We have visited Paris in many occasions, and in 2018 we even lived in the city of light for almost a year 🤩. We enjoyed running in its parks, our favourite being our “local” Parc Monceau. And we also mapped a few “long run” routes which passed by the wonderful Tour Eiffel and the Musée du Louvre. Pas mal!
TLDR; “Too long, didn’t read”
- I just want to run! Take me to SCENIC RUN.
- I want to seriously run. Take me to LONG RUN.
- I want to know what to read in the plane. Take me to ONE BOOK.
Scenic 10k Run 🏃♀️ by the Tour Eiffel and the Musée du Louvre 📷
This is the most scenic route, my favourite in terms of sightseeing. We ran it almost daily when we were living in Rue des Renaudes.
The route allows you to run by the Tour Eiffel, alongside the river Seine, the Place de Concorde (the second biggest in France) and see the Musée du Louvre a few meters away:
But you can only run this route early in the morning because after 10am it gets super crowded with tourists and street vendors. It is just not possible. To prove my point, the following picture was taken around 7am:
And as it can be seen in the picture, you can see the Tour Eiffel without the crowds that can make the experience a little ‘stressful’.
I include here an anecdote. It was this route that we also “tried to” to run on the 15th of July (funnily enough, the day after Bastille’s Day, a national holiday in France).
That day, France played the final of the 2018’s FIFA’s World Cup.
And I say “try”, because the streets were crowded with French supporters, shouting loudly “Allez les bleus”. Later that day, we enjoyed the festive atmosphere as France did win. They beat Croatia by 4 goals to 2.
Long run 🏃♀️: 15k in Bois de Boulogne 🏃♂️
This is a longer route, suitable if you are training for a marathon. We were, at the time, training for the Berlin marathon and the Chicago one.
And it is also quite scenic, just because the centre of Paris is full of beauty everywhere, so you get to see exceptional buildings and gardens:
One book
While I will include books by French authors in other posts of my runs around France (and we have quite a bit!), for Paris I have picked “a moveable feast” by one of my favourite authors, the great Ernest Hemingway.
“A moveable feast”, by Ernest Hemingway
The book is an early memoir about his years in Paris during the interwar period. It was published after his death. I like how it describes the atmosphere of Paris at the time, including other figures of the Lost Generation.
Plot Summary: ‘If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.’ Hemingway’s memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the 1920s are deeply personal, warmly affectionate and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him – literary ‘stars’ like James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein – he recalls the time when, poor, happy and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation.
