Paris, 4* Holiday Inn Paris La Villette, 2 nights from £139.00pp
Available on selected dates, address :

216 AVE JEAN JAURES PARIS, 75019 FRANCE

The Holiday Inn Paris La Villette is a modern hotel located opposite the museums of music, science and industry and La Grande Halle (theatre and convention hall) and within direct reach of the main historical monuments, cultural and shopping areas of Paris by metro. The hotel has 182 air conditioned bedrooms with many facilities including a TV with in-house movies, minibar, safe, hairdryer and telephone. There’s also a fine restaurant and a mini gym. Great for Paris breaks with familiar comforts.

Holiday Inn Paris breaks

Within walking distance is a unique complex associating the Science and Technology complex, the Music complex, the Grande Halle and the Zénith venue.

The “Porte de Pantin” underground metro (line 5), situated only 50 m from the hotel will quickly take you to Notre Dame de Paris (20 min), the Eiffel Tower (30 min) and the Louvre Museum (20 min) .

Paris breaks in the 19th Arrondissement

Today, Paris visitors come to what was once the village of La Villette to see the angular Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, a spectacular science museum and park built on a site that for years was devoted to the city’s slaughterhouses. Mostly residential and not at all upscale, the district is one of the most ethnically diverse in Paris, the home of people from all parts of the former Empire. A highlight is Les Buttes Chaumont, a park where kids can enjoy puppet shows and donkey rides.

Vélib, Paris

Originally uploaded by batigolix

After arriving by Eurostar or other means, Paris breaks are usually spent wandering around the city on foot supplemented by rides on the metro or bus. Here’s a way to discover other parts of Paris which you might not encounetr otherwise. The vélib or “vélo libre” is a public bicycle rental programme in Paris, It is a great way of exploring the city. The system was launched in July 2007and has grown to 20,000 bicycles and 1,450 stations, roughly one station every 300 metres throughout Paris city centre, making Vélib’ the largest system of its kind in the world.

To use the system, you need to take out a subscription, which then allows an unlimited number of rentals. Subscriptions cost €1 per day, €5/week or €29/year. With a subscription, bike rental is then free for the first half hour of each trip and you can make an unlimited number of free trips each day so long as you return the bike to a station within half an hour of each rental. Any trip that lasts longer than 30 minutes incurs a charge of one to four euros for each subsequent 30-minute period. The increasing price scale is intended to keep the bikes in circulation. So you just use the bike to get from one part of the city to another, then you put it back into the system and keep doing that for only €1 a day or less! Brilliant for getting to places like Pere Lachaise cemetery or the the Bois de Boulogne.

With the free bicycle scheme you can turn Paris breaks into a little home from home.

The Sacre Coeur has become one of the iconic landmarks of Paris, because of its unusual eastern style architecure, white stonework and the location at the top of la butte de Montmartre.
But as a ‘must see’ destination for short Paris breaks I’d have to give a few warnings. There’s not so much to do or see as you might think. The interior of the church is dark, because the stones from which is was made have the peculiar characteristic of being white only when exposed to sunlight. And the church is not really that old.

On the other hand the view from the top presents one of the few opportunities to look out over Paris, spot the eiffel tower, chatelet, Montparnasse tower, the Opera and the rest of the parisian skyline.

So on a sunny day it may be worth climbing all the steps for the view and the sense of being outdoors above the city. There is a funicular railway which is sort of part of the metro system but last time I was there it was closed for safety reasons, a bit like La Samaritaine.