"The ornate, Beaux-Arts frame of the InterContinental Paris Le Grand has been around since 1862, when the building was first inaugurated as Le Grand Hotel. Since then, its reputation for grandeur, along with its prime location—just across the avenue from the gilded Palais Garnier, home to the Paris Opera—has made it a magnet for international royalty (Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra, King Edward VII of England) and regular, if well-heeled, folk alike. But it's the buttoned-up Café de la Paix, housed on the ground floor of the hotel, that should shimmy to the top of your to-do list: Not only is the foie gras first-rate, but if you sit out on the terrasse long enough, you might start to soak in the genius of Émile Zola or Guy de Maupassant, just a few of its former patrons." - Sandra Ramani, Lindsey Tramuta
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