Just before dawn, the mist from the Seine drifts lightly into the city, clinging in shreds to stately bridges and capturing Paris in its famed black-and-white essence. Cobbled streets are calm and empty. As pigeons stir the serene quiet in gray smudges of motion, bakeries and pastry shops begin to spin out warm, doughy, flaky treats. In a city known the world over for its pre-eminent cuisine, the morning would be incomplete without the comforting noises and tantalizing smells of the day’s first feast.

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Paris has many faces, but its soul is rooted in a 2000-year history filled with controversy, decadence, love, revolution, and great food. Some travelers are content with a weekend fling in the city of lights; others take a lifetime to discover its hidden (and not-so-hidden) treasures. The Louvre, the Centre George Pompidou, and the Musée d’Orsay boast some of the most inspiring and well-known artwork in the world, housed in museums that are feats unto themselves; but depending on your mood, happiness could just as well be lurking in a Latin Quarter jazz club, downtown disco, or Left Bank bookstore. This is Paris: brunch in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Marais, meet the Mona Lisa’s infamous gaze, and dance the night away on the Champs-Elysées.

No matter where you stroll, dance, or tap to the beat, you will be following in the footsteps of someone who came to Paris in search of inspiration and managed to change the world. An entire generation of hungry intellectuals was lured by the call of academic and artistic freedom (not to mention great croissants) during and after World War II. A growing community of thinkers and writers flocked to the cafés to argue, write, and drink, hoping for the kind of spark that had inspired genius from Leonardo da Vinci to the revolutionaries of 1789. In the 1940s and 50s Picasso, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Hemingway took their seats in the cafés of the 6ème arrondissement; they set the dramatic tone for café life that prevails even today, as great ideas are debated and novels are written under the influence of very potent espresso.

From tiny alleys hiding the world’s best bistros to broad avenues flaunting the highest of haute couture, from the old stone of the Nôtre-Dame cathedral to the futuristic impulses of the Parc de la Villette, from street performers to the Comédie Francaise, from the relics of the first millenium to the celebration of the second, Paris presents itself as both a harbor of tradition and a place of impulse, coyly hiding a discovery around every corner.

Some believe it’s the world’s most beautiful and romantic city, but most travellers just know it as one of the world’s most expensive. The French capital can be a wallet-crunching extravaganza of guided tours, extortionate meals and £5 beers. It doesn’t always have to be this way though, with budget opportunities popping up all over the city if you know where to look.

You can save a fortune before you even get to Paris by looking around for a £69 air fare or, for the same price, catching the hassle-free Eurostar train, which will zip you to Paris in three hours.

Arriving in Paris you could book into a mid-price hotel or a pension, but these often cost as much as a top range hotel anywhere else in the world. A better option is one of the HI youth hostels which are well situated and cheap at around £10 a night with breakfast.

The D’Artagnan hostel is Europe’s largest and has its own restaurant and even a bar which sells beer at prices that would make any French bar owner blush with shame. This hostel is a great place to meet people as there are usually backpackers from around the world as well as a smattering of French students.

When it comes to getting around, the cheapest way is by metro. If you buy a carnet of ten tickets it works out at around 50p per journey. The metro system is fast, efficient and gets you all over the city without having to spend a fortune on guided tours and taxis. You can also use the RER trains which bullet you through the city centre, cutting journey times by as much as half.

An even cheaper way to get around the city centre is by walking. For such a massive metropolis this is surprisingly easy, though many visitors don’t even think of it. Have a look at a map and you will soon realise that you can easily cover the main sights on foot. When it comes to food, Paris can be a budget nightmare. If you go into many local restaurants you will be charged a large fee for a main dish, extra for vegetables and yet more for your sauce — and that’s not even including wine.

A cheaper option is to head to a local supermarket and pick up a picnic. Fresh baguettes cost virtually nothing in Paris and you can lace them with fresh vegetables and a delicious selection of cheeses. As for drinks, local bottled beers are cheaper than their British counterparts and you can buy huge four-litre casks of red wine for around £5.

