I'd say it's about time to tell you a little something about my recent trip to Paris. As you may already know from some previous blog posts I went there just for three days (was leaving on Friday and returning home on Sunday), with my parents and my brother. In many ways it was very educational trip. It was kind of a trial version of this year's two-week summer holidays - all the planning, organizing, taking care of my folks (make sure they won't get lost; which almost happened in Paris!), and the most importantly kind of learn how to spend a lot of time with my mum without getting on each other's nerves, which is still kinda impossible (oh my god! she was complaining ALL THE TIME!!).
Anyways, let's start from the beginning...
It all began on Friday, 20th May, pretty early in the morning. We all crawled out from beds before 5 am, had a quick breakfast, made sure we have everything we'll need in our suitcase, jumped into the car and were on our way to Prague, to the airport. At the time we got there, parked the car in reserved parking space and got to the departure hall, I was already nervous about the flight so I somehow managed to get into an argument with both, my mum AND my dad. Thank god, my brother joined us so I had at least somebody on my side to calm me down.
We sent away our suitcase, got through all the check-ins and were left with almost two hours before the flight. As I was getting quite hungry and knew I can't get on the plane with empty stomach, and my dad was already in need for coffee, we stopped in an airport café to have a second breakfast. To have a proper get-ready for Paris I got a warm croissant, mum and dad got each a cup of coffee, and as usually at the airport, the waiter automatically offered a shot of some strong booze which my mum just couldn't refuse. Especially after those very recent news about a plane crash.
By the time her glass was empty, she was laughing about everything. I mean, literally everything! She didn't care about anything. To the point that she almost left her jacket in the café as we were leaving. So pretty early into the trip I had an opportunity to try "taking care" of my parents. I grabbed the jacket and headed after my mum. "Where's your jacket?" I asked when I caught up with her. "Jacket? ... In the café... Yeah, you've got it..." she said like it would be nothing, took the jacket from me and kept walking. I just shook my head and made a mental note not to get very far from her, at least until the alcohol gets out from her head.
"Let's all say together: we have a faith in our pilot," I said to my mum as we were boarding the plane and got a quick look to the pilot cabin. The pilot DID look trustworthy. Mum started laughing, quite nervously I must say.
Lady in front of me was laughing too: "We have no other choice," she said and my smile disappeared.
We spent around an hour and a half in the air. Thank God for waking up before five am - I managed to sleep through most of the flight.
We landed in Paris, at the Charles de Gaulle airport, around half past twelve and before our suitcase arrived, I went to buy something to drink in a arrival hall. Cashier gave me (without any reason) the biggest smile and in that moment I couldn't be happier. Pretty quickly I forgot about all those horrible things that had happened in Paris recently, and I was just enjoying being there.
From arrival hall we headed for the train station (city trains RER). It wasn't very hard to find the station (there are acutally two of them - the airport is that big!), all you have to do is follow the arrows. Without any problems we also bought the tickets in a ticket machine (€10.00) and when we arrive at the platform, the train was already there.
In half an hour we got to the city center and at the metro station Chatelet we hopped on the metro (line 1) which took us through two stations basically right to our hotel. We had chosen Lion d'Or Louvre mainly because it's situated right in the city center, just a few-minutes walk from Louvre, and thanks to the nearby metro station it's very easy to get from here to basically anywhere in the city (in Paris you can find metro stations almost on every street; in every station there's also a usefull map and ticket machines where you can buy different tickets very easily; so I'd say that metro is definitely the easiest way to travel around Paris; and it's not that expensive). In a hotel loby we found out that our hotel room will be ready in 20 minutes. We left our suitcase there and went back to the streets. It was amazing to walk along the streets of Paris without being rained on (last time we were there, we were soaking wet!). Just a few steps from our hotel we visited a little shop to buy some delicious baguettes and headed to the Tuileries Garden by the Louvre where we sit down on a bench in a shadow under a tree and enjoyed our first minutes in Paris.
After we finished the baguettes we headed back to the hotel to check in and settle down in our hotel room. The room was just enough for two nights. The bathroom was absolutely stunning. There was so many mirrors which I honestly appreciated the most.
When we unpacked our suitcase and changed our clothes, we quickly got back to discovering beauties of the city of Paris. And we headed back to the Tuileries Garden.
We walked through them for some time but then it was time for visiting Museum Orsay - at least, for me and my mum. My dad and my brother weren't really that much interested in art. My brother headed off for his own adventures - a long walk to Sacré-Coeur; and my dad settled in a nearby café. And me and my mum, filled with excitement, headed to the museum to admire impressionists (if you want to visit the museum when in Paris, don't forget to reserve your visit online in advance - here; you won't have to waste any time in a queue).
The exhibition of impressionists was absolutely breathtaking! There's also an amazing view of Paris and Sacré-Coeur from the museum. And one of my dreams came true - I saw paintings of Vincent Van Gogh who's my favorite artist without a hint of doubt.
After visiting the museum we met with my dad again and headed across the gardens to the metro station Concorde from where we went (with metro line 12) to the station Abbesses, just under Sacré-Coeur. And to be walking through the streets around this monument is an amazing experience! They're just so full of life!
Visiting the cathedral is for free, so it wasn't a difficult choice to go inside. I didn't really have any need to take pictures. I just sit there and enjoyed the magical atmosphere. Unforgettable experience, for sure!
After that we got back to the streets. In a little sweet-shop we bought delicious ice cream and walked across to the Place du Tertre which is full of street artists. You'll definitely enjoy the true atmosphere of Paris here.
Then it was time for some food. We settled by a little table right on the street in front of an amazingly looking restaurant. The waitress was super nice and friendly! She asked where we come from and helped us pick something to eat from the menu. When we were ordering she asked us how to say thank you in Czech language and when we were leaving she and her colleague thanked us in Czech. Which is always nice!
