🇳🇱 Rotterdam → 🇫🇷 Paris · 1 week

Skip the tourist-area boulangeries and walk to Du Pain et des Idées (10th arrondissement) by 8am — their kouign-amann and escargot pastries are worth crossing the city for, and the 19th-century painted ceiling alone justifies the detour.

Book a timed entry for the Musée d'Orsay at 9:30am on a weekday — the Impressionism galleries on level 5 are almost empty at opening and the light through the old station roof is extraordinary. Skip the ground floor on the first visit.

Join locals at a cave à manger (wine-bar-meets-cellar) in the 11th — Le Verre Volé on Canal Saint-Martin lets you pick a bottle off the shelf and pay a small corkage fee. Go Tuesday or Wednesday when it's less packed.

Climb to the top of Sacré-Cœur at dusk rather than noon — the queue is shorter, the light is golden, and the view over the rooftops is genuinely stunning. Then walk downhill through Montmartre's vineyard-side streets, which most visitors never find.