Postcard from Paris

Best cozy neighbourhood restaurant - Chez Fernand, 127 blvd du Montparnasse. Everyone has his or her favourites and this is mine. It's full of French writers and journalists and has the best bone marrow with sea salt in the world, or for starters try the creamed eggs. It's easy going and relaxed with good, heavy old-fashioned French food from the Fifties.

The best Anglo-Saxon doctor in Paris - this is one of those numbers everyone should have - is Dr Nancy Salzman, a Canadian family doctor, who is the equivalent of having your mother feed you chicken soup when you are sick. Otherwise, you will have to brave a barking French GP.

For the best massage in Paris, visit Craig Dennis, a Mississippi surfer transplanted to France for the past two decades. The former chief massage therapist at The Ritz, he gives the deepest and most effective massage in Paris. I tried for years to find someone and he is it. And he makes you laugh your head off if you feel like talking while he does it.

The best yoga/Pilates studio is CoreBody, 76 bis rue des St Pères, a beautiful, airy studio owned by the Italian-Texan Cindy Fumei. It has the best teachers in Paris. You get inspired just looking at them. Try the amazing Wednesday morning Iyengar with Carine Barco (a Harvard Business School graduate turned master yogi) or do a course of Pilates with the bilingual instructors.

Everyone has their favourite place for afternoon tea but I am a sucker for Bread & Roses, a California-style café at the gates of the Luxembourg Gardens. The carrot cake is extraordinary, so are the organic breads and salads, and there is a wide selection of teas (my favourite is Marco Polo by Mariage Frères). They also do a New York-style cheesecake that tastes like something from a 6th Avenue Deli. It is the perfect place to meet someone for lunch.

For the best shopping for food and household items try any Monoprix, located all over Paris. Mine is in the 14th near Montparnasse, but any one will do. A more upmarket Woolworths, it's the only place where you can buy great children's clothes, wine, organic vegetables, cheese, foie gras, notebooks, fresh salmon or tinned tuna as well as pretty lingerie in one stop. They also deliver.

Paris is a city where you don't need a map. Everything leads to the river, in one way or another, and you can simply walk from east to west or north to south and find each street more beautiful. To get a good sense of the beauty of walking in Paris, read The Flaneur, by Edmund White, (a fl‚neur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without an apparent purpose). My favourite walk is either on the river on a hot summer night - the man-made beach Paris-Plage opens in late summer and is the perfect way to spend an evening - or along the Canal St Martin in the 10th and 11th arrondissements.

But nothing is quite as beautiful as the Paris parks. The most lovely is the one in my neighbourhood (but I am biased) the Luxembourg Gardens, for the romance and sheer elegance. I run there every morning, and always come away happy. For children, there is a puppet theatre, and a super-cool (as my four year old says) playground. There is also a café under the chestnut trees where exhausted parents can drink hot chocolate.

Also beautiful is the Le Palais-Royal, with its row of lime trees, its beautiful shops (including Marc Jacobs and some of the best vintage dress shops in Paris) and at the very end, the wonderful restaurant where Colette and Napoleon dined (not together), Le Grand Véfour. Opened in 1784, it is one of the oldest and most powerful restaurant in Paris (but note: only go if someone else is paying).

The best street for children's clothes is rue Vavin, where you'll find everything to make your child look like something out of Madeline.

Finish off at Le Café Vavin, on the corner of rue Notre Dame-des-Champs and rue Vavin, for an apéro and lots of people watching on a Saturday afternoon.