A weekend in Paris

It sounds romantic, and Paris is a romantic city, if laid back is your

style and you manage to get to the right places at the right time.
Confused? Let me explain.

We (the hubby, 10 year old and me) decided to celebrate May bank
holiday weekend in Paris. I had a fairly clear itinerary and having
read several reviews, I was confident of getting through two days in
the French capital without getting ourselves lost, killed or arrested.
At the end of our trip, I find that we did a lot of things right, but a lot
of things could have been better had we known some basic facts.
My blog aims to fill that gap for other families like ours who need an
itinerary that doesn’t excessively tire a young child, while letting
them see the best that Paris has to offer.

We booked our hotel through lastminute.com and coach travel

through Eurolines. Both together, cost us a little less than £400. It is
possible to book a hotel for less, but it’s unlikely to get travel for
less, so for budgeting purposes, you could do with taking that as a
base figure.

The Eurolines coach from London Victoria takes around 7 hours to

get into Paris without any stops. The determining factor is how long
the wait to cross the channel tunnel and how stringent the checks at
border control are likely to be. We took the 10:30 p.m. coach out of
London Victoria, which was supposed to get us into Paris at 7:30
a.m. (+1 hour GMT). The channel crossing came around 2 ½ hours
into the journey and a bus load of people eagerly awaiting to
witness something akin to Moses parting the Red Sea, were a trite
disappointed when the entire bus rolled into a huge metal container
train which then completed the crossing in 20 minutes while we
stretched our feet inside our temporary metal shelter. Our driver
was aiming to create some kind of personal record. He simply flew
over the roads, and arrived into Paris at 5:55 a.m. even before the
Eurolines coach station opened on the Saturday morning. The coach
station is at Gallieni, Bagnolet and is the start point for line 3 of the
metro. A trip into central Paris takes around 20 minutes with about a
couple of changes. Luckily for us, we had booked our hotel in
Gallieni itself, and it allowed us an early check in, so we were able to
get a couple of hours of sleep before we could hit the roads of Paris.

Now, for the tips.

Tip 1: Everyone in Paris speaks French, so it helps to know

some basic French too. The French learn English as a part of
optional school curriculum and find it as tedious as we find learning
French. Excuse moi, Parle vous Englais, Seel voux plais, (Excuse
me, do you speak English, please) will get you so far and no more.
As a very smiley stationmaster asked us back, “Do you speak
French, that you ask me if I speak English”, do not presume that
people will try to help you if you ask them in English. However, the
French do appreciate when you take the effort to try. If you ask
them politely enough with a few key words, they do try to help you
out and unlike Londoners, who are always in a hurry, they do stop to
show you directions, often gesticulating and making the most
strange sounds to indicate a flight of stairs or the river Seine, just to
ensure you’ve understood well enough.

Tip 2: Paris is all but closed on Sundays and public holidays.

Unfortunately for us, 1st May is observed as Labour Day in Paris too,
and being a public holiday there was no supermarket, café or public
service open. In all my extensive pre-holiday research, I didn’t come
across this little fact anywhere. So, unless you come equipped with
your crisps and drinks as part of your luggage, you are going to be
faced with the unpleasant task of shelling out €2 for a bottle of cola
and €1.30 for a 30g bag of crisps from a dodgy vending machine
which won’t give you your money back if it fails to dispense your
snack.

Tip 3: Buy your travel card. Paris offers several options for travel
cards and it can get pretty confusing to choose between the lot.
1. The Paris Viste – Advertised as the visitor pass for touring
Paris. Offers unlimited tube, train and bus travel and also
discounts on several of the attractions. It costs €9 for one day,
€14 for 2 days and €20 for 3 days, and is valid from 5:30 a.m.
on the day of purchase to 5:30 a.m. the following day. The
discounts are only on certain attractions and don’t work out to
more than €1.50 or the max €2.50.
2. The Paris Mobilis – An equivalent of the London day travelcard.
Offers the same convenience of the Viste, without the
discounts, and so comparatively cheaper. If you’re in Paris on
the first Sunday of the month, and are going to get free entry
into the Louvre and don’t plan to avail of the other offers, then
it makes more sense to buy the Mobilis. An adult day card for
Zone 1-2, costs €5.90 and a child day card is half the sum.
3. Carnet of tickets – a book of 10 tickets that you validate as
you travel. If it’s your first time to Paris, and you don’t speak
too much French, I would suggest you completely avoid this
option, as the spaghetti network of train and metro lines can
be pretty confusing and you’re unlikely to get all trips right
first time, so it will mean a lot of moving backwards and
forwards on the train to find the right station for the right
attraction and if you’ve got to validate a ticket every time you
pass the turnstile, it’s going to work a lot more expensive with
the carnet, than with a travel card.
Tip 3: Accessibility in Paris is hopeless. If you’re used to
London, you will find the lack of accessibility in Paris absolutely
appalling. Escalators are reserved for larger stations such as
Champs Elyess. The rest of the stations have multiple levels of
narrow staircases. The network is complicated and sometimes you
need to climb through no less than 4 levels of stairs to access the
line you want to get on. It’s pretty easy to read the metro map, if
you’re used to the London underground, but if you have accessibility
issues, or are travelling with the elderly, Paris is so not going to be
easy for you.

