Paris Take One

I caught quite an unfortunate cold right before arriving in Paris. Liz and I had an extremely early flight from Barcelona and only one night in the city so I recuperated in our hotel room for a few minutes before venturing out. Our first order of business was food and coffee. We found a delicious Asian noodle place right next to the hotel, which also served coffee so we went there for lunch. After the coffee kicked in a bit we made our way to the nearest metro stop to try and figure out the city’s best transportation. The metro itself was not difficult to figure out, having already mastered the tube, however the ticket system is quite odd. After pondering at the ticket machine for a bit we decided our most cost efficient option was to buy a book of tickets. It came with ten tickets each of which allows one to take one ride on the metro within the city. The system is not difficult just obnoxious. The ticket machine shoots out all of these individual tickets at you, each about the size of my thumb. These tickets you then must keep track of and keep the used ones separate from the ready to be used ones. Not the ideal system, although quite a bit cheaper than the tube.

We decided to do the most touristy thing first: see the Eifel Tower.

And of course we climbed it. The cheaper option was taking the 49 flights of stairs to the second floor of the tower. It was a rather cloudy day but we still got a pretty good view of the city.

We then went to see the Arc de Triomphe and wander a bit before getting a pastry and calling it a night fairly early because I was not feeling that well and we wanted to get up early the next morning to get to the Lourve.

Our hotel offered breakfast which was a bit expensive but much easier than hunting for breakfast so we decided to eat there and they did provide a wide selection of food. We then headed to the Lourve where we proceeded to spend almost the entire day.

That museum is absolutely huge! We didn’t even see everything in it and we were there upwards of 5 hours! The museum legs were really kicking in by the end of it; although, it was amazing to see the world famous Mona Lisa in person. It’s hard to get a good picture of her because of the glass she is behind, but I tried.

After the Lourve we wondered a bit before needing to get to the airport to catch our flight back to London. Paris was amazing. I was happy I was going to get the chance to spend more time there because I felt so sick and it was a bit chilly.

Have a wonderfully marvellous day, au revoir! ~Laura