Paris is always a good idea…even in Winter.

lets explore, Paris. Being a tourist and cramming everything into a weekend!

it was a random suggestion to go to Paris for a weekend. As soon as we spoke about it, me and my two friends from uni got together and booked Paris. three weeks later we arrived in Paris. i had been before, but my friends haven’t. We arrived on a Friday, at around 9pm, got a taxi to our hotel from the airport which took around 2 hours; thanks to the Parisian traffic. Our hotel was located in Montparnasse-14eme. (arrondissement). We settled down in our rooms, got ready whilst pre-drinking, dancing around and sharing secrets.

bye bye london

how we looked when we were leaving. We decided to dress up, i wore high neck top, with a leather look skater skirt and suede ankle boots with a mid heel.

We walked all the way to eiffel tower or as the french say ‘tour eiffel’ bearing in mind it was probably after midnight and there were hardly any people on the streets. Finally, after all the asking for directions, many selfies taken on the way and many ‘i love Paris’ later we got there…not going to lie eiffel tower is creepy after midnight.

tour eiffel

There weren’t anyone there, we actually expected to find people but, no. There were few people…drunk ones. we walked towards the main road and hailed a taxi to Champs Elysees and ended up in a club called ‘Queen’, the entry was €15. The door staff was quite friendly and the music had a bit of everything – even ‘what is love’.I managed to converse in French (somehow, hand signs and actions included) with my new found French friends.

On our way back to our hotel, we got kind of lost when we got out from the Montparnasse metro, there were far too many exits and the streets lookalike. After a bit of a search we found it, tired + happy us, fell asleep as soon as we got in. After few hours of sleep, at around 11am we decided to go towards the Notre Dame cathedral; we walked through Jardin du Luxembourg. It was pretty peaceful. We then went into a cafe called ‘saint severin’ for some desserts and coffee, which tasted absolutely delicious; I’m not a big coffee fan but my latte was awesome. Also, having a good looking waiter helped too, whom i named Dima.

chocolate crepe, coffee and ice-cream

We got a ticket for the hop on, hop off tour bus which took us to arc de triomphe first, whilst giving us history lessons. We sat inside as it was very cold, even though i had a jumper on i was shivering. We got off to take some pictures.

arc de triomphe

arc de triomphe

arc de triomphe

Then towards Eiffel tower, and on the way there we saw the Paris eye (or what i like to call it, Parisian version of the London eye)

what i call the ‘Paris eye’

eiffel tower

Tour Eiffel is named after Gustave Eiffel. It was built for the 1889 world’s fair, many regarded it with skepticism. Eiffel tower, which is located in the Champs de Mars is the most visited tourist attraction in the world, today and also the easily recognised However it was considered an eyesore by the Parisians at the time and it was intended as a temporary exhibit, the Eiffel Tower was almost torn down and scrapped in 1909. Furthermore, it was saved when its radiotelegraph values were recognised which helped during the world war 1 and during the world war 2; Hitler wanted to get rid of it but that never happened and now tour eiffel is cherished. Read more on here. How could this beautiful architecture seen as an eyesore?

We bought a tickets (billetes) to the top which didn’t cost a lot, it was around €15.5 for adults. We got the lift to the middle floor which had souvenir shops, where we bought a keyring. Then another lift to the top floor, it was freezing! but the view was beautiful. i videoed it, which i might make it into a little movie thing when i get the time off from uni and upload it on youtube.

view

We decided to call it a night and walked towards Trocadero station to get the metro home (well, hotel), this time we had an idea where it was.

These were the things we did on the first night and day there, we stayed till Monday afternoon, next post will be about the next day, locks, louvre and again getting a tad lost in North Paris.

Love, E.Z