“how to” - 4 days in Paris

Everyone has a different philosophy of travelling. I’m the aggressive type: see everything, try everything, plan everything – especially during “first-time” trips. This way I know what to expect (more or less) and I’m hardly ever disappointed with our voyages. I have to say, our Parisian trip may just be a crown jewel of my plan making abilities!

How did I achieve such a touristic mastery? Well… I spent close to two weeks planning every second of our stay – researching locations, metro connections, places to stay, to visit, to eat in; tickets, entrance fees and what not. It may seem excessive, but boy was I happy I did that!

First, I made completely unrealistic list of ALL the places we should visit. Then, map in hand, I made painful cuts. Unfortunately, with any kind of trip, you have to prioritize. For example, will you pick visiting one specific place that will take the whole day of your precious time, or will you skip it to see three other, equally interesting places?

In our case, Anant really wanted to go to Versailles and I had my heart set on Monet’s garden in Giverny, but they are both outside of Paris so we decided to leave them for the next trip.

Since we had very good experience with AirBnb, we decided to book our room with them. It actually makes a lot of sense. Paying more or less “hostel” price, you have your privacy and comfort, plus you can choose a convenient location. We decided to stay in Montmartre - just a few minutes from Sacre Coeur and between two metro lines.

I prepared our private map of all the places we finally decided to see. I also divided them into color-coded categories: museums, historical places, interesting places, places to eat in. This way, I could easily figure out how to group the attractions and start planning our daily routes.

With that done, I compared the list and order of visiting places with opening hours and metro map and it finally started to resemble somewhat organized plan.

This is what I came up with (minus the metro details):

Day 1

·         Breakfast/ breakfast picnic under Sacre Coeur

·         Sacre Coeur

·         walk through Montmartre and lunch 

·         Champs Elysees

·         Arc de Triomphe

·         Eiffel Tower & Champ de Mars

·         Dinner

Day 2

·         Sante Chapelle

·         Crepes for breakfast

·         Notre Dame

·         Notre Dame Crypt

·         Shakespeare & Co

·         latin quarter + Pantheon and lunch

·         bvd. Saint Germain towards d’Orsay 

·         stop in Laduree or Café de Flor

·         Musee d’Orsay

·         Dinner

Day 3

·         Chocolate at Angelina

·         Musee de l’Orangerie

·         Tuileries gardens – picnic lunch

·         Louvre

·         dinner

Day 4

·         Cafe @ Lafayette

·         Chartier

·         Cluny

·         Centre Pompidou

·         dinner

Of course, we didn’t manage to do everything on our list, which was predictable. Our walk through Montmartre wasn’t at all what I planned.
You know, how some people say that you stumble upon best things when you just get lost in the city? Well, we did get lost and ended up next to the metro stop from which we were supposed to go towards Champs Elysees, just after half an hour walk. But, since we actually flew from India that very morning, I figured it was good enough.

We also didn’t see the inside of Notre Dame, because the queue was, quite frankly, horrifying.
Angelina, where we were planning to sip the famous chocolate, was closed by the time we actually felt like having chocolate, and we also skipped the trip to Galeries Lafayette.  I read that the view is amazing, and, since I didn’t anticipate climbing Arc de Triomphe, it was supposed to be my chance to see Paris from up high.

Now the handful of practical information, which made our trip so much easier.

If you are a museum freak, buy Museum Pass. It will save you some money and a lot of time. In most places, you get the priority access with the pass, not to mention, you don’t have to stand in the ticket queues. The only place, where we had to wait was Sante Chapelle, where you have to go through security check. Even if you are not planning on buying the pass, visit the website. They have all the basic information about the museums, exhibition, location etc. I found out that some museums stay open as late as 9.45 on some days.

You could also invest in Paris Pass. It is a bit pricey and offers and bunch of things we didn’t need so we decided to stick to Museum Pass.

Also, in most places, pregnant or disabled people and whoever they are with, get special access. For example, you can see Mona Lisa up close!

Public transportation in Paris can be a bit confusing. I found the metro the most convenient. Depending on how much you plan to travel, you can choose from few different tickets options. 

There are tourist passes, weekly passes, daily passes, ticket packets or single tickets. They are priced depending on how many zones they are valid for. Most of the touristic spots are located in zone one, apart from Versailles and airports. 

I planned our trip in such a way, that we didn’t need more than 2-3 tickets a day, so we just got two of those ticket packets (it’s 10 tickets each and comes out to be cheaper than buying single tickets) on the airport. You can find ticket machines on every metro station.

If you are taking the train from the airport (as far as I know, it’s the cheapest option) you will need 10 euro ticket, which is also valid on the Paris metro.

Oh, and contrary to popular belief, people are quite friendly and do speak English! Before we got our online maps sorted, we had to ask directions couple of times and I was pleasantly surprised with how helpful everyone tried to be!

And the final thing to know about Paris – it’s a city of stairs! You feel like you are constantly climbing sth, so be ready for that and get comfy shoes!