Tiff & Jared's adventures

Day 1

Our trip was so jam-packed that we ended up only having two and a half days in Paris, but heck if we saw a lot! The first day we got there around 6PM after we left Normandy, and dropped our car off at the airport. For three nights, we stayed at the Hotel Arvor in the 9th arrondissement, which was walkable to both the 1st arrondissement (where a lot of the famous attractions are) as well as the 18th arrondissement, where the beautiful neighborhood of Montmartre is located. The journey from Normandy to Paris was long; as mentioned, we dropped the car off at the airport, then we took the train to Gare du Nord station in downtown Paris, then we walked the 25 minutes to the hotel with all of our bags. The items on the itinerary for the night included going to the Eiffel Tower and taking a river cruise along the Seine.

We ended up taking an Uber to the boat docks, which was right at the base of the Eiffel Tower. For our time in Paris, we got a Go City pass to use at a bunch of attractions, so the Seine cruise with Bateaux Parisiens was our first attraction. The timing ended up being perfect – we took a 9PM boat cruise and the sun had set and we started in that perfect midst of twilight. The cruise lasted an hour and was a perfect high level way to see the city; we saw Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre, the Conciergerie, and the Place de la Concorde to name a few. We were struggling at this point because we’d been up so long that day, and we had started the day on the Normandy coast! To top it off, we wanted to eat before the cruise but there was no time, so we decided to eat after the boat cruise. We returned to the docks around 10PM and were treated to a shimmering Eiffel Tower – at the top of the hour each hour after nightfall, the tower puts on a beautiful light show. Rejuvenated and mesmerized, we decided to walk across the bridge to the Place du Trocadero, a plaza with great views of the Eiffel across the Seine. It’s not called the City of Lights for nothing!

After snapping some shots, we decided to finally go out for dinner. When in France, eat as the French do – apparently between the hours of 8PM and midnight. We went to one of the places I’d stumbled upon researching – Bouillon Pigalle. This place has two locations in the city and is super popular due to its low-cost, quick-service system (trying to mimic the 19th century bouillon establishments catered to working class people). We arrived at 11PM, and the line was still out the door! We ended up waiting about 20 minutes before being sat in one of the many tables. Due to how late it was, we didn’t want to eat too much – Jared got duck breast for $12 euro and I got French onion soup ($4 euro) and beef bourguignon for $12 euro. Everything came out super quickly and as anticipated, was meh. However, for a fast and cheap meal, we couldn’t complain! Definitely not the best meal we had in Paris though. After paying, we walked the 10 minutes back to the hotel to “rest up” (ha – going to bed at midnight) for our busy day ahead!

Day 2

Conciergerie

Time for another go-go-go day! To kick off the morning, we visited the Conciergerie, a UNESCO World Heritage Site referred to as a “medieval royal palace that became a revolutionary court and Marie-Antoinette’s prison.” This building is located on the Ile de la Cite, is island on the Seine and one of the oldest places in Paris. Over 2,000 years ago (back in the B.C. timeline), a tribe called the Parisii settled here, and the island has since seen Roman invaders, French kings of the Middle Ages and renaissance-era builders.

We did a self-guided tour, which was very cool from a technology perspective – they gave us this iPad and we scanned this screen in each new room we entered, and it gave us a history about the room, then there was AI that allowed us to move the camera on the iPad and see what the room would have looked like centuries ago.

We learned a lot about the history of the Conciergerie as a prison leading up to and during the French Revolution. Between the 15th century until the Revolution, the Conciergerie was one of the most important prisons in the country. One of the prison’s most famous residents was Marie-Antoinette, and one of the rooms we toured was the expiatory chapel served as a memory to the Queen of France.

Notre Dame Walking Tour

After our visit at the Conciergerie, we continued to walk around Ile de la Cite. We ended up venturing to a fromagerie, where we got some delicious herbed cheese and salami (but definitely got bamboozled – it was $14 euro for a few slices!). Then, we walked next door to a boulangerie and got a baguette for some DIY sandwiches. We ended up building our lunch by the Seine and it was delicious! Then we walked to Pierre Hermes and got 4 delicious macarons (we ate a LOT of macarons in Paris and these were by far the best). We got Ispahan (rose, letchi & raspberry), a raspberry, a pistachio and praline, and a vanilla. What a delicious meal before our 1PM Notre Dame walking tour!

