Paris did not invent breakfast, but it has spent several centuries perfecting it.

This morning tour moves through two of the city's most rewarding neighborhoods, starting in the arcaded passages of Palais Royal and finishing on Rue du Nil, the quiet street in the 2nd arrondissement that the Slow Food movement turned into one of the finest food addresses in the city. Eight stops over two and a half hours, each one built around something that Paris does better than anywhere else.

You start with a Viennese coffee and half a homemade waffle at a café tucked inside the Palais Royal passages, walk through the gardens that were built for Cardinal Richelieu in the 1630s, and stop at Alain Ducasse's chocolate shop for a praline cookie. The Galerie Vivienne follows, one of the most beautiful covered passages in Paris, before a quiche at an art deco bakery and a tea sample at Dammann Frères, which has held the royal warrant for tea in France since 1692.

The croissant competition runs across three stops: a reinvented version from Christophe Adam, a pure butter croissant from Terroirs d'Avenir, and a third from one of the city's most celebrated addresses. You judge. On Rue du Nil, French cheese with salted butter and fresh bread, then Plaq, one of only two craft cocoa shops in central Paris, where you dip your croissants into hot chocolate made from Belizean cocoa beans and nothing else.

Come and discover why Paris takes breakfast this seriously!