Day 1 we we’re up and ready to enter the beautiful city of Paris with a lot planned for the day!
First up we went to the closest metro station and bought the metro ticket for day 5 unlimited travel through all 3 zones. I would highly recommend NOT buying this. Cost 70 euro and if you lose it (which they’re VERY easy to lose due to high small they are!) You can’t get another. It’s soooo much cheaper to buy 10 tickets at a time (at 1.90 a ticket). You end up walking a lot of the time as well.
We had tickets for the Louvre at 9am (their opening time) that I had purchased online. This is honestly your best option! The Paris museum pass, a guided tour booked through viator and just rocking up ALL go in AFTER the direct online ticket purchases. We were the first people to be let in and because they had just opened we were able to walk around the place without massive crowds for a little bit. Make sure you go to the entrance above ground though! The metro will likely take you to the shopping centre underneath where there’s a small indoor entrance but this isn’t for pre-purchased tickets, you’ll have to go up the stairs and outside to the main triangle entrance.
Once inside, I recommend heading to the left side and down to Napoleon’s Apartment first. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see Napoleon’s Apartment due to time restraints (and not being able to find it easily! Ask them for directions straight away!). Then head to the other side where all the art and Mona Lisa is. I’m sure you have heard how underwhelming the Mona Lisa and it sure is! I’m sure it’s a lovely painting but it’s so small and because you have to stand so far away from it you don’t get to see the details that well. There are so many other beautiful paintings in the Louvre. There are also a lot of special sculptures, old egyptian art and some beautiful royal pieces from the French anarchy that you won’t be able to find at Versailles. It also helped that the building itself is the old palace and therefore is a piece of art in itself! I would allow like 4 hours inside this museum which is 2-3 times more than I usually would for a museum but it’s honestly one of the best I had seen in my travels.
After the Louvre I split away from my mum (who had become quite sick and wanted to rest) to go on a cake store adventure, which proved to be epically disappointing. So food is something I’m super passionate about and after watching masterchef episodes and doing endless research into the beautiful patisserie offerings in Paris I had compiled quite a list. I unfortunately discovered that most of them go away for holidays in August and shut their shops and restaurants. So I spent months and months before my trip emailing and facebook messaging them all to find out which ones would be open so I could visit them. I redid my list and itinerary and felt confident for my cake shop trip. Unfortunately despite them assuring me they will open, after 2 hours of walking around the city of Paris to them all I found that for some reason, they had decided to close anyway. This upset me greatly 😦
Places that I tried to visit today that were closed include La Maison Du Chou, Des Gateaux et du pain, Le Souffle and Pierre Herme. Jean Paul Hevin Chocolatier and La Pâtisserie by Cyril Lignac, which both had beautiful and INCREDIBLE cakes and Laduree which had some nice macaroons but wasn’t that great.
After my disappointing cake journey I met back up with my mum at the Louvre again to try and catch a river cruise up to the Eiffel Tower which turned out to be not possible. So we rushed to catch a metro, but the RERC main metro line was closed so we had to do a bit of chopping and changing and ended up being quite late to our scheduled Eiffel Tower ticket time. But they allow around half an hour leeway luckily!
Because we had purchased the tickets online we were able to go straight in! However there is still quite a wait for the elevators going both up and down. I’d 100% recommend just going to the second level, will save you a lot of time as there are more elevator options for this and will save you money. Going to the top you don’t see a whole lot in a clear way so it’s not really worth it I don’t think. The Eiffel Tower is still super magnificent to see up close in person and it’s a wonderful experience.
So after the Eiffel Tower I made my way to the Arch de Triomph. You have to go underneath the main intersection to reach the Arch and if you want a nice picture of it you kind of have to line up in the middle of the road at one of the crossings with everyone to do so haha. Going up the Arch De Tromph requires walking up 300 or so steps but omg is the view worth it. I would safely say it’s a better view of Paris than the Eiffel Tower and that’s because the Eiffel Tower is actually in it!! This is absolutely a must do!
After the Arch de Triomph I met back up with my mum so we could grab some dinner. We walked up to the main square near our hotel and found a beautiful classic french bar and restaurant. I got duck breast with potato, a lovely salmon entree and got to try frogs legs, which are like super moist chicken legs, so delicious!
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Our first stop on day 2 was the Notre Dame, the BEAUTIFUL gothic cathedral by the river. The cathedral has free entry and the line does look super long but don’t be put off as it’s only for security so it moves quite fast. I think we were only in it for like 5-7 minutes. But do try to go earlier in the day as it apparently gets worse. The cathedral is just as beautiful as Westminster Abbey, if not more. The incredible details in the exterior and once inside, the over the top gothic trimmings flow throughout. It won’t take you long to walk around and admire this beauty at all.
After Notre Dame we grabbed some lunch from this lovely little cafe across the river on the corner facing Notre Dame. I know it looks super touristy and maybe it is but it was still great! I got to try snails here and had a lovely coffee, mojito and creme brulee.
Then we went down to do the river cruise that we attempted to do yesterday (a little bit of itinerary shuffling was required haha). The river cruises run off a time schedule and it’s only like every hour, with a huge break over lunch. So that’s why it didn’t work yesterday. The cruise was really nice even though the weather wasn’t kind to us haha. But the river Seine is a remarkable way to see the beautiful sights and bridges of Paris and I highly recommend this. (We even did a nighttime cruise as well on our last night).
After this I once again split from my mum to try round two of cake hunting. Again I was disappointed by how many places were shut (Arnaud Larher, Jaques Genin and Hugo & Victor) but one super cute little patisserie was open, named La Patisserie des Reves, which is where I acuquired a great majority of my cake desires.
After my cake hunt I made my way back to our hotel to store them in our little mini fridge, had a little rest and met back up with my mum so we could go to Les Catacombs as we had purchased an online ticket for 6.30pm.
I highly recommend purchasing your ticket online for this attraction as the line is always wrapping around the street. It costs a little extra but if you know you want to visit, it will save you so much time and angst. I know this attraction is rated as one of the must do’s of Paris but personally I found it to be super overrated and really not interesting to me. It was quite literally what it said it was and I don’t feel like seeing it with my own eyes was really an experience per say. Most of the walk through the tunnels is just limestone anyway, there is only a small part with skulls. It was cool to see don’t get me wrong but I don’t feel like I need to do it again and I didn’t feel like it was worth my money or time.
After the Catacombs we walked back to the metro, passing a really cool “Aussie” pub on the way haha! Then we grabbed a lovely French dinner at a restaurant the hotel recommended down the street.
This wraps up my first two days in Paris 🙂 In my next post I’ll go over my next two days in Paris where I visit Disneyland and Versailles!
Thanks again for reading xx
Lydia Wilson 