Once you’ve grabbed your picnic there are plenty of prime spots to head to. A picnic by the banks of the River Seine is a quintessential Parisian experience and there’s a good spot near Notre Dame Cathedral where you can enjoy river and cathedral views right at the heart of the city centre. If you fancy yourself and your partner as a pair of those fashionable young lovers by the Seine, then this is the place to hang out as sunset here is definitely not for frustrated singles.

When the sun slips down over the city many tourists head for the cafés and bars of the city centre and end up clearing out their wallets. A cheaper option is the rising star of the Parisian night life scene — Menilmontant. A former working-class ghetto, this suburb is now bristling with trendy bars and cafés and prices are much cheaper than those on the Champs-Elysees or around Bastille.

My own Menilmontant favourite is Fleche D’Or, an old railway station that has been converted into a hip bar during the day and a bubbling night-spot at night. The music here ranges from reggae to hip-hop and the live acts are heavily influenced by the large local North African population. Nearby Cafè Charbon is an old ballroom, which has been converted into a great place for lunch during the day and an atmospheric venue for a lazy-night chat later on. There always seems to be something happening in Menilmontant and it’s worth asking around to see what clubs are best on the night you are there. There are a couple of night-clubs that are free during week nights and charge a nominal fee at weekends.

Any trip to Paris wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Eiffel Tower, but getting up to the top is expensive and can involve an excruciatingly long wait. Instead, save francs and time by slipping over the Seine to the Palais de Chaillot where you can savour the finest views of the tower itself. If it’s a sweeping view of the city you want, take the metro to Pigalle and make your way up toward to the Sacre-Coeur. Here the free views are impressive as are the buskers and street entertainers who head up here at night to entertain the crowds of young people.

If you’re thinking of visiting the French capital, but are put off by the thought of throwing away your hard earned travelling cash then don’t despair. With a bit of effort you can slip below the expensive veneer and discover a city that doesn’t need to be anymore expensive than any other Western Europe.

EVERY guide book or travel brochure on Paris talks about the city’s “beauty”, its “style” and, let’s not forget, it’s “romance”. And usually accompanying that dripping prose will be sweeping shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc De Triomphe or the Louvre — or probably all three. But let me give you a tip — Paris is far more than those clichéd images.

It’s more than jostling with hordes of tourists to look at the Mona Lisa, or standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower saying “ooh” and, believe me, it’s a damn sight more than trouping up the Champs Elysee and nearly getting run over just to peer at the famous Arc.

Yes, the city is an amazingly beautiful, stylish and romantic place, but the real magic is something not generated simply by the fabulous landmarks or historic buildings. As the word magic implies, it’s something beyond grasp, something ethereal and elusive.

That magic may appear when seeing a band in a smoky bar off the Boulevard de Clichy, then kicking on and getting sloshed with the French crew you’ve just hooked-up with. It could appear while walking through a Metro station late at night with a busker leaning into his saxophone and breathing a melody which follows you for 10 minutes. It could appear while sitting on the Pont Des Arts looking down on the Seine and one of the river’s great barges sweeping underneath, steaming off to some mystery port up or down river.

This is the other side of Paris, the living Paris, the thing which makes me go back again and again.

And the fact the city is only a few hours away from London makes it all to easy to do so, If you’ve never been there, or haven’t been for a while, go now, go for the weekend, it’s all right there. Instead of sipping a pint in Hammersmith this weekend, you can be quaffing a demi pression in the Cafe St Michel.

A good area to base yourself is in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank. There are numerous small hotels in and around the quarter which you can book by walking in off the street. But it’s a better idea to organise a room through a travel agent in London to avoid spending the night on the “rue”.

Forget the quarter’s Bohemian reputation — now it’s about as left-field as Earls Court Rd. Sure, there’s a slight residue from the days when Hemingway, Sartre and other literary and academic figures haunted it’s cafes, but you’re more likely to find a neon-lit kebab shop than a dingy bar with bearded men having a tête à tête.

I’ve been to Paris eight times in six years, and each time it seems the Latin Quarter has got more commercial and tacky. But the good thing is the area’s proximity to the city’s main sights. Paris is an extremely compact city and from the Latin Quarter it’s an easy walk to virtually all the best parts of the city. If you can’t reach it by foot, take the incredibly efficient Metro which seems to have a station on every corner.

