5 days in Paris - France
Autor: Henrique Leandro | Publicado: 2016-11-13T08:56:00-08:00






After years dreaming about experiencing Paris, I finally made my trip to the city of lights on October 16,2013. As part of my vacations plans not only I wanted to visit Paris, but also get a taste of the rest of France, why not right?

My initial plan was to spend 4 night " 5 days in Paris" before heading to Strasbourg, East side from Paris.

If you are reading this blog, it means you want to hear how to get the best of Paris in 4-5 days and that's what I am going to concentrate from now on leaving the rest of my trip for another blog post.



Let's start how I planned my trip to France, usually October is still considered high season, meaning things are more expensive and places are crowed, now notice that I planned my trip to mid-end October, so getting around wasn't bad and finding a good place to stay was not a big deal either.



American Airlines offers an one way ticket for 20,000 miles (trust me the cheapest you can get) and as I had been saving miles for this trip and wanted to travel France and not just just Paris, I managed to find my return ticket from Nice (South France) for the same amount, making my round trip 40,000 miles in total, great deal for me, since I had just applied for an American Express card and received the 40,000 miles as bonus, what a coincidence. 8-)



Now that you know how to go about your free tickets to Paris, let's talk about accommodation. Hotels in Paris are expensive, specially because they charge in Euros, which for us always requires an extra multiplication skills, in order to find out the real price of your deal.

A good friend of mine, recommended to use AirBnB.com , if you haven't heard about this system, please do a little research, but basically this is a great system to find studios and apartments available for short period of rent while traveling, I picked a place near my top favorite and most desired destination, the Effeil Tower (Tour Effeil). with just a little over $USD 520 I was able to spend a great time in Paris, watching the Effeil tower just outside of my apartment door. I won't tell how much time that saved, since I was just there around that great place and surrounded by many little boutiques and small restaurants , if I didn't want to go no place else, that small charming studio would have achieved all my expectations of France.



Now, that you know a little of the background , let's dig in with a great plan for you.






Day 1: Arriving in Paris

We arrived in Paris CDG at 10:15am, we did not check bags, in order to save time with connections, and at 10:30am, we had already left immigration, which by the way, we handled our passports to the official and the only word he said to us, was "please remove your hat" , in order to check my picture, after that, he handled our passport back and and allowed us to go, very easy , quick and smooth, I just loved how he skipped all the questioning part .



We bought a train ticket to Paris from CDG for 9.50 euros each, and that took us to Paris subway system, also called "Metro" in French. You can buy a single ticket, a day pass or a book of tickets, we decided for the last option which was perfect. A book of 10 tickets saved us lots of time and money, we ended up buying this book of ten tickets three times, since we did most of our sightseeing by subway and walking.



We finally arrived at our final destination around 12pm , our Airbnb studio was perfect and very warming, so we left everything in there and went for a walk in the neighbourhood, can't forget to mention as soon as we left our final subway station, there it was, the amazing Effeil tour. During our walk, we saw many little restaurants around, and we picked a little lovely Italian place to have our first lunch in Paris, of course I had some French wine with my pasta, and we saved A LOT with that inexpensive great lunch. the real reason we choose that restaurant was because they sell over the counter food, where you can just point what you want and they will heat it up for you on their oven, the food was ridiculous good and we repeated that place once more during our stay. it's around 3:30pm that we decided to climb Effeil tour, since we were staying 3 minutes from the place, we could go and see that there was a very short line (about 3-5minutes wait) and then we went up, the view is amazing, make sure you pick the ticket Sommet (top) and not only the second floor, also there is a less expensive ticket in one of the 4 legs of the tower for people willing to climb by foot, using the stairs, with all walking you will be doing in Paris, I have to say, good luck with that option, I decided to take the elevator and within 1 hour, we were done with our first monument, once you get to the top, you can buy a glass of champagne, but I didn't buy into that idea. Take your pictures, walk around and enjoy the view for a little while and Move On :) .

Once done with Effeil tower, we took a metro to the Louvre museum, we got there around 5:30pm, you may be asking Why If the Louvre closes at 6:30pm? Well, there are no lines to get our tickets for the next day around that time :) . I actually bought a 2 days museum pass, since we're going to visit other sites as well.&nbsp;

After done with our tickets, we headed to Saint-Germaine-des-Pres, vibrant neighbourhood with great restaurants, bars and boutiques for shopping. Just walking on those streets was already a great experience, you can get a nice coffee or a beer at some of the brasserie. We stopped at "Au Sauvignon" and had a great cured ham and cheese Panini with read wine, which comes with delicious pickles.

Our last little tour of that day was around our studio, where we walked by Effeil tower to get night pictures of it, and that was when I learned that at night, every top of each hour, the Effeil tower will blink for few minutes, not sure if that's the case for all year long, but we were very pleased to watch that scene.



