Paris in autumn, mais oui...

Munster take on Racing Metro at the Stade de France in Paris this afternoon. For travelling fans, October is the perfect time to visit.

YOU can arrive in a city any number of ways — by plane, train or automobile. But the actual feeling of having arrived — in the zingy, energy-boosting, can’t-help-but-grin-inanely sense of the word — is altogether different. It takes a something special to elicit that.

In Paris, that feeling comes the moment we step off the train at Châtelet. Having flown in on the Aer Lingus red-eye for a last-minute, 36-hour visit, L and I have been slow to shake off the early morning stodginess. But then the RER doors open. A surreal whiff of freshly-baked bread takes us by the nostrils. We float up the escalator, into the City of Light.