🇫🇷 💌 The Paris Love Letter #146

Linking You to Paris

➡️ The Best airbnbs in underrated Parisian neighbourhoods: Condé Nast Traveller uses a local’s eye to argue that underrated quartiers like Belleville, Lamarck-Caulaincourt, and Rue du Ranelagh are where Airbnb actually lets you test-drive a real Parisian life.

➡️ These Are the 5 Spring 2026 Trends French Girls Are Actually Wearing: InStyle reports that Parisian women aren’t chasing micro-trends this spring so much as using novelty denim, loud jackets, tiny shoulder bags, bare shoulders, and colored socks-with-loafers as small rebellions against the beige trench-coat uniform.

➡️ The best festive restaurants in Paris for fun until the end of the night: Paris Secret maps out the city’s new “eat-then-dance” ecosystem, from Pigalle cabarets to jungle-like mega-clubs, showing how dinner in Paris now often comes fused with full-blown nightlife under one very theatrical roof.

➡️ Best art exhibitions in 2026: Christie’s presents 2026 in Paris as a kind of open-air syllabus in art history, where you can walk from Nan Goldin’s queer slide-shows to Calder’s mobiles to a Michelangelo–Rodin face-off and see how the city is still curating its own mythology in real time.

VISITING PARIS
Taking Line 14 From Paris To Orly

Most people still treat Charles de Gaulle as the automatic choice when they fly to Paris. That is what we used to do too. We would take a taxi from the city out to CDG, sit in traffic, and hope that Parisian congestion did not decide the fate of our flight.

On our most recent trip, we did the opposite. We flew from Orly and took the new extension of Metro Line 14, which opened to the airport in 2024 as part of the Grand Paris Express project. It was our first time taking Line 14 all the way to Orly, and it was, by far, our favorite airport transport experience so far.

Line 14 now runs on a clean north to south diagonal through Paris, from Saint‑Denis–Pleyel in the north down to Aéroport d’Orly in the south. The trip from Orly to central Paris (Châtelet) takes about 25 minutes, with trains every 2 to 5 minutes depending on the time of day. In other words, once you are on the platform, you are essentially never “waiting for the next train.”

For this trip, every part of our journey was empty. The Line 14 train. The station at Orly. The airport itself. Everything felt easy and spacious. I am sure it is not always like that around school holidays or big events, but Orly really is smaller and less intense than CDG. Orly handles on the order of 30 million passengers a year, compared with roughly 70 million at Charles de Gaulle. Smaller airport, fewer people, shorter lines. Statistically and emotionally, it is simply easier to manage.

The money side is straightforward. The line 14 to Orly is a special airport fare, but in practice, it is still much cheaper than taking a taxi from central Paris to CDG or back, especially if you are one, two, or three people. Once you are up to around five or six people, a single taxi or van becomes comparable on a per‑person basis, but below that, the metro wins very clearly on cost.

After this last trip, I am starting to prefer the metro to Orly over the taxi to CDG, whenever the flight options make sense. If you are planning a visit and you see similar itineraries into both airports, consider flying into Orly and taking the metro into the center of Paris.

VISITING PARIS
A Quiet Moment At Square Louvois

If you ride Line 14 into the center of Paris and hop off at Pyramides, you are a few minutes’ walk from one of the more overlooked little pockets of calm in Paris: Square Louvois.

Most people never see it. They head straight to the Louvre, Opéra, or the big boulevards and never drift onto Rue de Richelieu, which is a shame. Square Louvois sits right in front of the old Bibliothèque Nationale site, and it feels like a miniature stage for everything Paris does best: water, stone, and a slightly bookish quiet.

At the center is a large fountain with four seated female figures representing four rivers of France. It sounds classical and grand, and in a way it is, but in person it feels very human in scale. A few trees, some benches, a bit of gravel, the sound of water, and people cutting through with tote bags and books.

It is one of those squares that is perfect for twenty minutes and probably not for much more than that. You stop. You sit. You watch the light work its way around the facades, listen to the water for a moment, and then you move on. You can almost feel the history of the old library behind you, the ghost of all those pages that once lived there, and the fact that Paris thought to give them a small garden.

If you are staying anywhere near the 1st or 2nd arrondissement, or if you find yourself emerging from Pyramides or Palais Royal, it is worth a short detour. Grab a coffee, walk a few minutes north along Rue de Richelieu, and let Square Louvois reset your senses before you go back into the busier parts of the city.

It is not a “must see.” It is something better. It is a place where you can remember that Paris is also made of small, quiet pauses between the big monuments.

FRENCH SONG OF THE WEEK
Louis, Matthieu, Joseph & Anna Chedid - On ne dit jamais assez aux gens qu'on aime qu'on les aime

This is a rare and beautiful moment of French musical royalty. The legendary Chedid family, including pop icon -M-, performs a live acoustic version of a song whose title says it all: "We never tell enough to the people we love that we love them."

It is a warm and multi-generational folk-pop embrace that feels less like a polished studio track and more like sitting in on the most talented family dinner party.