Day 2



We needed to recharge batteries, so we decided to sleep as much as our bodies required, in order to be very relaxed and fully enjoy our hours outside our studio. So, on day two we left the studio around 12pm and headed to Montmartre for lunch at a little charming place named "Soul to Kitchen" recommended by one of my friends. It's a restaurant for locals and not for tourists, food was really cheap compared to the rest we saw in Paris, a 3 course meal was about 15 euros each person. I do recommend you to check this place out,but careful, we tried to repeat our experience on Sunday and they were closed :(, check their site before going and have a nice glass of wine while enjoying their amazing fresh food.&nbsp;

We walked Montmartre a little bit, there was a very nice church called "Saint coeur" which we ended up skipping that day, but came back to visit later during the trip.

Finally headed back to museum D'Orsay, but before we passed by Notre Dame church in Saint-Michel and noticed a huge line to get in, even with the museum pass, you have no priority here, so we just skipped this church and planned to visit Notre Dame at Strasbourg, few days later. With our museum pass, which saved me a lot of time, since you go to a different entry line, and our different strategy for visiting the museums, we were able to complete both museums in one evening. Get this, on Fridays the museum Lovre closes at 9:45pm and museum D'Orsay closes at 6:30pm. We went to museum D'Orsay at 4pm spent two very well spent hours seeing the most interesting sessions in my opinion, Paintings. Of course we saw some of the objects of arts, but paintings were by far the most visited areas. I enjoyed everything showed at Neo-Impressionism session, and we left with a great perception of the work done by artists during that time. Vangohg paintings were very popular too, everyone wanted to get a picture of his self-portrait and night with stars. You must check those.

We finally left museum D'Orsay and arrived at Louvre around 7pm, with 2hours and 45 minutes left to visit and I can tell you, it was enough :)&nbsp;

Strategy for Louvre was similar, concentrated on Paintings, went to see La Joconde (Monna lisa) by Leonard de Vinci, and also saw the world biggest painting called "Wedding ceremony " , but I really enjoyed Napoleon's painting (find info) , it was described as biggest lie in art history , since he added his mother as part of the picture, which was supposed to be a real representation of Josefine's crown ceremony . Oh, by the way, it's totally worth to get an audio guided tour, to learn about the details of what you are seeing. Instead of paying $5 euros for renting the audio device at each museum, you can use their wifi to buy an official audio guided tour at apple store directly to your iPhone for $1.99 dollars :) . We did that and worked very well, the difference is that iPhone version has a smaller amount of arts included when compared to the once you get at the museum, but still enough for 3 hours and include all main arts.

We were very satisfied with our "Night at the museums" , head back home and got a nice dinner at the little Italian next door and got another great night of long sleep.



Day 3

We went for our breakfast /lunch at "L'Avant le comptoir" around 1pm. I am glad we rested all morning, this place you have to stand up and eat at their counter, super packed, so you have to find your spot, but let me tell you, this place made my entire trip to Paris worth everything since dollar. Starting with their hanging menu, this place is all about food experience, you order French food as small portions, like tapas. They offer food quality of super expensive restaurants at a very low price. It's not cheap if you are like us, and trying taste everything they offer, but like I said, just go, get couple glasses of wine while stand up and watch the chief prepare your amazing food. We also interacted with a local and he suggested us to try even more food. In total we stood there for about 3 hours and let at almost 4pm going to Versailles Palace. For Versailles, we could have left a little earlier, maybe around 3pm, but we got lost at metro station" since line RER C doesn't go to Versailles on weekends and everything is closed by Monday, so we had to use subway plus train. At Versailles, we walked into some of the Laddies rooms and around the Castle, which closed at 6pm. Our museum ticket doesn't allow us to visit the garden, you have to pay extra, but at 6:30pm the garden will be open for free during 2 hours, so it's totally worth to get to the palace around 4pm if you can, so would skip the very heavy crowd while enjoying your visit. Still Remember feeling like we're the only ones going to the palace while walking against hundreds of people coming back to the station, anyway, I would not sacrifice my experience at L'Avant le comptoir for the Versailles Castle anyway :) . Our visit to the garden was amazing, we saw the sunset, which made a perfect time for pictures and we loved them all.

Back to Paris, we went for dinner at Les Cocotes, french restaurant, which was another amazing food experience , this restaurant has line of people waiting in front and we didn't mind waiting 25 minutes to be sited at the bar. Food was again something out of the world, quality,freshness and super high quality service. We were very well treated, wine was carefully recommended and they kept coming back to check on us regarding our plates.&nbsp;



Day 4



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As we had completed the major sites and places we wanted to go, we decided to take the Sunday for local street Market, we went to Obeion station, where we read about this market and again, what a great opportunity to bargain with local people at this great flea market, you can find pretty much everything in those streets, if you haven't been to a street market, you need to check this one out. We had a nice French lunch at one little restaurant at that same neighbourhood and later we headed to "Au Passage" , near place d'italie station, it's gallery of little stores, very cool for shopping, specially if you are in Paris and it's raining out side. Au Passage is all inside, so you can walk without getting wet.