Travel Diaries: Paris 2016 (1) – Melting in Paris

To stay with the theme of travelling these past couple of weeks, I figured I might as well give you all an overview of what  did when I went to Paris last week. Now, we really did do too much to just write it all down here, so I’m going to be splitting this up and posting one the next couple of Sundays (per my new blogging schedule, right?)

Let me start out with a brief disclaimer: a large majority of it turned out to be waiting – but more on that later – and being way too hot – we had temperatures of “above 30°C only”. What we did in between those two, though?
Read on to find out!

Sunday 17/07

The first day, me and the bf met up with my best friend and her bf, at the train station where we were going to take the Thalys to Paris. Advantages to the Thalys? We got there in what seemed like no time, didn’t have to worry about parking, and, of course: there’s just something about those luxurious seats!
As soon as we got to Paris, we bought ourselves some metro tickets for the day (handy little fact: if you’re -26 year old, you can actually get a ‘day pass’ for only €3,85 in the weekends!) and made our way to the hotel.

We were staying in the Ibis Comfort on Montmartre (in the 18th district) and although I do have some questions as for the “luxury” part of that Ibis, the service was excellent, the room was nice and cool, and we had quite the interesting view (*cough* Montmartre cemetery *cough*), and the breakfast was great (freshly baked Madeleines every. single. morning.). As we’d already bought our lunch before leaving, we figured we’d just get settled into our rooms, get some food inside of us, and then get going.

Our first stop of the day was Montmartre, where we visited the Sacre Coeur – and although it was basically too hot to move even a foot, climbing the stairs was totally worth it once we saw both the view over the city, and the beauty that is the inside of this church.
Afterwards, we made our way through some of the little streets of Montmartre, enjoying the views and walking into some of the shops, as well as stop at a little place where someone was playing a “turning organ” (the Dutch term is draaiorgel, but I have no idea whether or not that literal translation makes any sense). All together, there was just this really “French atmosphere” around, if that makes any sense?

Next up, we took the metro to get near the Eiffel Tower, where we bought something to munch on in a Carrefour next to the metro stop and then had to walk quite a while (the whole first part of the grass was still closed off because of the Eurocup) to sit at the foot of the Eiffel tower and relax for a bit.
When we finally felt like we really “needed to do something else”, we went down to the Seine and were lucky enough to get on one of the touring boats almost immediately (and we’d gotten our tickets at the Ibis for free!). The tour really was amazing, allowing us to see some of the most beautiful buildings in Paris from the water, while enjoying a bit of (much needed) shadow and a nice breeze.

By the time the boat tour was done, it was already past dinner time, so we just took the metro back to Place de Clichy, right next to our hotel, where we had some delicious (like, seriously, if you’re ever in the neighbourhood, you should totally go there!) pizza’s at Tablapizza. As soon as we were done, though, we were so exhausted that we basically just went back to the hotel, took a shower, and got to bed – hoping to be all nice and rested for the next day!

-Saar

PS: If you should be interested in reading some of the other journey’s I’ve done, such as there are: last summer’s trip to England and Schotland, be sure to check out my travelling tag!