We’ve made it to a new country!
We managed to find our way off the Eurostar to our hotel which is near the Eiffel Tower. It was so exciting to be greeted by Jordan & Tristin there as they are going to be our travel buddies for the next few weeks! They’ve been over here for two months already and they were excited to see some people they know!
We didn’t do much in the evening – just had a walk to the Eiffel Tower and grabbed some food on the way for a very late dinner! We were just in time to see the Tower flash at 11pm and then we headed back to our room for bed!
Day One
We were up at 8am ready to embrace the cooler part of the day! It was already warmer than it had been in Scotland and it was time to start exploring Paris!
We first off grabbed some pastries from a store down the road (which were so yum) and began our walk past the Eiffel Tower. We have tickets booked already for the evening, but we couldn’t believe the huge line at the ticket office! It went for over 150m and we were hoping it was just due to the fact the Tower had only just opened.
We continued our walk to the Seine and decided to head towards Arc de Triomphe. It was already turning out to be a high step count day!
We walked through so many streets with such old buildings. We went through a food market, and the roads were still very quiet! Eventually we got to the Arc de Triomphe and the crazy roundabout was pretty much empty! We were obviously up too early for the Parisians!
We walked under the road to the Arc and spent some time taking photos and checking it out before heading off down Champs Élysées towards the Louvre. Again, we passed so many old amazing buildings! They were also doing a lot of pack up from Bastille day a couple of days before.
The line at the Louvre was massive as well! We decided to go online and book some tickets to go in tomorrow. It seems that the online queue was moving pretty fast compared to the other one.
The rest of the afternoon was spent looking for food (more pastry, plus a salad for lunch) and seeing cool things. We walked along the Seine, stopped for a beer on the river side, and then headed back to our hotel for a bit of a break from the hot sun.
For dinner we grabbed some cheese and bread and went for a picnic under the Eiffel Tower! We had tickets to go up the tower for sunset.
Miriam and I had bought a 2€ bottle of red wine and then had to buy a cork screw because wine is all corked over here! When we went through the security process for the Eiffel Tower, we had to throw the left over wine and the corkscrew in the bin! Still was an incredibly cheap bottle of wine that tasted good!
We had a great time up the tower watching sunset. It started to get a bit windy afterwards so we headed back down and went to bed after a 32,000+ step day! Definitely our biggest so far!
Day Two
At the start of day two in Paris I was feeling a little off. I thought it was too much cheese consumption the night before so just went with it and grabbed some breakfast on the way out. When we got to our stop for Sacré-Cœur, I was feeling extremely nauseous. We had a sit down in a cafe so that I could regain myself and we eventually walked up the rest of the hill. It was super busy and we had tickets for the Louvre at 1pm so we began our walk to there.
By the time we had got into the Louvre I was feeling pretty sick again. Miriam and I left Jordan & Tristin and headed back to our hotel. We were so close to seeing the Louvre!
An afternoon of sleeping and increasing my water intake had me feeling much better. I think it was partly the cheese and partly lack of water/heat stroke from the day before.
Sadly, we didn’t get to go to the Louvre, but on our first day in Paris we realised that Coldplay were in the city and had a few shows! We looked up tickets for Sunday night and they had some cheap as €29 tickets available!
We arrived at the venue and we could not believe our luck with how good the seats were! So we enjoyed an incredible show where Coldplay played all of their biggest songs and understood very little that was said between songs because they had learnt a lot of French!
It was a truly amazing experience being in a stadium of 90,000 people and seeing one of the biggest bands in the world play live. Was not something I was expecting to do in Paris!
The metro ride home was absolutely hectic with probably 50,000 of those people wanting to get on the same train as us. It was very squished and very hot. But all in all, an amazing night. So glad I was well enough by then!
Day Three
The morning started slow after a 2am bedtime! We headed out for a late breakfast at about 11:30am before heading over to Notre Dame. It was already extremely warm by this point. Probably about 35°.
