Paris layover from a Paris crew member: the Orly and Roissy hotel districts, the neighbourhoods that are not the Champs Élysées and the bakery rule
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#1 Air France CDG, and Hiroshi wrote Tokyo from a Tokyo crew member and Marisol wrote Madrid. Paris is the most visited layover city on this forum and the threads about it are tourist Paris. Here is crew Paris from a Parisian.
The crew hotel districts
The foreign crews are mostly near Roissy (the airport hotels, which are nowhere, and the RER into the city is 40 minutes) or in the city at Montparnasse, the Bastille area, the Gare du Nord quarter, or around Opéra. Orly crews are south, near the airport or at Porte d'Orléans. The RER B from Roissy to Châtelet is the crew's lifeline and the crew who stay at the airport hotels and do not take it have not been to Paris.
The neighbourhoods that are not the Champs Élysées
The Canal Saint Martin for the walk and the evening. Belleville and Ménilmontant for the food from everywhere and the view from the park. The Marais for the walk and the falafel. The 11th around Oberkampf for the dinner. Butte aux Cailles in the 13th for the village in the city. The Buttes Chaumont park for the hill and the lake. Montmartre at 8am before the tourists, never at 2pm. The Champs Élysées for nothing. The Eiffel Tower from the Trocadéro at night, once, and then never again.
The bakery rule
Every crew in Paris should eat a croissant from a real bakery (the ones with the queue of locals, not the chains) within an hour of landing and a baguette from a different one before the flight. The bakeries are the point of Paris and the crew who leave without them have wasted the layover. The good bakeries are in every neighbourhood and the queue tells you which.
The food that is not in the guidebooks
The bouillon restaurants (Chartier, Pigalle, the others) for the cheap French dinner in a dining hall from another century. The Vietnamese in the 13th. The North African in Barbès and Belleville, which Nadia's thread will tell you is the Maghreb village in Paris. The market streets (rue Mouffetard, rue des Martyrs, rue Daguerre) for the morning. The crêpe from a stand, standing. The wine bar in the 11th at 7pm with a plate of cheese.
The etiquette that matters
Say bonjour before anything else, in every shop and café, or the service will be the coolness the Anglophones complain about. Say au revoir leaving. Do not order a cappuccino after lunch. Do not eat on the metro. The waiter is a professional and not your friend and will be excellent if treated so.
The 24 hour version
Land, the RER in, the croissant, a short nap, out by 3pm: the Canal Saint Martin walk to the Bastille, the Marais, a bouillon dinner at 7:30 (they do not book, queue), the walk along the Seine at night, back by 10. Morning: a market street, the baguette, a park (Buttes Chaumont or the Luxembourg), the RER back. One walk, one dinner, two bakeries, no tower.
The 48 hour version
Add a morning at one museum (the Orsay, not the Louvre, unless you have a plan), an afternoon in a neighbourhood with no plan (Belleville), and a dinner in the 11th. Paris rewards the crew who walk and punishes the crew who queue.
For the Air France crews reading
Add your neighbourhood. The foreign crews have the Roissy hotel and the RER and the rest is ours to give them.
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#2 Air France Orly, and the Orly crews' Paris is the south: the 13th, the 14th, Montparnasse, the Butte aux Cailles that Raoul names. The bakery rule is the Paris crew's only rule and the foreign crews who learn it come back different. Add: the Orly to Denfert bus is the southern RER.
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#3 Air France, and 'the Champs Élysées for nothing' should be printed on the crew hotel key card. Belleville, the canal, the bouillon. Raoul has written the Paris the Parisian crew actually use.
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#4 Virgin, Paris monthly on the Heathrow Paris turnaround with the occasional night stop, and I have been doing the Roissy hotel and the airport mall for two years. The RER B and the croissant within the hour. Next month.
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#5 Aeroméxico, Paris quarterly, and the bouillon restaurants are the crew dinner I did not know about. The Madrid menú del día has a Paris equivalent and Raoul has named it. The Latin American crews will be in the queue.
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#6 Air Algérie, Paris weekly, and Barbès and Belleville being the Maghreb village in Paris is the crew's second home for us, as Raoul says. The foreign crews who go there for the couscous find the warmest tables in the city.
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#7 JAL, Paris monthly, and the Japanese crews have a Paris list as detailed as the Tokyo ramen one: the bakeries ranked, the Orsay on the first morning, the 11th wine bar. Raoul's and ours overlap on the bakeries completely. The bonjour rule is the one the Japanese crews learned first.