Before you head to Paris pick up Time Out in London to get a brief rundown on what’s happening in Paris that week. When you get there, grab a copy of the Pariscope magazine (3FF at newsagents) or L’Officiel des Spectacles (2FF). These are both published on Wednesdays and are jam-packed with information about what’s going on in the city.

If it’s a night on the town you’re after, I recommend seeking out the smaller, out of the way venues and clubs. All of these will be within easy reach by train or foot of the Latin Quarter (if not in the quarter).

Here you get the chance to mingle with French people rather than the hotch-potch mix of foreigners who frequent bigger joints such as La Locomotive, Queenorla Scala.

Keep a lookout for posters around town for bands. You might be lucky, one of your favourite bands might be playing.
A good thing about seeing bands in Paris is that sometimes, while the band is big in London or elsewhere, they might be not so huge in France.

I saw silverchair in a tiny venue with about 200 people and enough room to have a serious dance. I’ve also seen The Pogues, The Amps and Suede in Paris. It’s so close to London that most of the big bands, plus lesser known British acts, often make the trip. The typical price for such concerts varies between I00FF and 200FF.

Club-wise, again check the local guide magazines and look for flyers in the trendier cafes (particularly in the hip Marais area on the Right Bank). Like London, there’s always plenty of one-off events which are advertised by slick flyers in cafes, bars and record shops. But unlike England, the clubs equals drugs culture is not so prevalent.

Aside from hitting the town, there’s plenty of other things to do in Paris which aren’t given a big run in the travel brochures. One of my favourite activities is simply walking the streets. Even in the colder months, Paris’s streets are alive with activity, a constant hustle of people who are worth your whole trip just to observe.

There are some classic weirdos in Paris. Whether it’s the red-faced, loud-mouthed fishmongers in the markets, a poetry-reciting 80-year-old busker or a scruffy white-haired professor mumbling to himself on the way to the famous Sorbonne University — there’s all these and more. Another option is to head to one of the two parks on the city’s outskirts. To the west is the huge Bois de Boulogne, a park known as much for its splendid walks as for its “night life” which, suffice to say, involves numerous scantily dressed ladies and furtive men disappearing together behind the hedges. But, by day, it’s an great place to explore — a French version of Hyde Park.

Or try the Bois de Vincennes to the south-west of the city, which along with housing the city’s zoo, also has acres of nice parkland. There’s plenty of other things to do in the “alternative” side of Paris. There’s the flea markets of Saint Ouen and Montreuil, the dusty bookshops of the Left Bank, the winding strange backstreets of Montmatre, the antique shop-lined Rue Saint Paul, the relics of the city’s medieval walls off Rue du Cardinal Lemoine or the catacombs beneath the city. And plenty more.

There’s so much to see and do — and then of course, there’s the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre.

When one thinks of Paris it is the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees and the Moulin Rouge not skulls and cross bones. For many Paris is the city of lovers, shopping fiends who desire the latest in fashion labels, and artists who like to sit at sidewalk cafes trying to decipher the meaning behind Mona Lisa’s smile. A combination of its superb gastronomy, beautiful architecture and sense of style makes Paris glitter and in the words of Thomas Jefferson: “it’s everyone’s second home”. Only an hour away from London by plane or three hours by Le Shuttel, Paris is fast becoming the most visited capital in Europe.

But beneath the chic Parisienne glitz there is a hidden world, where the Comte d’Artois (later Charles X) threw wild debauched parties and the French resistance during World War II plotted the fall of Hitler’s Germany. These are places few tourists make time to see and yet they are as extraordinary as the Pompidou centre and as old as Notre Dame. A hidden Paris, whose entrance is marked with the sign saying: “Stop. This is the Empire of death”.

If you fancy spending the afternoon in the underworld instead of the hustle and bustle of the Louvre, then take a metro to Denfert Rochereau and discover the fascinating tunnels known as the Catacombs. But be warned, it is not a place for the faint hearted.

