Best places to spend a rainy day in Paris

Rainy days in Paris are a perfect excuse to visit the indoor stuff in Paris that let your imagination run wild.

On a rainy day in Paris, you can explore the wonders of outer space or delve into the mysteries of the deep blue sea; discover great stories in a bookstore that’s a great story in itself, or spend an afternoon being treated like royalty.

Armed with a good slicker and your umbrella, there’s no reason to let a little rain get in the way of a wonderful day in Paris…

CineAqua

Even if it’s too wet to explore the Trocadéro Gardens you can happily spend the day nice and dry in the nearby Paris Aquarium and CineAqua. Home to over 10,000 species of fish showcased in cutting-edge exhibits like their eerie shark tunnel, this venue also serves as a tribute to the fine art of film.

Watch demonstrations on how they create those amazing special effects and when you’re tired of walking, settle into a cozy theater seat to watch the kind of avant-garde shows that you’ll never see in your neighborhood movie house.

Shakespeare and Company

Take advantage of a rainy day in Paris to visit Shakespeare and Company, where travelers yearning to read text not written in French can feast their eyes at this independent bookstore that has served Paris’ English-speaking ex-pats since 1919.

Like a set out of a Harry Potter movie with towering floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the protocol does not require you to pick out a book, make your purchase and leave. Instead, patrons are invited to snuggle in and stay awhile. In fact, there are 13 beds available to struggling writers with the stipulation that they read a book for each day they stay.

Fascinating lectures and workshops are held upstairs in the reading room where novelists like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce once explored the same hard-to-find volumes collected by owner George Whitman from the libraries of such notables as Graham Greene and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Featured in the movie “Midnight in Paris,” this iconic Left Bank bookstore has also been the subject of the recent hit documentary “Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man.”

Palace of Discovery

To explore worlds where rain is never an issue, the famed Palace of Discovery invites you to climb aboard the Space Odyssey of ArianeV, a 3D digital simulation of a voyage to another planet.

When you come back to earth, grab your umbrella for a quick dash to the planetarium right next door where you can lay back and watch the computer simulation of the night sky overhead and ponder the movement of the constellations.

Mosque de Paris

Sometimes the best way to deal with a soggy day is to go with the flow at the luxurious hammams (steam rooms) like the hammam at the Mosque de Paris (where you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into a story from the Arabian Nights).

Prepare to be pampered after your indulgent steam bath with exfoliating body scrubs that melt away the tension along with those pesky dead skin cells that make you look older than you feel. For the finale, you are polished to perfection with scented almond oils and sent back into the rainy streets of Paris with a velvety glow and tranquil smile.

Instead of letting a little rain put a damper on Paris, embrace it as an opportunity to dive deep and discover how entertaining the City of Lights can be, even on gray days.