Hello!
We are back from yet another adventure and are ready to narrate tonnes of travel stories again. This spring, we spent 3 weeks in Europe exploring France and 4 of the Scandinavian Countries – Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The first country we began with was France. Following write-up is focused on our experience at Paris and how we managed to explore a major part of the city in 2 days. We are going to post separate journals for each of the 4 countries we visited during this trip.
Paris, so to speak is all about culture, architecture, history, patisseries, museums and all sorts of good things. Paris, being a major hub connecting a lot of countries together gives you many chances to explore the city during your flight’s long layover. We purposely, took a 2 day lay over in Paris while traveling to Denmark so as to explore this magnificent city.
Paris is a hustling city, always busy with tourists and well dressed people. The place is rightly called as the City of Love for it is full of beautiful sites, museums, buildings that are overflowing with culture and warmth. That is surely going to fill you with love and make you fall in love with the city. Above everything, the breathtaking Eiffel Tower is the Epitome of the city’s beauty and is surely going to leave you spellbound by its first sight itself.
We started our journey from North Carolina,USA in a direct flight to Paris. Its an 8 hours journey and went by pretty fast (we slept through most part of the flight). We deliberately selected a night flight so that can sleep through the travel time and reach Paris in the morning, refreshed and well-slept.
Our idea of exploring Paris was to do all the touristy stuff as well as try all its local food and wine. We figured that it would be best if we buy the 2-day Paris Pass to tour around on our own as a typical Paris Pass includes entry to all of the major attractions and museums along with the local transport – both bus and subway and can turn out to be very economical if used with a good planning. It also includes fast track entries for some of the attractions. You can know more about the Pass inclusions in this link. Most of the attractions we covered during our visit were covered within the Paris Pass.
Day 1
Our first day in Paris started with us picking up the travel Pass from its ticket counter near the central Paris. It’s pretty challenging to understand their public transport due to language barrier but with the blessings of google maps, we were able to commute with great ease.
After grabbing our passes, we walked to the home of the famous Mona Lisa – The Louvre Museum. Louvre, being the world’s largest art museum is enormous and requires a whole day for itself. It looks so beautiful that it is no less than a monument. Following the paper maps provided at the help desk and the signs, we reached the place of exhibit for Da Vinci Masterpiece – Mona Lisa. It is placed in a big room just for itself and is usually crowded by visitors like us. Honestly, it is tinier than we expected and have seen in the pictures and is a little over rated. After clicking a few pictures for our Instagram and selfies, we moved ahead and toured the museum for another hour, looking around at all these too-good-to-be-real paintings by so many artists.
After all this inspiration, we hit the street for some local food and hogged on some strawberry crepes, pizza and ice cream on the way to our next stop i.e. Les Caves du Louvre Wine Tasting.
They offered an hour long tour and let us try 3 of their amazing wines. We were even offered to take 1 Wine bottle of our choice with us. We totally enjoyed this experience of trying some of these Parisian Wines and let’s face it, we felt positively overwhelmed to get 2 whole bottles of wine from them.
Our next stop was Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris. We were lucky to have reached at the time of its evening service and made it in to witness the beautiful service. As pretty it looked from outside, it felt all the more serene inside. We clicked a zillion pictures of the Cathedral and none of the pictures did justice to what we saw with our eyes. All the time we spent there was spent in soaking in all the beauty of this cathedral.Â
It was almost the end of the day and we headed to take an hour long Seine River Cruise which starts at the harbour located close to the Eiffel Tower. We wanted to take the evening cruise to have a night tour of the city. The moment we arrived at the harbour, we were welcomed by the twinkling lights of Eiffel Tower.
Seeing Eiffel tower from our own eyes was the most exhilarating experience of our lives and the moment gave us goosebumps. We have heard tonne of stories about the experience at Eiffel Tower from our friends and family who have visited Paris and seeing it ourselves was very special to us. We continued to enjoy watching Eiffel Tower even from the cruise, it went from completely dark to completely lit in golden lights and then again to twinkling. As we sailed past the city center, we saw a lot of people enjoying by the riverside with food and beer. I wish we had enough time to have done that too but for now, we have added that to the list of things to do on our second visit. Exploring the city through that cruise was definitely a great idea, except for the fact that we had to climb down the deck after sometime due to freezing cold outside.
We also wanted to catch the Eiffel Tower during the daytime and decided to come again the next day for a daytime view. We had one more thing left to do that day as per our plan which was watching the city view from the top of Montparnasee Tower but we were too exhausted and starved. Hence, we decided to call it a day after grabbing dinner at a nearby French Patisserie.
Day 2
We just had a half day to explore Paris because we were flying to Denmark in the evening. We started the day with a typical french breakfast – Croissants, Baguettes, Cheese, Eggs and what not.
Straight after breakfast, we went to Arc De Triomphe, a unique monument formed in the centre of 12 avenues, to celebrate the Victory of Napoleon during World War I. You can view it from all the angles as it is placed in the center of 12 avenues and you can go the top of the monument as well by paying a nominal fee and climbing 280 super-steep stairs. The view from the top is ridiculously amazing. You can walk in circles and have a a wholesome view of the city. We even spotted a lot of other important sites from the top including Eiffel Tower.Â
We got on the hop-on hop off bus and went straight to the Eiffel Tower to catch a day view of this epic site. It was as beautiful as it looked during the night time!
catch a day view of this epic site. It was as beautiful as it looked during the night time!
We got on the bus once again, passed through the shopping street and traced Louis Vuitton and other premium brand stores while heading to our last spot which was the Opera national de Paris. We completed its hour long tour and went straight to the airport to catch our flight.
Other Recommendations
There are a bunch of other spots that we wanted to cover during this trip, but it wasn’t possible due to the time constraints. We are leaving a short note below with all our recommendations apart from what we mentioned above.
If we had more time, we would have loved to cover at least one out of the Lido Show or Moulin Rouge show. These shows get booked pretty quickly and needs to be pre-booked before arriving. For the people who are interested in doing a local food tour in Paris, there are a variety of tours provided by many companies. Our recommendation goes to the Secret Food Tours that conducts tour in small numbers of people and help you try a mouthful of dishes at a very reasonable price. You can find out more about them here.
For those interested in catching the city view from little less populated places can go to the top of Montparnasee Tower. Another place with a rood top view is Galeries Lafayette, which is actually a beautiful shopping mall – a work of art in itself, selling all high-end brands. It has a food court at the top and has a city view to die for. Another highly recommended roof top view is from our very favorite Eiffel Tower. Tickets for the top of Eiffel Tower are sold separately and are not included in the Paris Pass.
Last but not the least, our last recommendation is about how you chose to explore Paris. The way we toured around was more of a traditional way – using the public transport. You can also see around Paris by riding a Vespa that is quite popular in Paris. In these Vespa tour, you will be given a Vespa to ride and your personal guide will make you drive around Paris along with him showing all the major attractions in a day. It is a great and fun way to explore Paris and is most certainly on our go to list for next time. We are including a link for a popular Vespa Tour company in Paris here. There are Electric scooters throughout the City as well, provided by different companies like Voi that are also very fun and cheap to explore the city and are easy to drive as well.
Hope this helps you plan your visit in Paris!! Feel free to reach out to us in case of any questions.
Until the time we talk again, Happy Traveling!!
thatoutdoorsycouple 