Skulls and bones are piled high and wedged into every nook and cranny forming a deathly stylised wall. From the floors to the ceilings bones interlock into all sorts of elaborate arrangements and the skulls stare out at you with streams of golden light. It is like an alternative gallery and had been dubbed by the French press as “the art of death” .

As water drips on your head, the lights flicker and the tunnel takes yet another twist one feels transported back to 1786, when the monumental relocation project began.

All these faceless skulls were once buried in Les Halles city cemetery. The number moved is estimated in the millions and the operation took some 15 months. A strange undertaking by the government of the day, until you realise the rationale for such radical action. The fear of diseases such as black death, small pox, cholera and the like breaking out seemed increasingly likely as the smell of rotting corpses permeated the surrounding area. The cemetery ran out of burial spaces forcing graves to be shared and bodies to be piled one on top of the other, creating a potential death trap.

The skeletons were relocated to the old quarries at the base of the three mountains Montsouris, Moutrouge and Montparnasse, because they were able to support the over flow. Everything had to be done in the dead of night in huge open top carts, and moving such vast numbers across the city was no easy task. Many Parisiennes were suspicious at finding a bit of arm or leg caught up in one of their garden borders but the police removed the rotting bit of corpse saying they would investigate. No explanation was ever given and for years no one realised that beneath the streets of Paris was this other world.

A group of tourists laughing while taking macabre photos of themselves framed by bones, brought my thoughts crashing back to 1997. It could have been the grave diggers scene from Shakespeare’s play and Kenneth Branagh’s film adaption of Hamlet. In particular the scene where Hamlet calls out to his old friend the court jester, while holding a skull in his hand: “Alas poor Yorrick I knew him well”, but sadly the identities of these skeletons remain unknown.

As I wandered through the maze of tunnels, ignoring the all too tempting unlit tunnels winding off in other directions, I noticed that in certain sections of the passage way there were huge gaps where skulls had once been. Surely they had not been removed for restoration or to go on a world art tour. As I reached the exit all became clear as a couple of butch men with thigh length boots and swirly moustaches checked my bags. I half expected them to say “Allo, allo” as they recovered yet another relic from some wayward visitor. Past tourists had taken home so many mementoes of their trip to the catacombs, that now only the living got past these guardians of the dead.

To cleanse my mind and enjoy a bit of the summer sunshine I decided to take in a market or two, but something a bit out of the ordinary. Few cities boast the variety of eye-catching displays of food. Taking on the appearance of a Cezanne painting, the food markets of Paris are an orgasmic delight. The French treat food with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religion and even something as dull as a pile of onions can take on an appearance of a work of art.

Beautiful and delicious as food is, you can’t wear it, hang it over the mantle piece or give it away as a present. My idea of a market with atmosphere is a good old fashioned flea market — somewhere you can still haggle and if you are lucky pick up a bargain or two. To do this meant getting on another metro and heading further out to the boundaries of the city, where the market Marche aux Puces de St — Ouen sells gold and silver jewellery. Be warned, when a seller claims to have a piece of Marie Antoinette’s jewellery it is probably a copy, because the US bought it all in 1887. Something the French are still very angry about.

The Marche aux Puces de St — Ouen is in fact several markets joined together and has an endless range of the unusual and bizarre — from beautiful paintings which in all cases are copies of the great masters, antiques and to my amusement, skull shaped ashtrays. On the backs of the skulls a message was engraved informing passers- by it is better to smoke here than hereafter. Moving swiftly on through the stalls perhaps the most interesting section of the market is the area selling art nouveau lights, which come in every shape and size. Mostly feminine in form, there are figures dressed in long black flowing robes; dancers and walkers frozen in mid-step. Animals of extreme elegance such as the Egyptian cat and the swan gave a distinctive cosmopolitan flavour to the normally simple lamps. These aesthetically pleasing household objects in the form of miniature statues, balancing circular bulbs of light do not come cheap. They require hours of resourceful haggling to get them down to any sort of affordable price.

Back in London whenever I switch on my art nouveau light it reminds me that Paris has a lot more to offer than just the star sights. It is a city with a wide range of entertainments and to stick to the well worn tourist path and not take a leaf out of George Orwell’s book Down and out in Paris and see the less obvious sites may leave you richer in pocket — but all the poorer.