Paris

No city really multitasks like Paris, shorthand for romance, culture, fashion, gastronomy and the kind of street life you find on Robert Doisneau calendars. The £69 Eurostar return opens up a vista of civilised pleasures: the best cheese shops (Androuet), the loveliest perfumeries (Serge Lutens, Palais Royal), the best markets (Marché des Enfants Rouge), the prettiest dolls’ house shop (Pain d’Epices), the most engaging museum (Jacquemart-André). Armed only with Patricia Wells’s unsurpassed Food Lover’s Guide to Paris, Inès de la Fresange’s style guide, Parisian Chic, and the Penguin Map Guide or the little brown Paris version of the A-to-Z, you’re on a roll.

Yes, I know London’s meant to be where it’s at when it comes to cultural dynamism and ethnic restaurants (though Paris has an interesting Japanese vibe just now), that many of Paris’s finest are tax exiles in Britain, that the irresistible Left Bank cafés where smoking Gauloises was practically obligatory have been displaced by all-day Anglo-American eateries. I don’t care. Paris may be less eccentric, more casual than it once was, but it’s still where apparently unstrived-for elegance is the default mode, where you always greet the shop assistants, where the search for the finest éclair or the most fabulous nail varnish or the perfect colour hyacinths for a bouquet is taken quite seriously. Given the global character of our pleasures nowadays, it’s interesting how Paris stands aloof. You can get Parisian brands in London: Maison du Chocolat truffles, Ladurée or Pierre Hermé macarons, Poilâne sourdough, even Maille boutique mustard and Frederic Malle scent. But just not in the same way. In Paris everyone’s game is raised because people take trouble to seek out what’s really good. Consumption is less gross there, not only in quantity.