PARIS, a city known for its grandeur and aesthetic appeal, was our halt for approximately 48 hours. This city is always bustling with travellers from across the world and a varied age group. Paris has a lot of history associated with it and it still has the same charm that it had many years back. It is the home to many museums and famous artists as well as the commercial waterway of the famous River Seine.
MY ITINERARY:
DAY 1:
We landed in Paris Charles De Gaulle airport at around 12:30PM from Nice (another pretty city in France). Since, we travelled from Nice to Paris, hence, our flight tickets were cheap (€40 for one way per person). But if you plan to book flight tickets from India, it will cost you somewhere around Rs. 40000-50000 round trip depending on the city you are travelling from and the dates of travel. The best time to visit Paris is from April - October since it is the summer season across entire Europe.
After landing at the airport, we took the RER (Sub-urban Express railway) train to the city since the airport is at the outskirts of the city. The RER train will cost you 10€ and takes approximately 1 hour to reach the city. After reaching the city, we walked to the nearby metro station and purchased 10-trip tickets which costed us around 16€. The same tickets can be used in other public transports like bus, though metro is the fastest and convenient way to travel around the city. A single ticket will cost you 2€ approx. Since, we had a plan to take atleast 10 trips, we thought to go for the 10 tickets option. After making the purchase, we headed to our hotel. Our hotel was a bit far from the main city and it took us around 15 mins via the metro to reach the place. We had pre-booked the hotel earlier from online website and I would definitely recommend others to do the same as well.
After freshening up, we headed for a quick meal at Subway, since it was closer to us and went straight via the metro to Eiffel Tower. It's a short walk of approx 10 mins from the metro station and in the meantime, we could see the gorgeous beauty of the Parisian streets and architecture around.
We started our Day 2 a bit late at around 12PM and strolled around the city to admire the pleasant yet modern infrastructure of the city. After the stroll, we had our brunch at a nearby restaurant close to our hotel and post that, we headed to the famous LOUVRE MUSEUM. We had pre-booked our tickets to the museum from the official Louvre site. An individual ticket to the museum costs around 17€ and you can choose any slot of your preference. Since, we chose the 5PM slot, we made sure that we had our tickets ready at that hour. We reached the Louvre museum via the metro one hour before our scheduled slot and hence, had this amazing chance to spend a quality time around the entrance to the museum.
Once, we reached the Eiffel Tower, we were awestruck by the surreal beauty of the Iron Lady. The age-old tower was standing in front of us surrounded by lush green lawn and pool of water around. We had moved an inch closer to being at the top of the tower and were engrossed in the thoughts of the ambiance that was to follow soon. We had pre-booked our tickets earlier via the Official Eiffel Tower website. There are multiple options to choose from, out of which we had opted the one with entry to the 2nd floor. (2nd floor here meant close to 1000 steps, I don't remember the precise count). It costed us 10 euros each. With these tickets in hand, we made our way to the 2nd floor of the Eiffel tower and there was only one word which described the experience, BEWITCHING. We had spent an hour or two here, and grabbed some food in the stalls within the tower. Post this, we descended from the tower and walked around it, near the small pond to view the lights-on. It usually starts at 9PM during the summers when the entire tower blinks in gorgeous lights for a few minutes. This occurrence happens at 1 hour intervals from 9PM.
Once, we viewed the Lights-On pattern of the tower, we spend our entire night in and around the tower. Time flies when you stay beside it, watching the city change its hue from blue to orange to black and making itself ready to embrace another day in the calendar. We took our dinner from McDonald's since it was pretty late (around 11:30PM) and the proper dining places were about to close off and once we had our burgers and fries in our hand, we took the next metro and headed to our hotel.
DAY 2:
As we stepped inside the Louvre Museum, our eyes stopped blinking to see the gorgeousness around. The museum is splendid and a treat to ones who admire architectural beauty along with old remains and paintings. The Museum is very huge and it would easily take hours to go around the complete structure. It has several sections and the main ones are Islamic designs, Egyptian Mythology and remains, Greek sculptures and Paintings by world-famous artists. We tried to cover as much as possible but since the museum closes at 9PM in summers we could only cover 1/4th of the entire area. The museum is filled with old remnants and ancient sculptures. The paintings are marvellous and the Louvre is famous for the painting of Monalisa by famous Leonardo Da Vinci. There is always a huge rush near the painting of Monalisa and we somehow managed to find it despite the huge rush and short time.
We strolled through the museum and luckily, got a view of the other sides of the museum from the large windows. At this moment we could also capture a view of the sunset in Paris and the orange hues that covered the entire sky to welcome the longer shadows and gradually to the pitch black sky of the night.
At 9PM we had to come out of the museum since it was the closing hours at summer. But since this was our last night in Paris, we again stayed back near the entrance of the museum to see the gorgeous night lights shower upon the entire area and cast a lovely twinkling pattern.
We left the museum at 11PM after grabbing some dinner for the night and headed towards our hotel again via the metro line.
We had our flight the next day at around 10:30AM. We took the the metro line to reach the nearest railway station from which we took the RER train again and went to the airport. We bought a few souvenirs on the way to the station to keep the memoirs of our short stay in Paris with us forever.
Paris was indeed a treat to the eyes and the fact that it is covered with the fashionable architecture makes it indeed a hot-spot for the travellers from around the world. The charm that Paris has makes it truly a city of admiration and love.
Je T'aime Paris!!!
TRAVEL TILL YOU DROP!!!