait to start your journey. You've gotten your inexpensive flight for your trip to Paris, France , now you're trying to decide on some wonderful sounding offers on hotels and other accommodation in Paris . Where you are staying in the city is always an important consideration for hotel accommodation in Paris, France even if you are looking at hotels in Paris city centre.  Here's a guide to Paris's 1st arrondissement so you can learn more about whether this part of Paris is where you want to be!
The First Arrondissement of Paris

Paris's first arrondissement is filled with the sort of elegance and grandeur that centuries' worth of tourists have imagined when thinking of Paris . Wide boulevards, fashionable shopping , and well maintained parks overlooking the smoothly flowing Seine River are all to be found in this neighborhood, a district mainly of office space and tourist sites. Les Halles, Paris's unusual take on a shopping center , can be found here as well.

What To Expect If You Are Staying In The First Arrondissement :

The Good :

Spending time in the First has many benefits. When you walk under the nineteenth-century arches of the Rue de Rivoli arcade, you will be following in the footsteps of generations of dandies and duchesses: vanished citizens of Paris of long ago . You will be near some of Paris's most remarkable tourist sites - the Tuileries garden to Chatelet -site of the Comedie Francaise, where Moliere once produced his plays - to the world-class Louvre . And the shopping, on the elegant Faubourg Saint Honore, is unparalleled !

Why You Don't Want To Stay :

While daytime in the First provides a visitor with access to some of Paris's finest sights at a few moments' walk, the business-like character of the area means that nightlife, by contrast, is limited within the arrondissement. So unless you go to the Les Halles/St. Denis area there's not much to do. Les Halles/St. Denis's low brow pleasures may appear slightly seedy to those over the age of twenty-one (that said, the area bordering the Les Halles mall is consistently nice - a fine place to stop after watching a film in Les Halles's enormous cinema, which presents many US and British movies in their original languages. But avoid going towards Rue St. Denis/Blvd. Sebastopol unless you're consciously seeking that sort of milieu.) What's more, this area can get extremely touristy - especially around the otherwise lovely Rue de Rivoli.  So watch your handbag and control your buying impulse for souvenirs until you're a bit further off the beaten path.

What To See:
Sites abound here. Take a stroll down the Faubourg Saint-Honore, where nearly every top fashion house of the world has a store . Visit the Louvre or Tuileries Gardens near the Place de Concorde, see a play at the Comedie Francaise in the Chatelet area.

Eating Places :
Finding untouristy food is difficult in this area, but finding excellent desserts is not. Angelina, on Rue de Rivoli, has lost some of its legendary elegance, but the aging-grande-dame feel of the place makes the yellowed mirrors and creaky chandeliers worth seeing on their own merits. Plus, their famously rich hot chocolate and Mont Blanc desserts are among the best in Paris. For a more current hotspot, Cafe Marley in the Louvre offers views not only of the museum's art, but also of Paris's current celebrity scene. For good food, the area right around Les Halles has a number of good brasseries, but, as said earlier, the area closer to Rue St. Denis and Sebastopol has a slightly sketchier character - not at all dangerous, but nevertheless unsavory.

Where To Shop :
If the exclusive shopping of the Faubourg Saint Honore is a bit out of your budget , go to the Les Halles mall. A surprisingly beautiful, art nouveau-inspired underground city (complete with street names, a swimming pool, park, and more), Les Halles proves that even Paris's malls have a particular Parisian flair. While the area around the mall is useful for really cheap (think 3-5 euro) clothes and shoes, the mall itself has much higher quality items at pretty good prices.