Au Lapin Agile - Paris Nightlife

Picasso and Utrillo patronized this little cottage near the top of Montmartre, then known as the Cabaret des Assassins, and it has been painted by many artists, including Utrillo. You'll sit at carved wooden tables in a dimly lit room with walls covered by bohemian memorabilia and listen to French folk tunes, love ballads, army songs, sea chanteys, and music-hall ditties. You're encouraged to sing along, even if it's only the "oui, oui, oui -- non, non, non," the refrain of "Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde." Open Tuesday to Sunday 9pm to 2am.

Amnesia Café - Paris Nightlife

The Amnesia's function and crowd may change during the day, but you'll always find a cadre of local gays. This cafe/tearoom/bistro/bar includes two bar areas, a mezzanine, and a cellar bar, Amni-Club, open in the evening. The drinks of choice are beer, cocktails, and café amnesia, a specialty coffee with whisky and Chantilly cream. Deep armchairs, soft pillows, and 1930s accents create an ambience conducive to talk and laughter. Open daily 11am to 2am, Friday and Saturday until 3am.

Académie de la Bière - Paris Nightlife

The decor is paneled and rustic, an appropriate foil for an "academy" whose curriculum includes more than 153 kinds of beer from microbreweries. More than half of the dozen beers on tap are from small-scale breweries in Belgium that deserve to be better known than that country's bestseller, Stella Artois. Snack-style food is available, including platters of mussels, assorted cheeses, and sausages with mustard. Open Sunday to Thursday noon to 2am and Friday and Saturday noon to 3am.

Tour Eiffel - Paris

This is without doubt one of the most recognizable structures in the world. Weighing 7,000 tons, but exerting about the same pressure on the ground as an average-size person sitting in a chair, the wrought-iron tower wasn't meant to be permanent. Gustave-Alexandre Eiffel, the French engineer whose fame rested mainly on his iron bridges, built it for the 1889 Universal Exhibition. (Eiffel also designed the framework for the Statue of Liberty.) Praised by some and denounced by others (some called it a "giraffe," the "world's greatest lamppost," or the "iron monster"), the tower created as much controversy in the 1880s as I. M. Pei's glass pyramid at the Louvre did in the 1980s. What saved it from demolition was the advent of radio -- as the tallest structure in Europe, it made a perfect spot to place a radio antenna (now a TV antenna).

The tower, including its TV antenna, is 317m (1,040 ft.) high. On a clear day you can see it from 65km (40 miles) away. An open-framework construction, the tower unlocked the almost unlimited possibilities of steel construction, paving the way for skyscrapers. Skeptics said it couldn't be built, and Eiffel actually wanted to make it soar higher. For years it remained the tallest man-made structure on earth, until skyscrapers such as the Empire State Building surpassed it.

We could fill an entire page with tower statistics. (Its plans spanned 5,400 sq. m/18,000 sq. ft. of paper, and it contains 2.5 million rivets.) But forget the numbers. Just stand beneath the tower, and look straight up. It's like a rocket of steel lacework shooting into the sky.

In 2004 it became possible to ice-skate inside the Eiffel Tower, doing figure eights while taking in views of the rooftops of Paris. Skating takes place on an observation deck 57m (188 ft.) above ground. The rectangular rink is a bit larger than an average tennis court, holding 80 skaters at once -- half the capacity of New York City's Rockefeller Center rink. Rink admission and skate rental are free, once you pay the initial entry fee below.

To get to Le Jules Verne (tel. 01-45-55-61-44), the second-platform restaurant, take the private south foundation elevator. You can enjoy an aperitif in the piano bar and then take a seat at one of the dining room's tables, all of which provide an inspiring view. The menu changes seasonally, offering fish and meat dishes that range from filet of turbot with seaweed and buttered sea urchins to veal chops with truffled vegetables. Reservations are recommended.

Time Out at the Tower -- To see the Eiffel Tower best, don't sprint -- approach it gradually. We suggest taking the Métro to the Trocadéro stop and walking from the Palais de Chaillot to the Seine to get the full effect of the tower and its surroundings; then cross the pont d'Iéna and head for the base, where you'll find elevators in two of the pillars -- expect long lines. (When the tower is open, you can see the 1889 lift machinery in the east and west pillars.) You visit the tower in three stages: The first landing provides a view over the rooftops, as well as a cinema museum showing films, restaurants, and a bar. The second landing offers a panoramic look at the city. The third landing gives the most spectacular view; Eiffel's office has been re-created on this level, with wax figures depicting the engineer receiving Thomas Edison.

Parc Zoologique de Paris - Paris

There's a modest zoo in the Jardin des Plantes, but without a doubt, the best zoo is here on the southeastern outskirts of Paris, quickly reachable by Métro. Many of this modern zoo's animals, which seem happy and are playful, live in settings similar to their natural habitats, hemmed in by rock barriers, not bars or cages. You'll never see an animal in a cage too small for it. The lion has an entire veldt to himself, and you can lock eyes comfortably across a deep moat. On a cement mountain like Disneyland's Matterhorn, exotic breeds of mountain goats and sheep leap from ledge to ledge or pose gracefully for hours while watching the penguins in their pools at the mountain's foot. Keep well back from the bear pools, or you might get wet.

Musée de l'Orangerie - Paris

In the Tuileries stands this gem among galleries. It has an outstanding collection of art and one celebrated painting on display: Claude Monet's exquisite Nymphéas (1915-27), in which water lilies float amorphously on the canvas. The water lilies are displayed as the artist intended them to be -- lit by sunlight in large oval galleries that evoke the shape of the garden ponds at his former Giverny estate.

Creating his effects with hundreds and hundreds of minute strokes of his brush (one irate 19th-century critic called them "tongue lickings"), Monet achieved unity and harmony, as he did in his Rouen Cathedral series and his haystacks. Artists with lesser talent might have stirred up "soup." But Monet, of course, was a genius. See his lilies and evoke for yourself the mood and melancholy as he experienced them so many years ago. Monet continued to paint his water landscapes right up until his death in 1926, although he was greatly hampered by failing eyesight.

The renovated building also houses the art collections of two men, John Walter and Paul Guillaume, who are not connected to each other, except that they were both married at different times to the same woman. Their collection includes more than 24 Renoirs, including Young Girl at a Piano. Cézanne is represented by 14 works, notably The Red Rock, and Matisse by 11 paintings. The highlight of Rousseau's nine works displayed here is The Wedding, and the dozen paintings by Picasso reach the pinnacle of their brilliance in The Female Bathers. Other outstanding paintings are by Utrillo (10 works in all), Soutine (22), and Derain (28).

Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle (Museum of Natural History) - Paris

This museum in the Jardin des Plantes, founded in 1635 as a research center by Guy de la Brosse, physician to Louis XIII, has a range of science and nature exhibits. At the entrance of the Grande Gallery of Evolution, two 26m (85-ft.) skeletons of whales greet you. One display containing the skeletons of dinosaurs and mastodons is dedicated to endangered and vanished species. Galleries specialize in paleontology, anatomy, mineralogy, and botany. Within the museum's grounds are tropical hothouses containing thousands of species of unusual plant life and a menagerie with small animals in simulated natural habitats.