Paris

1. ~8:00a●Breakfast at a Grand-Prix boulangerie

   A still-warm croissant au beurre and a flan pâtissier at a winner of the Grand Prix de la Baguette — that year's champion supplies the Élysée Palace. Du Pain et des Idées' escargot pistachio is worth a detour.

2. 9:00a◆Sainte-Chapelle at opening

   Slip in before the queues: fifteen towering walls of 13th-century stained glass set the upper chapel ablaze in cobalt and ruby. The single most transporting interior in Paris — Notre-Dame's facade and the Conciergerie are steps away.

3. ~10:45a◇The Île Saint-Louis & Berthillon

   Cross to sleepy Île Saint-Louis for the city's most storied glacier — Berthillon, made on the island since 1954; the salted-caramel and marron glacé are the orders. Browse the tiny art and homeware ateliers along Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île.

4. ~12:30p●Rue Mouffetard market lunch

   One of the oldest market streets in Paris: a jambon-beurre on a tradition baguette with cultured butter, oysters from a stall, and a wedge of Mont d'Or from a fromager to carry off.

5. ~2:30p◆The Panthéon & the Latin Quarter

   Foucault's pendulum swinging under the dome and the crypt of Voltaire, Hugo, and the Curies, then the Sorbonne's lanes and the medieval Musée de Cluny's unicorn tapestries nearby.

6. ~4:30p◇Shakespeare and Company & the bouquinistes

   The fabled English-language bookshop facing Notre-Dame — get your book stamped at the till — then the green riverside book stalls (the bouquinistes), a UNESCO-listed Paris institution, for vintage prints and posters.

7. 8:00p✦Epicure at Le Bristol ★★★Anchor table

   Éric Frechon's three-star room onto the garden — the macaroni stuffed with black truffle, artichoke, and foie gras is the legendary signature. Book weeks ahead; this anchors the trip.

The historic core rewards an early start — Sainte-Chapelle before 10 is a different, emptier place. Epicure seats at 8pm and Paris dines late, so there's no rush back from the Left Bank.

1. ~8:30a◆Sacré-Cœur & the village before the crowds

   Climb to the basilica for the dawn-quiet city view, then lose the crowds in the back lanes — the Clos Montmartre working vineyard, Place du Tertre's painters, and the Musée de Montmartre garden where Renoir kept a studio.

2. ~10:30a●A coffee-roaster stop in SoPi

   Down into South Pigalle for a flat white at KB Caféshop or Belleville Brûlerie — Paris's third-wave coffee movement — with a financier or a slice of cake.

3. ~12:30p●Lunch at a classic bouillon

   A historic bouillon (Bouillon Pigalle or Chartier) — œufs mayo, blanquette de veau, and a baba au rhum at honest old-Paris prices under belle-époque mirrors.

4. ~2:30p◆The Marais & Place des Vosges

   The city's oldest planned square, the free Musée Carnavalet (the history of Paris), and the Picasso Museum in a grand hôtel particulier — the Marais is the best-preserved pre-Revolution quarter.

5. ~4:30p◇Marais concept shops & falafel row

   Merci concept store and the boutiques of Rue Vieille-du-Temple, then Rue des Rosiers in the old Jewish Pletzl — L'As du Fallafel's pile-high pita, or warm babka and rugelach to go.

6. ~6:30p✦Apéro on the Canal Saint-Martin

   Join Parisians on the canal banks at dusk with a bottle of natural wine, a saucisson sec, and a Comté from a nearby cave — the city's favourite warm-evening ritual.

Montmartre is busiest late morning — beat the funicular crowds to Sacré-Cœur by 9. The day flows downhill east, Montmartre to Marais to canal, so it walks far better than it maps.

1. ~9:30a✦The covered passages

   The 19th-century glass-roofed arcades — Galerie Vivienne's mosaic floors, Passage des Panoramas and Jouffroy with their stamp dealers, old toy shops, and tea rooms. The ancestors of the shopping mall, gloriously intact and wholly Parisian.

2. ~11:00a◆Palais Garnier

   The opera house that inspired The Phantom — the marble grand staircase, the gilded Grand Foyer, and Chagall's dreamlike painted ceiling around the great chandelier.

3. ~12:30p◇Galeries Lafayette & a department-store lunch

   The Art Nouveau stained-glass dome of Galeries Lafayette and its rooftop terrace view over the city, then the food hall below — or a bistro under Galerie Vivienne's glass roof for blanquette or sole meunière.

4. ~3:00p◆Musée d'Orsay

   The world's greatest Impressionist collection in a Beaux-Arts railway station — Monet, Degas, Van Gogh's self-portraits, and the view through the giant station clock over the Seine.

5. ~5:30p●Saint-Germain cafés & a macaron house

   A café crème at Les Deux Magots or Café de Flore where Sartre and de Beauvoir held court, and a box from Pierre Hermé or Ladurée — the Ispahan (rose, lychee, raspberry) is the icon.

6. ~8:00p●A classic Left-Bank dining room

   Duck à l'orange or a Grand Marnier soufflé at a white-tablecloth institution — finish with a mille-feuille whose caramelised layers shatter under the fork.

Orsay stays open late on Thursdays — if your third day lands then, flip the afternoon and evening to dodge the crowds. The covered passages are roofed, so this is the rainy-day card if the weather turns.