An autumn weekend in Paris

Three days, written for someone who has been before. The trip is short on purpose. The point is not to add up sights — it is to pick three or four habits and keep them, in the way the city is best kept in October.

Friday — arrival

Land in the morning if you can. Drop the bags at Le Bristol — they will accept them before check-in, and you will need an hour to walk before the room is ready. Cross to the Tuileries; come out at the Concorde end and take the long bench-line up to the Louvre. The light at 10 a.m. in October is the reason you came.

Lunch at a small Right Bank room — we like Caillebotte for an unhurried plate — then back for the room. Sleep an hour. The trip will still be there at 4.

The first evening is for the bar. Go to the Hemingway at the Ritz when it opens at 6, before anyone else has arrived; sit at the corner of the bar; ask Colin for a Serendipity. Dinner can be a light one — La Poule au Pot or a glass at a wine bar in Saint-Germain.

Saturday — the long day

Saturday is the day we spend most carefully. Start with breakfast in the garden at Le Bristol if the weather is still warm, or in the room if it has turned. Walk to the Musée de l'Orangerie at opening — the Monet rooms are the reason — and continue along the river to the Pont des Arts. Cross to Saint-Germain; bookshops, two coffees, a long bench in the Luxembourg gardens.

Lunch is the moment for Le Voltaire. Order the steak tartare and a half-bottle. The room is the room; you do not need to do anything besides sit in it.

The afternoon is left intentionally undefined. The most Parisian thing to do is to not have a plan from 3 to 6. Walk, read, sit. The trip will reward this hour more than any museum.

The night is for Plénitude at Cheval Blanc. Book months ahead. A long evening, a window over the river, the tasting menu and one good bottle. Plan to walk the bridges back; the city does this better than any other.

Sunday — the slow exit

Sunday morning belongs to the Marais. Coffee at a small place on rue de Bretagne, the market at Enfants Rouges, an hour at the Picasso museum if you have not been recently or the Carnavalet if you have. Lunch can be very simple — a bowl at Au Passage or a plate of charcuterie from the market eaten on a bench in place des Vosges.

Leave time for one quiet afternoon thing before the train or the airport. The Musée Bourdelle is a half-hour, free, almost always empty, and we promise it ends the trip well.

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What to skip

Do not climb the Eiffel Tower in October. The wait is long and the view is not the one Paris is best at — the city's view is from inside it, not above it. The Champs-Élysées is for crossing, not walking. The grands magasins are for window-only browsing in this season; the better department-store afternoons are in November and December.

Three days in Paris in October are short but they keep. We have made this trip in two long weekends a year for as long as we have been writing the edit, and the city has not yet repeated itself.