FRANCE’S WATERWAYS ❘ RIVER SEINE
“JUST DOWNRIVER, YOU CAN SWIM IN THE JOSEPHINE BAKER POOL, AN 80FT-LONG BASIN SUBMERGED FROM A BARGE IN THE SEINE”
From top: Soaking up
the rays at Paris Plage; fine dining with Ducasse sur Seine; Ducasse sur Seine takes in the sights on a river cruise while you dine
‘Reinventing the Seine’ programme. If there is one absolute-must experience on the Seine, put your money on a bateau mouche boat tour, where you’ll see the city bridges and monuments from a unique perspective. There are dozens of boats – and experiences – to be had on them, from a standard narrated tour to a champagne cruise to watch the sunset or the lights of the Eiffel Tower sparkle for five minutes at the top of each hour after sunset until midnight. Even the renowned chef Alain Ducasse, holder of more Michelin stars than any other living chef (21 stars and 30 restaurants), offers an elegant lunch or dinner cruise complete with snowy linens and silver on a perfectly silent electric boat, where you’ll take the last sips of your post-dinner digestif at the foot of a twinkling Eiffel Tower. While a ride on a bateau mouche is a must, the Batobus is a good budget option. On a €19 day pass (€21 for two days) you can hop on and off the river bus, which stops roughly every 20 minutes at nine of the city’s most visited places, including Invalides, Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Musée d’Orsay and the Jardin des Plantes. If you’d rather commandeer your own boat, the start-up Clickandboat offers every kind of vessel you could desire, from sailboats and jet skis to a small yacht. You can even stay on the river itself in the floating Off Paris Seine hotel, a four-star lodging moored on the Left Bank near the Gare d’Austerlitz train station. The hotel has its own marina and offers cruises on its motorboat. Just downriver, you can swim in the Josephine Baker pool, an 80ft-long basin submerged from a barge in the Seine in front of the Bibliothèque Nationale François Mitterrand. But if you can bear to wait until 2024, you’ll be able to swim directly in the Seine.
AROUND PARIS
At the end of metro line 9, at the Pont de Sèvres stop in the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, you’ll
92 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Feb/Mar 2023
find Seine Musicale, set mid-river on the Île Seguin. It hosts a range of musical events in a soaring glass building designed by architects Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines. Besides its eclectic musical programme, the venue offers stunning views of Paris and the river from its café and outdoor terraces. A short walk upriver from the same metro stop, the exceptional Sèvres – Manufacture et Musée nationaux, France’s royal porcelain makers, offers a view of the artists at work, as well as some of the factory’s most famous creations commissioned by world sovereigns since its beginnings in 1740. Its contemporary galleries feature artworks in porcelain made by artists in residence here. Farther downriver you can visit the beautiful Château de Malmaison, home of Napoleon Bonaparte and his first wife Josephine, who lived out her days here cultivating her famous roses; her gardens remain a highlight of the property to this day. Heading toward Normandy, stop in Seine-side Vernon and Giverny: Vernon’s pretty half-timbered buildings, 11th-century Gothic cathedral and beautiful gardens are often overlooked as visitors flock to Giverny, where Impressionist Claude Monet lived and painted in his famous gardens.
On the way to the mouth of the river at Le Havre, be sure to stop in at Rouen, whose restored old town, Gothic cathedral (immortalised in Monet’s 30 paintings of the cathedral under changing light) and fine art museum are well worth a visit. And don’t miss Honfleur, on the estuary where the Seine meets the Channel; one of France’s most charming towns, it’s where Monet met his spectacularly gifted mentor Eugène Boudin, as well as being the birthplace of the composer Erik Satie. FT
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