Notre Dame Walking Tour

The tour obviously was different than what it used to be, since the cathedral is still being renovated. Our tour guide had been doing tours for about a decade, and he had some moving personal stories – when the cathedral caught fire on April 15, 2019, he had just finished a tour and saw the smoke and eventual flames come out of the structure. The entirety of our tour was spent walking around the perimeter of Notre Dame and talking about the series of unfortunate events that took place that day, and there were quite a few.

Some of the facts we learned:

• One example was that the security guard on duty was on his first day of work, and didn’t think the initial alarm was real. It took a while before it was investigated, and then it took even longer for the police and eventual fire department to come because well, Notre Dame is in downtown Paris.
• It took two full years to secure the building, including six months alone to take off the melted scaffolding from the exterior.
• While the spire collapsed (over 500 tons of wooden support were in the spire), the firefighters were true heroes and with quick thinking, were able to save the towers from collapsing by running up the towers with their hoses.
• The investigation is still technically ongoing, with lots of theories around the cause of the fire. One of the more logical explanations is that a renovation crew had recently been brought on, and there were lots of electrical wires and the like lying around. The thought is this could’ve sparked the fire, since the renovation crew had only started working on Notre Dame recently before it went aflame. Another interesting fact – the company involved in the original restoration work is now the same company doing the post-fire renovation.
• There are currently over 1,000 people working on the renovation! Because the skills necessary to remodel the cathedral are so unique, France has had to bring in architects and the like from around the world with the appropriate expertise.
• Thanks to the ingenuity and sheer luck of timing, the roof of the cathedral is able to be restored due to the work of two architects. Recently before the fire, they decided to visit and make drawings of the roof, and this is now what the restoration crew is using to help with the renovation.
• French President Macaron vowed to have the cathedral fully renovated within 5 years of the fire, so December 2024 – but our tour guide made it very clear that the cathedral is nowhere close to being ready and will likely take many more years.

All in all, it was a very interesting and personal tour. Hopefully one day we’re back in Paris and can see the interior in all of its restored glory!

Les Caves de Louvre

We had a 4PM tasting tour at Les Caves de Louvre and it was very informational, especially since Jared and I aren’t super knowledgeable about wine. We learned how wine is made, what types of soil it can grow in, the different French wine regions, and more. The experience was very interactive; there was a sensory experience where we got to smell all of these different scents and had to guess what the scent was (i.e. vanilla, raspberry, tobacco, chocolate). Along the tour, we also got to try 3 different wines throughout the cellars (which were once used by the King of France himself to store his wine). This got us nice and boozed up a bit before our nighttime tour at the Louvre!

The Louvre

We made it to the Louvre! Our tour started at 5PM so we waited anxiously in line at the Pyramid before descending into the cavernous museum. We had a specific list of exhibits we wanted to see so that we had a purpose and weren’t just aimlessly wandering around the massive place. Items on our list included the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, and the Sphinx. Unfortunately, Napoleon’s apartments and the Egyptian department were being renovated. We ended up walking around the Italian Renaissance sculptures and paintings for quite a bit – lots of pictures of Jesus and naked babies. The sculptures were magnificent and crazy to think they were sculpted centuries ago! The Mona Lisa, as expected, was underwhelming – the amount of people around the painting was insane. I did move from one side of the room to the other just to double check her eyes did in fact follow me everywhere I went.

After exploring for about 2 hours inside, we called it quits and walked around the Tuileries Garden for a bit, while eating some lovely macarons, before walking to Semilla for our dinner reservation.

