Tyler Cowen offers some good advice about Paris.

He says that Pierre Gagnaire is better than Taillevent, which I have a hard time accepting for purely emotional and irrational historical reasons (the same logic by which I retain an attachment to the Fairmont in San Francisco when there are several objectively better properties in the city). I keep a Taillevant vintage chart pinned to the cork board on my office wall.

I find the best of Paris to be extremely overpriced yet strangely an outstanding value. It’s home to the best city hotel in the world. (I can’t afford it, but it’s worth every penny. Alas, for such luxury I must confine myself to the better properties in Hong Kong or ever Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.)

Perhaps the best advice:

7. Watch The Triplets of Belleville and spend hours walking through the (rapidly gentrifying) working-class neighborhoods of the Right Bank. The Metro is splendid but it robs you from seeing the greatest walking city on earth (Buenos Aires is number two). Don’t take it. Walk, walk, walk.



8. Go into a good cheese shop and spend $40. Focus on the weirder cheeses. Buy the non-pasteurized delights. Sit down with a baguette and some fruit as well, finishing the meal with small squares of outrageously priced dark chocolate. Throw in a sausage for good measure. Keep the cheese leftovers in your room at night and eat them for breakfast the next day. And the day after that. See how many days they will keep, you will be surprised.