Café Marly
This cafe is swooningly romantic. Nestled in the arcades of the Louvre, its super-cosy heated terrace overlooks the Cour Napoléon and pyramid, which glows in the dark. Café Marly is the place to go with your love on a twilight evening. The service is slow and measured, harking back to an earlier era when there was all the time in the world. The mojitos are among the best in Paris, too.
• 1st arr. Le Louvre, Cour Napoléon, 93 rue de Rivoli (00 33 1 49 26 06 60).
Café Hugo
This elegant retreat is named after Victor Hugo, who resided on the Place des Vosges, and who wrote in Les Miserables (long before Oscar Wilde said something similar): "Some of us see the stars and some of us see a duck's footprint in the mud." Café Hugo is a must for starry-eyed visitors and local miserablists alike, with its excellent vin chaud, prime people-watching potential and enough chatty tourists to keep the grumpy unhappy.
• 4th arr. 22 Place des Vosges (+1 42 72 64 04).
Le Pick Clops
On the corner of the Rue Vieille du Temple, where a witch lives in a Colette short story, is this charming 50s cafe. It's mostly retro kids, students and clued-up young tourists who crowd the small Formica tables and the narrow, heated terrace, but Le Pick Clops is a friendly destination for everybody. Sit at the bar admiring the strawberries marinating in rum while sipping your bargain vin chaud. A slice of Le Pick Clops' cake à l'orange, costing only €1.80, is a good accompaniment.
• 4th arr. 16 Rue Vieille du Temple (+1 40 29 02 18).
La Closerie des Lilas
Sitting in the bar of swanky erstwhile writers' haunt, La Closerie des Lilas is like being in a painting. You instantly feel more elegant, refined by the shadows and contrasts of the lamplight on mahogany furnishings and blood-red upholstery. Hemingway, who admittedly seems to have frequented every bar in Paris during the decade he spent here, wrote in La Closerie: "Paris: the city best made to allow a writer to write." The vin chaud is expensive but, for any blocked wordsmiths, maybe you're worth it.
• 6th arr. 171 Boulevard du Montparnasse (+1 40 51 34 50, closeriedeslilas.fr).
Le Square Trousseau
This bistro has featured in a string of French films, including Olivier Assayas's Paris, Je T'Aime, thanks to its classic belle époque interior. At the splendid zinc top bar steams an enormous spaceship-shaped La Victoria coffee machine, and the walls are hung with enigmatic portraits of the owner's family. With tulip-shaped light fixtures and molded ceilings the place exudes a sense of an old Paris that's perfect for writing poetry. And the vin chaud is very cinnamony, served in a highball glass fit for a movie star.
• 12th arr. 1 Rue Antoine Vollon (+1 43 43 06 00, squaretrousseau.com).
L'Entracte Gaîté
The name of this theatre bar means "the cheerful interlude", and it's so apt: owner Marie-Dominique has decorated it in various sherbety colours with plenty of nooks for intimate confidences over sugar-cane vin chaud and jelly sweeties. In the 60s, L'Entracte was a bar tabac where Jacques Brel seduced smokily with chanson française; recently Patti Smith exhibited a film of a typical L'Entracte Gaîté evening as part of her exhibition at nearby Fondation Cartier. A perfect Parisian pleasure.
• 14th arr. 24 Rue de la Gaîté (+1 43 20 96 52).
Café Fou
Just in front of the Bibliothèque National de France is the windswept part of the riverbank where the Bateau Le Café Fou is moored, housing a bright and cosy floating cafe run by enthusiastic entrepreneur Frédéric Decatoire. His vin chaud with peach syrup is spectacularly good, and there's a selection of good-value tapas. The river laps soothingly at the porthole of the bathroom below deck for anyone who's had one vin chaud too many.
• 13th arr. 8 Fort de la Gare. Phone Frédéric on 00 33 06 18 56 00 75.
Un Zèbre à Montmartre
This divine little bar/restaurant is very near the Sacré-Coeur but has none of the homogeneity of nearby identikit brasseries. Sample the Zèbre's vin chaud on the tiny warm terrace, or lounge about the intimately lit, mirrored interior with some spiced caramel cake, €6.50. For vin chaud, it's best to visit outside mealtimes; for dining, the Zèbre's excellent Lyonais menu is served from 12.30pm to 8.30pm (reservations recommended).
• 18th arr. 38 Rue Lepic (+1 42 23 97 80, unzebre.free.fr).
Le No Stress Café
Wintry Sunday afternoons are spent well with a vin chaud and friends in Le No Stress Café on the picturesque Place Gustave Toudouze in the next-cool-quartier of the ninth arrondissement. Enjoy a snuggle in a cute alcove or pop along on a Thursday evening to visit No Stress's clairvoyant, who presumably sees only good things.
• 9th arr. 2 Place Gustave Toudouze (+1 48 78 00 27, nostresscafe.com).
Le Chantefable
Chantefable means "tell a story", and the Toulouse-Lautrec reproductions lining the walls of this lovely bistro-bar must have plenty of tales to tell. Le Chantefable is frequented by actors from the nearby La Colline theatre. Sit at the marble bar and partake of the excellent, spicy vin chaud, wearing a mysterious expression and imagining you're a glamorous étoile of the French stage (you may need two for the full effect).
• 20th arr. 93 Avenue Gambetta (+ 1 46 36 81 76, chantefable.fr).
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