Notre Dame is still closed due to the massive fire in 2019, but it was interesting to see some information about the rebuild of the cathedral. It still looks pretty much the same from the outside at the front as the wooden parts which burnt were further back and hard to see from the front.
Miriam and I had tickets to Saint Chapelle in the afternoon so we headed in that direction and waited a little while in the queue to get in.
Saint Chapelle is a small church in the middle of the Paris high court. If you haven’t been before, it is a must see!
The church is in two levels. The bottom level is fairly plain (compared to the top), although all of the walls are painted in bright colours and there is loads of imagery. The top floor is mind blowing. There are 15 sections of stained glass windows that are about 5 metres tall starting well above your head. Each of the sections represents a different book or theme from the bible. There is so much detail in the windows that it’s almost impossible to take them all in! It’s truly a hidden treasure in the middle of Paris.
We next moved to a more shaded area near the end of the island that we were on. There is a garden area called Pont Neuf which was a nice stop to sit in the shade and try to regain some water in our bodies! By now it was probably 38°.
Our final attraction for the day was Musée de l’Orangerie which is an art museum. We didn’t have tickets and decided we would risk standing in the line at the end of the day because we hadn’t had a chance to do the Louvre. We managed to get in at 5pm – an hour before closing.
We went straight to the Claude Monet installation which is what Miriam was most interested in at that museum. The installation was 8 of his water lilies paintings. He had designed the rooms in this museum to be exactly how he wanted his art to be displayed.
We sat down for a while and just contemplated the paintings (I was loving the air conditioning to be honest). I heard Miriam sniffing which can be pretty normal and I asked “are you all good?” When I didn’t get a response I turned to look at her and there were tears down her face. She had heard about these paintings and to be able to be right in front of them to enjoy the actual thing brought her joy. I was stoked to see that. It was well worth standing in the hot sun for an hour in that museum!
Later in the evening we went out for dinner with Jordan & Tristin. We decided that the only thing that had to be on the menu was snails because we had to try them!
We ordered snails with mushrooms for a starter and they came doused in garlic. They were ok. Kind of chewy. Probably wouldn’t go back for them, but they weren’t terrible.
The rest of dinner was pretty normal food. Not much to report home about there!
We spent the last part of the evening walking along the Seine which was nice. It was much cooler and more bearable to be out and walking!
Day Four
Our final full day in Paris was here! We started the day pretty chill as we had booked The Palace of Versailles in the afternoon. The temperature was due to hit 40° in Paris so we had to limit our outside time.
We wandered up a street near us with a few clothing stores and had a bit of a browse before heading to our hotel to get ready to leave for Versailles.
We trained in and had to walk up to the palace, grabbing lunch on the way.
The last time I went to the palace I had to stand in a huge queue for ages to get in. Now you book time slots for the palace part and can go to the rest at any point during the day. Our palace slot was 2:30pm so we wandered through the gardens and found a place to have some lunch. It was very hard to find shade, but we were lucky to find even a seat in the shade!
The gardens are incredible. We saw fountains with music, lakes, statues, and loads of trees. We barely even scratched the surface of the garden! The palace looks tiny in comparison to the grounds that it’s on!
We found a spot in the shade to have a drink and cool down before heading into the palace. It was about 39° by this point!
We got into the palace pretty fast and we’re quickly wowed by how grand and stunning it was! We saw amazing things in every room – paintings, statues, paintings on the ceilings, an organ in a concert hall. So much stuff!
The King’s and Queen’s rooms were the busiest and I think we were stuck behind about 4 tour groups. These rooms were stunning though!
After a lot of walking around, we decided to call it a day and head home. We got to the train station and knew what platform we needed to be on so jumped on the train that was just leaving. It only took about 2 stations to realise that train wasn’t going the right way! We got off and figured out how to get home from there. Luckily the tickets we had worked the whole way home, and the next train we got on had aircon so that was a blessing!
We spent the evening eating food in front of the Eiffel Tower to finish off our few days in Paris. We had a great time and saw lots and walked lots!
We are now on a train to Bruges for the next adventure!
Bye for now! 👋🏻
