Ok, so everyone says Paris is amazing. OMG multiplied by a bajillion… they are right! (Side note: Gabi and I realized on this trip how much Americans exaggerate.. or maybe just young American girls.) Anyway, basically everywhere we turned we saw beautiful buildings, statues, monuments, parks, and towers! Even buildings that aren’t that important or historical are still gorgeous! My pictures will not really do it justice, everyone should go there before they die and experience it for themselves. I’ll most definitely be back. Three full days just wasn’t enough, but we sure saw a lot and had a blast doing it!
Day 4: Monday, April 11
We woke up in Amsterdam and hopped on a 6:16am train to Amsterdam. It was a new really fast train, so it was only a three hour ride which I slept through almost completely! Except when I woke up for a couple of minutes and saw Gabi doing this:
Haha she said it was too light in the train. When we got off the train in Paris, we both were so excited because it was WARM! Amsterdam had great weather, probably in the low 60s for highs, but on the first day in Paris, we didn’t even need jackets! YAY! We had to take a metro to our hotel, and the Paris metro is really gross and old and the lines are all over the place. Plus, you have to go through a turnstile to get to the track, which is basically impossible with a suitcase! I got a bruise on my leg :(
Anyway, we found our hotel which was called Luna-Park Hotel, and it was in a cute area with a lot of cafes, bars, and pastry shops. It wasn’t even 10am yet, so we could only drop our bags off. The hotel looked kind of crappy from the outside, so we were a little worried about what our room would look like. However, after the hostel in Amsterdam, anything was better! Plus, we got a room with just two single beds, so we didn’t have to share with any random people! Sweet! Oh, and it was only $20 a night per person!
We sat in a lovely garden near our hotel and looked at the map of Paris so we could figure out where we wanted to go that day. Our plan was basically the same as in Amsterdam… just walk around and explore the city! Then, we would figure out the things we wanted to go back to and see the next couple days. Seriously, the best way to see a city is to just walk!!! Luckily, Gabi and I have the same approach to travelling, and we didn’t really want to run around and see everything like chickens with our heads cut off. So we decided to take the metro to a stop that was near most of the popular sights, and as we were walking, we stopped into a bakery for a freshly baked French baguette and into a grocery store for meat, cheese, and water so that we could have a nice picnic lunch!
We wanted to find a cute little park, so we started walking towards some green trees we saw in the distance. Who knew we were walking right into The Tuileries, the awesome park and gardens right by the Lourve complete with a view of the Eiffel Tower!!!!
Perfect place for a picnic if I do say so myself.
After eating, we literally just leisurely walked around for hours and hours taking in all of Paris. We also saw a guy sitting near us who was eating basically the same thing we did for lunch! It made me feel so Parisian! We also took some breaks in pretty parks along the way to enjoy the weather, the smells of spring, and everything else around us. I had to keep reminding myself that I was really in Paris! Here are some of my favorite pictures from the afternoon…
More gardens by the Lourve
Relaxing for an hour on the grass in front of the Lourve and watching everyone picnicking
Walking along the Seine River
Just a weird man sunbathing near Pont Alexandre III (a famous and extravagant bridge that was finished in 1900, picture below!)
Alexandre III statue leading to the entrance of the bridge.
Then we wanted to see the Eiffel Tower up close, so we started walking toward it because you can basically see it anywhere in Paris! Well, since it’s so big, it looks a lot closer than it really is, so we got to wind through the streets of Paris looking for it which was really fun!
We finally found it!
Then we walked to another park by the Eiffel Tower, laid in the grass again (story of our lives in Paris), and had a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower
Then we walked to the Arc du Triumphe!
Then we were starving, so we walked for what seemed like a million more years to a creperie we saw earlier that day for banana and nutella crepes! YUM!
We made it back to our hotel around 5:30pm, and although it is an old hotel, we really liked it! It was awesome having the room to ourselves, even if we did have to share the shower and toilet with the whole floor. We rested for a bit in our hotel before going to happy hour at a café close by… it hit the spot!
We ended up finding some salads for dinner and going to another bar for mojitos before calling it a night before 10pm. Were such party animals haha… but in our defense, we were up at 5am that day and had probably walked more than 6 miles!
Day 5: Tuesday, April 12
We woke up early again and decided to get breakfast at a café, which in Paris consists of a croissant or baguette and an espresso. We loved how every café has outside seating with heat lamps! I think we were outside basically the entire time we were in Paris except for sleeping and visiting the Lourve! We had this lady next to us a breakfast chain smoking which was really gross, but I think more people smoke in Paris than in Copenhagen which is saying a lot! Super nasty. Europeans just haven’t gotten the memo that smoking kills!
After breakfast, we stumbled upon a market… apparently they just pop up everywhere in Paris! I would love to have this in Iowa, just go buy everything fresh every day!
Our plan was to head to the Lourve after this, but we got there and apparently the Lourve is closed on Tuesdays! We decided to go back on Wednesday, so we got some lunch and went to Notre Dame instead. Notre Dame is pretty magnificent. We went inside for free, and then we waited in line about 45 minutes to climb the towers to the top. It costs 5 euros to go up, but it was so worth it!