Tip 4: If you wish to buy a snack, and you see a shop, buy it.
Don’t bother looking further on for a better shop to buy from,
chances are you won’t find it. Unlike London, where newsagents dot
the side of every road, especially tourist attractions, it’s really hard
to get a snack around the Parisian tourist stops. Having said that, if
you can afford it, do have at least one meal at a Parisian café. We
had a really nice meal at a café near Champs Elysses overlooking
the Arc de Triumph and enjoyed the Parisian delicacy of steamed
snails in garlic sauce and a wonderfully light and crispy French wine.
It set us back €53, but the experience was well worth it.

Tip 5: Make your own list and see what you really want to
first. Because the truth is, that you aren’t going to be able to see
everything in two days. The Notre Dame is an impressive structure
from the outside, set in the most idyllic location overlooking the
Seine, surrounded by a huge garden. It’s the perfect place to sit and
eat your baguette and cheese while listening to street musicians
belting some phenomenal music. But, the true beauty of the Notre
Dame is supposed to be in its interior architecture. Entry to the
Cathedral is free, so you could be forgiven for thinking that you
could squeeze it into your schedule. But, the winding queue to get
into the cathedral can easily be more than a mile long, and I’m not
exaggerating. If you want to explore the Notre Dame from the
inside, you are unlikely to see anything else that day. The same
goes for all the other attractions too. The queues are the most
common feature of all Paris attractions. Queues to gain entrance,
queues to buy food and queues to go to the toilet!

Tip 6: If it’s a good summers day, head for the Eiffel Tower .
Between the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Defence lies an enormous
green. The view from every angle is a photo opportunity, and on a
good weather day, it’s alive with people and their picnic baskets.
Make sure you carry a bottle of wine and some cheese to nibble on.
There’s nothing more depressing than being surrounded by
picnickers while you have nothing to keep you entertained other
than the view. Don’t buy the tickets to climb the Eiffel Tower in
advance. On the day we went, the elevator to the top floor was out
of order. I don’t know how they were planning to refund people who
had bought tickets as most of them are bought off discount
websites. It’s better to pay the extra €5 on the day. At least then
you know you’re definitely taking the trip. As usual, be prepared for
the queues.

Tip 8: If you want to see a view of Paris from the height, try
the Sacre Coure. The beautiful cathedral is built on the highest
point in Paris and it’s free! Skip the queues and hefty entrance fee
of the Eiffel Tower and still get the view. Because, the truth is, that
there’s nothing exceptional about the skyline of Paris. All you see is
an ariel view of lots of little houses and buildings not designed with
any particular strategy in mind. The closest metro station for the
Sacre Coure is Anvers. It’s a walk up a hill to get to the cathedral,
and the walk is dotted with little souvenir shops. You can buy an ice
cream in a fancy cone, you’ll work it out climbing the steps to the
Cathedral. And yes, the Turkish kabab shops at the bottom of the
hill are best avoided.

Tip 9: If you can see only one of the night sights, make it the
Eiffel Tower. The Arc de Triumph is also lit up at night with
diffused lighting and it makes for a nice-to-see if you have the time.
But, if you’re running out of time, it makes better sense to head to
the Eiffel Tower. No diffused lighting for this one! It’s absolutely
alive with bright light, which go off like a giant sparkler every now
and then. It’s a sight, which inspires a slow hushed awe-inspired
Wow from all watching. Surprisingly, inspite of all the light, it does
photograph well even with a fairly low spec camera.

Tip 10: There’s more to the Louvre than the Mona Lisa. It’s
almost the done thing to blindly head for the Mona Lisa. But, doing
so, will rob you of probably the one opportunity to see some classic
creations of art that are second to none. ‘The Wedding at Cana’
placed directly opposite the Mona Lisa, is simply breathtaking. The
sheer size, complexity and detail of the painting will stun even the
most unappreciative of tourists. The Mona Lisa, on the other hand, is
a small painting which is placed under high security and you can
only see it from a cordoned off area which is about 500m away from
the painting. You need to truly understand art to appreciate the
appeal of the Mona Lisa. To others, like me, it’s just a painting of a
woman who isn’t even particularly beautiful. The other ones not to
miss are David and Goliath, which occupies a rather central position
in the gallery, Medusa of the arc which is in the same gallery as the
Mona Lisa and all the paintings of the Madonna and child. Dan
Brown’s Da Vinci Code certainly was good news for the Louvre.
Nearly everyone, us included, felt obliged to pose for a picture
before the huge inverted crystal dominating the entrance to the
museum.
In conclusion, I would like to add, that the above is a reflection of
my experience of Paris. While I went about Paris, I kept thinking that
I wish I had known this or it would have been helpful to be told that
before. There is no dearth of information on Paris on the internet.
But, for most people, what we find useful is practical tips that could
help make a short city break, less tedious, less intimidating and
more enjoyable. If my blog meets that objective, it will be an added
bonus to a very enjoyable weekend in Paris!
Merci’