Pleasure of Paris is to roam free

Paris appeals to all the senses and you can savour its beauty without breaking the bank, writes EWAN McDONALD.

Think Paris and the images tumble out: the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Champs Elysees, avenues of haute couture, three-starred restaurants with haute cuisine at prices that would feed a small African nation, five-star hotels at prices that would house a large African nation, the infamous $22 coffee for two.

Yes, you can experience all those things in the French capital. Uniquely among the world's great cities you can also enjoy a holiday on the sort of budget that the New Zealand dollar will support.

For Paris' greatest attraction is right outside the door of the hotel room (and that doesn't need to be expensive either, but we'll get to that). It is the city itself: the sights, the tastes, even the smells. Most are yours free. Others, for next to nothing.

Because it is a compact city (around 10km in diameter) and relatively flat, Paris is best seen on foot. Most of the sights are within a small central core, so you can walk around the Latin Quarter, or from the Louvre through the Tuileries and up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, in an unforgettable day.

And because it is a place made to be lived in (not a living museum like Florence or an office worker's 9-to-5 prison like London) there are cafes, supermarkets, shops, sandwich and crepe-makers, parks, a functioning transport system and people and buzz from early morning until well into the night.

Safe, too: we've walked the boulevards and quays well after midnight and one too many burgundies. Like every big city around the world, of course, it's wise to stick to brightly lit and well-peopled streets.

So what treats are there for budget travellers? Savour these ideas.

Two of France's great contributions to life are the ham sandwich and the picnic.

Put them together by picking up one of the foot-long sandwiches (that's the French word for them) of incomparably crusty bread and sweet, pink ham - cost $4 - from any cafe and head for the Luxembourg Gardens, playground of the rich, famous and local.

Or the Tuileries Gardens, just outside the Louvre on the banks of the Seine. Or beneath the Eiffel Tower, or the forecourt of Notre Dame ... Best place to pick up a sammy to go is Fauchon, on the Right Bank, supermarket to the super-rich and super-celebs, where chauffeured limousines drop off the aforementioned and their poodles (it does cost more than $4 here).

The great churches: the glorious, dark, cool, inspiring expanse of Notre Dame; the studied self-pity of Sacre Coeur atop Montmartre.

Of course, you will want to go up the Eiffel Tower and you will pay for the pleasure. But you don't need to climb the Arc de Triomphe once you've walked underneath the subway at the top of the Champs Elysees and stood underneath the grand arch.

It might sound an odd place to visit on a holiday but Paris' great cemeteries - such as Pere Lachaise (current address of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Isadora Duncan, Yves Montand, Marcel Proust) and Montparnasse - are fascinating cities of the dead.

Window-shopping. Two of the world's most elegant department stores - Au Printemps and Galeries Lafayette - sprawl languidly over several blocks next to one another on the Right Bank. But the place where Parisians love to shop, La Samaritaine near the Louvre, has even more to offer.

Take the lift to the ninth floor (that's as far as it goes) and clamber up a spiralling wrought-iron staircase to the Panorama level and you'll be rewarded with a breathtaking 360-degree view of the city and its landmarks - for free.

For even more cheap thrills, throw on your T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and head for Ave Montaigne, just off the Champs Elysees, where you can wander in and out of the Houses of Dior, Givenchy, Chanel ... practise an air of studied "I'm actually an antipodean multimillionaire but my suitcases got lost on the flight" before trying this one, though.

If you're into TV shows like Changing Maisons, the Rue du Bac just off the Boulevard St Germain, with some of the snootiest interior design stores on the planet, is another gem to investigate.

Museums, old buildings, wall-to-wall art, culture, design - you should experience them because that's why you went to Paris.

But it's as much fun, more even, to jump on the Metro or bus, get off some place you've never heard of and wander through an Arab or Vietnamese neighbourhood. Check out the shops or sit outside a cafe with the locals and a coffee or a glass of wine and watch life go by.

Now the bit about the hotels, for accommodation is always the most expensive component of a holiday budget.

Paris has an estimated 72,000 hotel rooms. There are thousands in the two-star class, which is where an average New Zealand visitor not on a package tour will stay. You can put your head down in a conveniently located, small, probably family-run hotel for much less than you would pay in, say, London.

Thumbing through the reputable guidebooks and booking early, we paid $175 a night (at last week's exchange rates) for a room with en suite in the Marais, Paris' Ponsonby, earlier this year; in the Latin Quarter we struck a bargain at $160 for a relatively modern room.

Don't expect Kiwi-level comforts, though. If we'd paid a bit more we would have had enough space to move between the bed and bathroom, which had been a wardrobe in a previous life, without tripping over our suitcases.

Prices vary between peak and off seasons, and with typical Gallic panache these dates are decided at the whim of le patron. They vary from one hotel to the next. Hotels catering to tourists are busiest in summer. Those hosting business travellers may offer special deals then. Nearly all hotels are busy in spring , so can charge top rates.

Oh, and those cups of coffee for $22: I'm the sucker. Each time we leave Paris we treat ourselves to a late-night coffee for me, hot chocolate for Ann at Cafe de Flore (yep, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's haunt) on Boulevard St Germain.

The hot chocolate comes, with a flourish, in a silver jug on a silver tray from a waistcoated waiter. It's an indulgence, but when the two of you have to say au revoir to Paris next morning ... c'est la vie.