We climbed 422 steps to the top of the tower, and our prize was this amazing view!
Just absolutely breathtaking.
Oh and we saw Quasimodo’s bell, which is actually called “Emmanuel”! It’s massive and weighs over 13 tons! It is the largest bell in Notre Dame, and it is only rung on major Catholic feast days.
Climbing the stairs made us hungry, so we decided to indulge in some Parisian desserts! Along the way, we came across love padlocks on a bridge, so cute!
Then I ate a berry tart, in a park, in Paris, in the sun. Perfect.
We wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower later that day, but we had some time to kill first. We ended up wandering around, going to the courtyard of the Lourve, and I napped for an hour on a bench while a man played beautiful flute music in the background. Seriously, it felt like a movie. Then we got to CLIMB the Eiffel Tower! You can take an elevator the whole way or you can walk up to stage 2 and you have to take an elevator to the very top stage 3. We decided to take the stairs as far as we could because it’s cheaper, we could burn off all of our pastry/dessert calories, and it is just an awesome experience! Plus, it sounds cooler. We didn’t just go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, we climbed to it!
Yep, Gabi’s face says it all!
There are three platforms on tower, and on the first one there are a bunch of signs pointing out the big landmarks in Paris that you can see. We spent a lot of time looking at those because then we could figure out what we had been seeing when we were walking around the day before!
View from Stage 1
View from Stage 3, the tip top!
The views were absolutely amazing! We though being at the top of Notre Dame was cool! We couldn’t believe how high up we were. I had to pinch myself because I seriously couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I was on top of the Eiffel Tower! Such an amazing experience, and it is something I will never forget.
After that we had a late dinner and waited until it got dark out because we wanted to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle! We ate at a café really close to the tower, so when we were done with dinner we just had to walk around the building and we were there. When we turned the corner, we thought the tower was sparkling because there was a light beam circling around the top. We thought it was lame, and it didn’t seem like sparkling to us. We ended up getting some crepes at a stand near the tower, then we decided that it wasn’t going to do anything else, so we might as well head back to our hotel. Just as we were walking to leave, THIS HAPPENED:
Ummm… yeah. We were like two little kids!!! It was so gorgeous and we just couldn’t stop laughing at the timing!! It was absolutely gorgeous! It sparkled for about 5 minutes and we just stood there in awe the entire time! BEAUTIFUL! Such a perfect ending to another perfect day in Paris!
Day 6: Wednesday, April 13
We woke up early (again) and got croissants at a little pastry shop by our hotel, then we went to the nearest McDonalds for coffee because it is way cheaper. Over coffee, we planned out our day, and decided to head to the Pantheon before our wine and cheese lunch that started at 12:15pm. Well the Pantheon was cool on the outside, but unfortunately we didn’t get to see the inside because they were delaying the opening until noon. Instead, we found another pretty church nearby, then we explored the nearby area, the Latin Quarter, before lunch!
The Pantheon was built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, but now it is a mausoleum for famous French citizens like Marie Curie and Voltaire.
Wine and cheese tasting was super fun! We got to try 5 wines and 5 cheeses. Gabi and I were definitely the youngest ones there, and there were 4 older couples and two older women who were friends. Since Gabi and I have been taking wine classes through DIS, we actually knew more than everyone else there! It was pretty awesome haha. We decided that the wines weren’t as good as the ones we have at wine tasting with DIS, but the cheeses were AMAZING! I have decided that my favorite wines are the ones from the Bordeux region of France because they are super complex red wines. Unfortunately, they are also quite expensive :( After wine tasting, we needed a nap… off to the grassy area by the Lourve again for an hour long nap!
Then we actually visited the Lourve, which I found to be too crowded and boring. I need to take an art appreciation class because I literally have zero appreciation for paintings and sculptures. That is why most of my pictures are of crazy people trying to get a picture of the Mona Lisa and of Gabi and I doing goofy things around the statues. For example…
People are seriously wacko near the Mona Lisa…
but I did get my obligatory photo:
We walked around some more and looked at other paintings, which Gabi enjoyed more than I did. I honestly just don’t know very much about art, and there were way too many people and tour groups around to make it enjoyable. Oh well, I can say I’ve been there, done that!
Then we went back to the Latin Quarter for our final dinner in Paris! It is nice because they don’t rush you like in the United States… you have to actually ask for your bill. I think we sat there after dinner for about an hour without paying yet. It’s fun. Then we went to a pastry shop by our hotel that has free wi-fi so we could check on the bus schedule for the morning and buy pastries for breakfast!
Here are some pictures of our hotel room in Paris:
And the random toilet in the closet hahahaha. Gabi thought it was cute.
And I would hate to have my last picture of Paris be of a toilet, so here is one last picture of the Eiffel Tower… I’m not photoshopped in, I swear!
Paris is wondrous. Something amazing around every corner. Also, I don’t find the French to by snotty like I have heard. One guy stepped on the back of my foot and said, “Excusez-moi madammoiselle” in a sexy French accent, which made the apology seem 10x better haha. Anyway, Paris is amazing… GO!
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