After dinner it took us just a few minutes to walk over to Moulin Rouge which was something I couldn't leave out when I was planning the trip. So another one of my dreams came true. And I just couldn't help it but think about Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman in a same-named movie.
At this point, due to an early start, exhausting journey and quite a lot of walking, we were already pretty tired, and that's why we decided to end the day by chilling out in our hotel room where we also pretty soon fell asleep.
Saturday morning didn't start that early as the previous one, but as we had a lot of things to see, we were up at 7. We had a breakfast at our hotel and a few minutes before nine we were already out in the streets. Sun was already up with a promise of a lovely day, parisian streets smelled of freshness of the new day. We walked along the streets, me and my mum were admiring fashion boutiques (still closed, at this time of the day), making fun of dad for not buying us anything. We walked across Place Vendome and by the Opera we got on the metro (line 8) to get to the station École Militaire from where we got to the Eiffel Tower in just a few minutes.
It was opening at half past nine but even before that there was already a pretty long queue. You can plan and reserve your visit online in advance too (here), but we'd kinda missed it and our time had been already full, so we had no other choice than to spend some time in the queue. The entrance was opened and surprisingly it was moving pretty fast. In just half an hour we were already buying tickets and in another few minutes we were getting into the elevator. Now, to be honest, if you want to go to the top of the tower (which was something we wanted, too), you need to be ready to invest a bit more. But under 26 years of age you get a pretty decent discount, and there's no need to show any ID (at least they didn't want us to show it, even though my brother definitely looks older), and it's totally worth the experience! The weather was absolutely perfect and the view of the whole city was breathtaking!
Then we headed to the Invalides, the place where Napoléon Bonaparte is buried. It wasn't far and the weather was perfect for a walk.
There's no entrance fee for the gardens; of course there were soldiers checking our backpacks (which is something we were already used to by that time; it was basically at every entrance of every monument). If you want to visit The Dome or The Army Museum, you have to buy tickets. We skipped the museum, but we wanted to see Napoléon. Tickets were not that expensive and The Dome was really beautiful inside so it was definitely worth it.
At this point my brother left us again to follow his own schedule so I was alone with my parents and we headed to Luxembourg Gardens to see Luxembourg Palace. It was a bit far but parisian streets were beautiful and I was really enjoying the walk. Before we reached our next destination, we stopped for lunch in a very pleasant restaurant. We had a delicious pizza and soon were on our way again.
Luxembourg Gardens were full of people, sitting on the grass, enjoying the sun, and on a small pond there were little models of boats floating around. The weather was almost summerly. After visiting the gardens we settled in a little café for a while.
Then we headed to Panthéon, that was basically just around the corner. There was a small entrance fee but people under 26 from EU can go in for free. The most interesting thing about Panthéon were definitely the crypts under it, where you can find tombs of a lot of important people, from artists to scientists.
From Panthéon we headed to the nearest metro station to get to Place de la Bastille, where you can find (apart from other things) the building of the new Opera. But we walked through the gardens du Port de l'Arsenal and were admiring docks full of small boats. Then we set for a walk along the river Seine, all the way to Louvre and our hotel where we had a little break before heading out again to the nearby café for evening drinks. Not even an unexpected rain could ruin our day at that moment.
We didn't have a lot of plans for Sunday so we slept a bit longer and after breakfast we packed our suitcase. Around nine we checked out from the hotel and paid for our stay. They let us keep the suitcase there for a few more hours so we didn't have to drag it around with us as we used the last hours before leaving for a visit of Louvre. So the expedition is divided again to the girls and the boys, as my dad and my brother didn't have any interest in the museum. They were on their way to hide in some café on Champs-Élysées. But me and my mum didn't mind the rain neither - in just a few minutes we hid ourselves under the pyramid of Louvre. And again I really recommend to reserv your visit in advance (here), especially here can the queue get really long. Even though you have to reserv your visit at the exact hour and the info on the ticket itself says they won't let you in apart from a half an hour time range you reserv the tickets for, we had the visit reserved for ten am (so technically there were supposed to let us in just between 10:00 and 10:30), but around half past nine we already got in without any trouble. Nobody really cared about the time on our tickets, which was something we really appreciated mainly because of the rain outside. And full of excitement we set to explore the museum.
And then all that was left to do was to pick up our suitcase at the hotel and head for the airport where everything went basically the same as in Czech Republic. We were quite worried about finding our terminal because the parisian airport is quite bigger than the one in Prague, but in the end it wasn't that hard; we just followed the arrows. After check-in, we went through the security and all we could do after that was wait for our flight at three o'clock. I had time to visit a little shop to bring home a little memory of the trip - a keychain. We flew with Czech Airlines so I knew my work is done because even if there was a problem, my parents would manage to deal with it on their own. There was some turbulence along the way but I put my headphones on and tried not to think about it (I kinda succeed, suprisingly).
On the way from Prague to Pilsen I managed to write the review of my last read book (I'll tell you about that some other time) so I consider this trip very successful one.
Now, let's have a look at some useful information:
Plane ticket from Prague to Paris (both-way) for one: around €149,00
Hotel (2 nights, 4 people, breakfast included): around €564,00
Louvre entrance fee (reserved and paid in advance) for one: €15,00
Museum Orsay entrance fee (reserved and paid in advance) for two: €28,85
Info about Eiffel Tower entrance fees: here
Info about Panthéon entrance fees: here
Visiting Sacré-Coeur: for free
Info about public transport and prices: here
Map with marked monuments and some metro stations: here
I'll talk to you soon, my friends!
Lil'
xxx
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