Rugby, Montmartre and 25 Hours brighten up a grungy Paris

Songwriters may love Paris in the springtime, but on a grey, rainy weekend in February there's a lot less poetry about the place, particularly given current levels of rubbish, graffiti and homeless people.

It's been almost six years since the last time we were in Paris, and the city has changed noticeably. I'd always considered it to be cleaner than London, but no more. Discarded papers and packaging blew down streets in most neighbourhoods. Go out when shops are closed and you'll see that most security blinds have been defaced by street "artists". The graffitti isn't just in marginal neighbourhoods. I spotted several defaced walls on the Left Bank overlooking the Île de la Cité, in buildings likely to house multi-million dollar apartments.

Most surprising were the homeless. Around the Gare du Nord and Montmartre we saw them established on full-sized, filthy and rain-sodden mattresses, looking like they were long settled. We saw obviously homeless people sleeping on the ground in metro stations or riding trains to stay warm. Tragic bundles of humanity huddled in doorways in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, amongst some of the world's most expensive galleries and antique shops. While London has a significant homeless problem, they don't seem to be as obviously established in the middle of traffic patterns as those we saw in Paris.

Though the city looked grubbier everywhere we went, I confess that three days of rain and staying just across from the Gare du Nord probably gave us a disproportionately grim view. Neighbourhoods around train stations are inevitably a bit dodgy, no matter how hard they push their urban renewal projects. Someone's clearly been putting effort in around here since my last visit, since the station's grand facade is now spotlessly clean, artfully lit and fronted with new civic sculpture. Ignore what you see on street level and it's quite magnificent.

The 10th arrondissement may lack the charm of my usual preferred bolthole in the Marais, but if you're coming from London by train ... and if your primary objective for the weekend is a rugby match at the Stade de France ... you can't beat the location. And if you want to stay around here, I'd recommend the 25 Hours. It's an enormous hotel within the Accor chain in a classic 19th century building, immediately across the street from the station's main entrance, but it feels neither corporate nor traditional. In fact, they've somehow managed to pull off the feel of a boutique hotel despite having hundreds of rooms.

The decor is North African fusion with hints of Asia and industrial chic. A minimalist front desk also has the feel of an African or Caribbean market, with craft items inspired by the hotel's design for sale and a coffee and pastry stand to one side. Upstairs, hallways are an eye-popping fuschia, rooms are decorated in bright primary colours and vivid batik prints. The rooms are well-lit (often a problem in old building renovations) thanks to fun exposed bulbs and signage, mattresses are deep and pleasantly firm, there are surprisingly large shower rooms and even more surprisingly large TVs with sharp definition. The whole place is flooded with high-speed WiFi. The first (American 2nd) floor has a cocktail bar with a cool vibe, an extensive drinks menu and a live DJ on weekend evenings. There's a lounge area with a big communal table for people who want to hang out outside of their rooms and ... the big boutique-y touch ... a table with typewriters and printing stamps where you can write and post a love letter to whoever you're missing.

This floor also features a family-run restaurant called Neni that served up the best meal we had the whole weekend. It markets itself as Persian-Arabic-French-Russian fusion, but I'd simplify that by putting it in an eastern Mediterranean category. Think hummus, babaganoush, spiced lamb. I had their Jerusalem chicken platter; think fajitas, but the grilled chicken and peppers were served on a pillow of silky-smooth hummus and served with the best pitta bread I've ever had. We didn't get to Neni until our last night, when we'd exhausted all the most likely-looking bistros in the street. Had we started there, we would have been back.

I hadn't done any restaurant research before the trip, because the primary objective of the weekend was a simple one: rugby. Typhoon Hagibis had cancelled the France v. England match to which we'd had tickets during last year's World Cup, so getting to the same match up in the 2020 Six Nations tournament seemed like an excellent Christmas present for my husband. (It also gave me the chance to go to Paris' much-publicised Da Vinci exhibition. Of that, more later.)

If you get in on the day the tickets go on sale at the Stade de France you can get tickets direct from the venue. I missed this window so bought tickets through rugbyticketservice.com They're highly professional, with frequent communications and an emergency number if anything goes wrong. It's still stress-inducing, however, to be using a reseller when the official tickets warn so prominently against it. And, of course, you're paying double the price. Best to be more organised in the future.

If you were an England fan, the result was disappointing but the experience of seeing a game in the Stade de France fantastic. This is entirely different from the carnival-like atmosphere of seeing an away game in Rome, where visitors outnumber Italians. The French take their rugby seriously and the huge stadium (2nd largest in rugby) was sold out. The stadium managers are a canny lot, laying a French tricolour across each four seats and seemingly not selling seats to visiting fans in blocks. I'd guess there were at least 15,000 English fans there but they melted into the sea of beret-wearing, flag waving French. La Marseillaise is one of the world's great national anthems, and hearing it sung with passion by tens of thousands is a cultural highlight on par with ascending the Eiffel Tower or eating a classic French meal.

English fans were far more obvious around the Gare du Nord before and after the game, where bar and bistro owners ran up both nation's flags and invited fans to celebrate or eat and drink away their sorrows. Nobody seemed to care that it was Brexit weekend and the UK had just left the union ... save for one bar owner who mentioned it as excuse to drink with him, whatever your feelings. Business, rugby and tourism seem to flow despite government disputes. Over the weekend we tried the Terminus Nord, Au Baroudeur and Le Bouquet de Nord. All offered standard French bistro fare, tasty but unexceptional. Terminus Nord probably has a slight edge with its art deco interior and fresh seafood, but it's the most expensive of the three.

Staying in this neighbourhood also puts you within walking distance of Montmartre, the obvious sightseeing choice if you want something close and easy. This 130-metre hill is the highest natural point in Paris, made even more prominent because it's topped with the high, triple domes of the Basilica of the Sacre-Coeur. The fit can hike it but we took the funicular up and a taxi back to the hotel. The view from the top is spectacular; arguably better than the one from the Eiffel Tower because the tower is in it.  (Top photo.)

The church itself is worth a wander ... particularly for its mosaics ... though is much more modern than most people think. It was only dedicated in 1919, though planning started in the 1870s. Amusingly, it was conceived as an enormous public penance for 100 years of decadence that, the founders believed, led God to allow defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Part of the decadence was also the revolt of the Communards (French proto-communists, not the '80s pop band), so city government felt perfectly justified evicting hundreds of undesirables ... lefties, artists and the like ... from the land to build the church. And so you end up with an enormous monument to the establishment and conservative values in the heart of Paris' most alternative neighbourhood. No wonder construction took so long.

The streets winding down the hill from Sacre-Coeur are a jumble of picturesque architecture housing restaurants, boutiques and galleries. This is picture-postcard Paris. The main square here is packed with caricaturists and artists selling the same sweet scenes your grandparents might have brought home in the 1950s. This may be the neighbourhood of Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani, but don't expect edgy stuff in the streets; that's on the gallery walls.

An older generation of artists was also associated with this neighbourhood: Monet, Renoir, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. The last is more closely associated with a little place at the bottom of the hill called the Moulin Rouge. And that establishment really needs its own story...