For those that are new around here, welcome! Tim and I are a husband & wife wedding photography duo based in Charleston, SC but we love to travel! So when we got married, we promised we would go somewhere new on our bucket list each year as our wedding anniversary gift to each other. So far, we’ve traveled to Santorini, Greece for our honeymoon, Oahu, Hawaii for our first anniversary, different parts of Northern California for our second anniversary and this year for our third anniversary we went to Paris, France!

 

 

While we were planning our Paris trip we were pretty nervous about how available vegan options would be for us while we were there. We found a few spots that looked amazing through social media hashtags, saved them and hoped for the best! Well…..now that we’ve gone and come back – L.O.L.- at any of our worries. We were blown away by how many vegan options were available! So I figured it might be fun to create a little Paris Guide for Vegans within this blog post!

If you’re only interested in the list of our favorite Vegan Restaurants in Paris you can scroll to the bottom for a summary of restaurants!

Whenever we travel, we just wing it. We’re not into feeling stuck or under a time restraint when we’re traveling. So we usually “plan” our days the morning of or the night before. We just want to experience the culture and enjoy being there! We’ve heard (and have seen through many social posts) that Paris is a photographer’s dream city & we’re happy to report that that pretty much sums it up! It rained five out of the eight days we were there. We were wet & freezing and we were STILL blown away by everything! This was the first trip that Tim and I only packed film cameras and no digital cameras! We brought our Contax Film camera and an old Canon AE1 35mm film camera that my family found and sent me right before our trip.

On a very serious note, pack flat water proof boots to wear all the time. This is something I didn’t do and we ended up locating the nearest Doc Martin store to buy a pair of their vegan kicks! Tim will tell you that I’m a much happier person with warm & dry feet haha!

First things first, we landed at 4:00 AM local time. Nothing was open and we couldn’t get into our room. So we stood outside a cafe in 30 degree very windy weather until the owner let us in. I think we stood there for 45 minutes with nowhere to go haha. So note to self, Paris doesn’t open until (at the absoutely earliest) 7 am – don’t plan on arriving before then! haha

We stayed at a studio apartment that was a 10 minute walk to the Eiffel Tower through Paris Perfect Rentals. The room was on the 6th floor and in order to get to it we took an elevator that was so narrow that Tim’s shoulders just about fit – he had to stand sideways in it. The said it’s max occupancy was 3 individuals but we find that hard to believe haha. The bed came out of the wall and the patio overlooked the outdoor market in our street. It was absoutely perfect. To save some money during our trip, every morning we would get a fresh baguette and grapes from the market and make an espresso in our room before venturing out. And yes, we ate a fresh baguette every morning – it was the most amazing baguette we’ve ever had haha.

 

We took the metro everywhere and often. The metro stations are so much cleaner than the subways in the US and even though they stopped often, the wait at each stop was so much shorter so it made the rides super quick and easy! Our first official vegan restaurant stop was to Hank Burger and it was awesome! We walked around that area for a bit and ended up heading towards Notre-Dame. The rain stopped just long enough for us to take in the beautiful walk over the bridge and all the architecture beauty there was to see!

 

 

The only thing we had “planned” for our Paris trip was to get anniversary photos of us with the Eiffel Tower by the amazing film photograph Štěpán Vrzala. On our second morning we decided to go find the location that we were meeting him so we wouldn’t be late when the actual session day arrived! It was absoutely pouring with puddles everywhere. A bus actually ran over a puddle that splashed us & that was the moment that we decided to go find some waterproof shoes haha. We went to Riz Riz for dinner and had their vegan sampler. Insert drooling emoji here. It was SO good and SO colorful!

Almost all of the sit down restaurants required a reservation that you could easily book online. At first we thought it was a little odd, until we realized how small each restaurant was! Even if you don’t have a reservation they will try to fit you in, but it’s best to just make one! Their way of life is so relaxing. We could have sat at any cafe for hours without the server coming up to you – this isn’t a bad thing. They are truly just letting you enjoy your tea/meal! There was never any rushing and it was so incredibly refreshing!

The third morning was our anniversary session! We got up at 4 AM and met Štěpán at 7:00 AM for our sunrise photos! Him and his girlfriend were the sweetest and cutest photo couple to work with! They even let us photograph them on film a bit too! We started the morning at this platform in front of the Eiffel Tower, walked to another location a few blocks away and then took the metro to Palais Royal (probably my favorite place!).

We hopped back on the metro and went to Abattoir Vegetal . We found this spot on instagram before we left and it was one spot I really wanted to go to and it was a m a z i n g! So good actually that we went to their second location a different evening haha! After this lunch we walked around to see La Basilique du Sacré Cœur de Montmartre – the highest point in Paris! We accidental walked through a movie set that looked like it was going to be based in the 50’s and then we stumbled across the prettiest floral covered buildings! We probably photographed them for a good 25 minutes before we started walking again! We found our first truly vegan chocolate croissant and it was awesome! I can’t locate the name of the cafe but I do know it was in Montmartre!

 

 

One of Tim’s favorite spots was the Château de Versailles. That place is HUGE! When we were there it was so cold so a lot of the gardens weren’t in their prime so I can only imagine what that place looks like with lush greenery everywhere! We found a vegan cafe that was walkable from Château de Versailles called Positive Healthy Foods and we almost ordered the entire lunch menu. It was fabulous!

Have you caught onto our Paris Trip yet? We basically: walked, took the metro, saw some really cool shit, ate at drool-worthy vegan cafes, took photos and repeated that each day!

 

 

We discovered that Tim & Vincent Gough are basically twins when we went to Musée d’Orsay and that Monet is my kind of painter. We ate the best avocado toast at Cuppa Cafe for lunch & the yummiest fancy dinner date at Apéti. At Apéti we had the best red wine we’ve ever had Back in the HSSR – I haven’t been able to find it in the US yet – guess that means we just need to go back to Paris for it!

The Musée du Louvre ! Talk about a massive museum. We probably only walked/saw a quarter of that place! Since the sun was out we walked around and took as many film photos as we could before dinner at Le Potager De Charlotte .

On our last night, we decided to have one more fancy dinner date and decided on Breathe Restaurant . The restaurant set up was so artsy and so was their food! On our walk back to the apartment we went to say goodbye to the Eiffel Tower and finally got to see the Tower Twinkle. It didn’t disappoint. It was stunning and the perfect ending to our trip!

 

  

Vegan Restaurants in Paris: Hank Burger | Riz Riz | Abattoir Vegetal | Positive Healthy Foods | Cuppa Cafe | Apéti | Le Potager De Charlotte | brEAThe Restaurant

Paris Landscapes & Couple photos by Kailee DiMeglio Photography
Most landscapes pictured here are available for purchase through the online KDP Wanderlust Print Shop!
Film lab: The Find Lab

Anniversary Film photos of Kai & Tim by Štěpán Vrzala