Last Day in Paris

At this point, we were pretty exhausted from our trip, so, we decided to sleep in a bit and ~ have a quiet morning ~ ! We walked around the neighborhood and went to a cute coffee shop called Norma, and got some coffee, a so-so cardamom pastry and a delicious breakfast croissant. Fueled and ready to go, we headed towards the Galleries Lafayette, the most famous and historic department store in Paris. One of our friends recommended going to the Galleries Lafayette Gourmand, a bougie grocery store, to pick up some French items to bring back home. We went a little crazy and got quite a few things – chestnut cream (delicious in yogurt), various Edmond Fallot mustards, some olive oil, some jams, and cookies. We didn’t really have anything planned until 2PM, so we sauntered around the neighborhood, and found this really cool charcuterie place called Le 17.45 for lunch. There were way too many meat and cheese options, so we ended up getting a pre-made board, and added sides of an artichoke spread and caramelized onions – the onions were so tasty! It was fun to have some wine with lunch and people watch as we ate.

Montmartre

We had a 2PM walking tour booked through our Go City pass but alas, our pass expired by the time we got there (the pass was advertised as a 2-Day Pass so I assumed that meant 48 hours, but nope it was activated during our Seine river cruise). It wasn’t a huge deal though because it started to rain as soon as we got there. So, we decided to do our own walking tour of the neighborhood! Jared downloaded a DIY walking tour and we visited several places, including Rue de l’Abreuvoir, La Maison Rose, Le Consulat, and Le Bateau-Lavoir. Of course, we had to stop and get macarons throughout the tour to fuel our bodies. Once again, out of the three macaron shops we went to, Pierre Hermes had the freshest, most flavorful pastries. The tour ended at Sacre Couer Basilica, located at the summit of Montmartre, As such, this provided an overview of much of the city of Paris.

After stuffing ourselves with macarons and sitting on the steps in front of the basilica for a bit, we started walking again (if you’re wondering, we’ve been averaging about 10 miles of walking daily on this trip lol), first to our hotel to drop some things off, and then onward to our 5PM tour of the ~ Opera House after dark ~.

Palias Garnier

We showed up at the Opera House, ironically very close to the Lafayette Galleries, for an after hours tour with a Phantom of the Opera theme. The tour itself wasn’t that great – the guide seemed like he was rushing to get out of there (although he had some dry humor that was entertaining) and he didn’t have a mic so we couldn’t really hear him, but the building itself was magnificent so just walking around it was more than enough. Throughout the tour, the guide related parts of the Phantom of the Opera to the different places within the building, while also incorporating the history of the building and architecture. The building was constructed between 1861 and 1875, and is known for its extraordinary opulence. Nowadays, it’s mainly used for ballet, and The Opera Bastille is used for opera.

Evening in Paris

After the tour, we walked across the street, back to the Galleries Lafayette, and took the escalators all the way to the top to get a great aerial view of the city. The weather still wasn’t great so we figured the rest of the night would include some bars and one last French meal. We ended up finding not one, but TWO beer bars on our last night and both were really cool! The first was right near the Opera House, Le BAB OPERA, where I got a good fruited sour. I even found a brewery sticker from Odd13, a Colorado brewery, in the bathroom!

On our last night, we shockingly didn’t have dinner reservations, so we looked around us to see what sounded good. Jared found a placed called Brasserie Alesti and it was a very good last meal! As we hadn’t tried some French staples yet, we started the meal with mayonaise eggs (like a deviled egg but with lots of mayo) and escargot. For the main meal, I got the steak frites, but substituted the frites for mashed potatoes as our server said they were delicious and she was right! Jared got the tartare and it was a huge serving – I tried a small bite and it was tasty, but the cold, raw meat was definitely weird to me! 

Not quite ready to end our last night in Paris, we went to one more place – Mikkeller Bar Paris. I got a really good sour, and there were multiple levels of the bar so we went up to the 2nd floor and got a good view of the quiet Parisian streets underneath us. And then – it started pouring! Finishing our beers, we walked/ran about 8 minutes back to our hotel. Now came the dreadful part – packing for the return trip and making sure everything fit! I still don’t know how we were able to bring so many souvenirs, including bottles and food, in our soft-shell checked bag without anything breaking. We had a 10AM flight in the morning, so we went to bed, Ubered to the airport, and officially called it quits on our Europe 2024 trip! It was a very busy trip, but glad we got to see so much.