“Look, he’s doing the metronome!”
Right in front of us, a guy is taking a shower behind a glass wall in the middle of a bar-club in the Marais. And apparently, he has a rather unusual trick involving a certain part of his anatomy. Everyone around us is transfixed. We’re mostly trying not to burst out laughing. We’re at Raidd Bar, a place we find utterly ridiculous and absolutely brilliant at the same time. Between the shower shows, the music, the people we meet and the nights that go on far too late, there’s never a dull moment. The whole concept still makes us laugh, but we love coming back.
A few days after Christmas, we left Lausanne on the TGV for a few days in Paris. The French capital is only about three hours away by train, and that’s exactly what we love about it: being able to escape for a few days without getting on a plane. This time, we had one particularly good reason to go: La Cage aux folles at the Théâtre du Châtelet, a production we’d heard so many great things about that we simply couldn’t miss it. We’d also booked something else we’d been dreaming of: skating beneath the enormous glass roof of the Grand Palais. We dropped our bags at OKKO Hotels Paris Gare de l’Est and headed straight back out to enjoy the streets still glowing with Christmas lights.
After a delicious dinner at a small restaurant between our hotel and the Marais, we made our way to the Grand Palais des Glaces, billed as the world’s largest indoor ice rink, with 2,700 square metres of ice. But before we could enjoy any of it, we had to wait almost two hours outside in the cold, with frankly chaotic crowd management. We were starting to wonder whether this had been such a good idea after all.
Thankfully, once inside, we almost forgot the wait. Beneath the Grand Palais’s vast glass roof, the light displays turn the rink into a giant dance floor. An illuminated Eiffel Tower stands in the middle of the ice, music fills the entire building and skaters glide around glowing installations. The rink is crowded, leaving little room to skate freely, so we have to take it slowly. But in the end, we’re here as much for the atmosphere as for the skating. Between the lights, the music and the spectacular setting, it feels like being immersed in a show. We spend nearly two hours skating through this incredible scene. The contrast with those two freezing hours outside couldn’t be greater. We certainly wouldn’t call the organisation a success, but the experience itself was worth the trip. By the time we leave, it’s almost midnight, and we’re tired and frozen. For once, we sensibly head straight back to the hotel.
The next day, we return to the Marais, a neighbourhood we never tire of, with its narrow streets, historic façades, shops and cafés. We stop at the National Archives Museum, housed in the beautiful Hôtel de Soubise. Admission is free, and we explore “Faux et faussaires, du Moyen Âge à nos jours”, an exhibition about forgery and deception through the centuries. Counterfeit banknotes, falsified documents, fake artworks and other imitations reveal centuries of ingenuity, sometimes used for remarkably elaborate scams. It’s exactly the sort of exhibition we might never have thought to visit, and it turns out to be fascinating. We continue on to Notre-Dame, admiring its restored silhouette after the 2019 fire, before heading to Canal Saint-Martin, one of our favourite places for an early evening drink.
After those first drinks, we decide to return to the famous Raidd Bar in the Marais. This gay bar-club is particularly known for its shower performances: at certain points during the night, guys take turns performing behind a glass wall, with acts ranging from vaguely serious to completely absurd. The concept still cracks us up, but there’s much more to the place than the shower. We also come for the music, the dancing, the drinks and the atmosphere. Some people are there specifically for the shows; others just want a fun night out. We love that mix. We always end up chatting with people we meet there, and this visit is no exception. The evening flies by, and we get home much later than planned.
The following morning, our hotel’s small gym and sauna are particularly welcome before we head out to explore Paris on foot again. It’s cold, but the sky is perfectly clear, so we decide to wander without a fixed route. We pass the Louvre, cross the Tuileries Garden to Place de la Concorde and keep soaking up a city where we find the streets almost as beautiful as the monuments. In Paris, we could easily fill every day with museums and sightseeing, but one of our favourite things to do is simply walk around. Of course, we eventually make it to the Eiffel Tower, which we really wanted to see again. We left it too late to book tickets to the top, but that doesn’t stop us admiring it from several viewpoints and taking far too many photos.
Later, we head over to Pigalle and Montmartre, where we discover Patoche, a craft microbrewery that’s perfect for kicking off the evening with a few beers. More drinks and dinner follow, and because we laughed so much the night before, we make another stop at Raidd Bar. Once again, there’s the lively bar-club atmosphere, the shower performances and the easy conversations with new people. Another night full of laughter and chats, ending, inevitably, far too late.
So the next day gets off to a rather late start. We take our time over food and enjoy Paris at a slower pace, but this evening we have plans. We’re off to the Théâtre du Châtelet to see La Cage aux folles, starring Laurent Lafitte as Albin, also known as Zaza, and Damien Bigourdan as his partner Georges. This show is the main reason we came to Paris, and we have high expectations for Olivier Py’s new production. The story of a couple running a drag cabaret naturally resonates with us, but beyond that, the show is simply outstanding. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes extravagant, the music infectious and the acting fantastic. Laurent Lafitte is excellent, but Damien Bigourdan impresses us even more with his stage presence and performance. And what a pleasure to experience this musical in the magnificent Châtelet theatre! We leave absolutely delighted, feeling we’ve seen something truly special. No bar-hopping tonight: we head straight to bed.
On our last day, Paris has a surprise in store: snow. Watching snowflakes fall around Notre-Dame gives the city a completely different atmosphere, and we enjoy one final walk despite the cold. Then we duck into the Bourse de Commerce, now home to the Pinault Collection’s contemporary art museum. The building alone is almost worth the visit, with its spectacular glass dome, circular rotunda and beautifully restored historic architecture. We explore “Minimal”, an exhibition devoted to minimalist art since the 1960s. The works play with shapes, materials, light and space, sometimes with disarming simplicity. They interact beautifully with the building itself, and we leave just as impressed by the exhibition as by its setting.
A few hours later, we board the TGV back to Lausanne. We came to Paris primarily for La Cage aux folles, and the show more than justified the journey. But we’re also taking home memories of a spectacular ice rink, museums we might otherwise have overlooked, miles of wandering, a city lit up for the holidays and then dusted with snow, and two nights of laughing and dancing at Raidd Bar. That’s one of the reasons we love Paris so much: however many times we return, we can revisit our favourite neighbourhoods and still discover something completely new. And between the stage at the Théâtre du Châtelet and the showers at Raidd Bar, this trip reminded us that Paris really does have a show for every taste.