A Rainy Day in Paris is better than a sunny day pretty much anywhere else!

I want to first start by apologizing for the delay in blogging.  We are currently in Spain so I am an entire country behind, but I promise I have a great excuse.  Our trip to Paris was going to be a short one.  Unlike our month in London, Paris was a whirlwind and I knew I wouldn’t have time to spare to sit down and blog about our experiences so I decided to put the computer away and take an actual vacation from working and blogging and enjoy our French adventure.  And an adventure it was…

Our 10 days in France were definitely the most  “challenging” yet for us. I would love to say it was simply because of the language barrier, but it was truly a comedy of errors day after day.  By the end I found it comical and grew to expect for things to be the opposite of what I expected them to be.  That being said, it was still Paris, and Paris is truly magic when you peel off the challenging layers that come with traveling to this beautiful city.

Instead of boring everyone with the day to day details and writing the world’s longest blog post, I will break it down with a list of what we did and some of our highlights along with the crazy, random stuff we encountered…

Since I’m one to always TRY to stay positive I will start with the highlights..

The Food-

The Good-

From day 1 we were “all in” with the French cuisine.  Even though I did my best to at least have my greens and minerals every morning, I was in Paris for a week, and I was going to enjoy every tasty treat that I wanted to, gosh darnit.  Croissants, escargot, wine, cheese, bread, more wine, more cheese, more bread, and I even had crème brulee for dessert 3 nights in a row.

The Not-so-good-

My fingers are so swollen I can barely fit into my wedding ring.  No joke.  I didn’t think that a few days without my superfood smoothies and cleansing juice in the AM would make such a difference, but I’m sold again!  We ran out of some stuff and I will NEVER let that happen again. Currently waiting for our order of superfoods to arrive here in Spain to feel better and debloat.

 

The Paris Pass and the sights!

The Good-

So, they have this cool thing in Paris that I read a lot of great reviews about called the Paris Pass.  It is designed to save you time and money by getting you into the major Paris attractions and museums for a set price.  We bought the 6-day Paris pass since it included a lot of what we were planning on seeing anyways. It also came with a metro pass for all of us for 6 days, so in my head we were winning, and any other time we would have been, but more on that later.  The great part was hitting up some museums and attractions  early on in the week that we might have skipped otherwise.

We visited the Musee D’Orsay and saw some famous masterpieces from Van Goh, Renoir, and Monet (my favorite.). We also made it to the Rodin museum to catch a glimpse of the Thinker, The Kiss, and The Gates of Hell.  We got an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower from the Montparnasse tower which we wouldn’t have even known about without the pass and even got a ride on a petit train up to Sacre Coeur and MonteMartre (my favorite part of Paris by FAR.)

We also took a tour on the Seine, and rode the Hop On Hop off bus all around the city which in my honest opinion is the best way to go.

My friend, Lindsey, joined us for a few days and together we all enjoyed what Paris had to offer.  The Catacombs, lunch and a stroll on the Champs Elyses, the Eiffel Tower etc.

The Catacombs are NOT part of the Paris Pass, but I highly recommend this to anyone when visiting Paris!

We enjoyed dinner at a lovely restaurant near Trocedero Park where we got the BEST view of the Eiffel Tower!

The Not-So-Good-

While we did break even with the Paris Pass, little did we know that we were going to be in Paris during protests AND a national holiday that comes once a year where they open all museums up to the public for FREE!  So, not only did we pay for a pass to get us in free for all of the monuments and museums, but the crowds that weekend were crazy! Tip-don’t head to Paris that weekend in September if you can help it.

Security-

The Good-

There was not ONE moment during the trip that I felt unsafe.  With all the media nonsense I had many people remind me to “be safe” while in Paris.  We even laughed a bit when we saw the US news about riots in Paris while we were there. The protests were planned and the city was prepared.  Metro stations were closed to not allow people into the areas where they knew protesters would be.  IF you are caught in that mess you had to actively seek to be a part of it.  Every monument, museum, attraction etc in Paris had metal detectors, and bag checks.  I was amazed at the levels they are going to to keep everyone safe.

The Not-So-Good-

With the amazing security, came a few challenges.  I want to point out that I am NOT complaining, but just sharing some info for anyone looking to visit Paris any time soon.  Even with the Paris Pass we had to wait in line for EVERY attraction because of the security check-points.  Again, I am grateful that they kept us safe, but it did take away from the “fun” to have to queue up for 45 minutes or more to enter a museum.

Versailles-

Since we knew that there would be street closures in the city, we decided to head to Versailles on Saturday to see the world-famous palace and gardens.  This would turn out to be our most challenging day of all, and since I’m here to share ALL of our adventures, I figured I would share ALL of our adventures that day.

It started with us having issues getting to the correct train station because of all the security and metro station closures.  When we finally got to the train station we were scammed by a woman pretending to be a ticket agent.  We didn’t realize it at the time, but she ended up charging us 100 Euro’s for 5 tickets that should have cost us about 15.

Once we arrived to Versailles and found our way to the palace we saw the lines and prayed that our Paris Pass line was shorter, but alas, everyone had to wait in the same security line which took about an hour.

Once inside the palace, we realized that we were there with thousands of other tourists.  By this point the kids were DONE, and even though the palace was stunning, it was hard to enjoy when being bumped around by so many people trying to get their perfect insta-pics.

We decided to leave and head back to the city where we attempted to right the day, but just kept running into issue after issue. To give you an idea of how the day ended, we bought the kids McDonalds before taking the metro back to our Airbnb, but not before buying a bottle of wine that the 3 of us drank along the way.

Our last day in Paris

We knew that our last day in Paris was going to have some rain so we saved the Louvre for this day.  The Paris Pass was worth its weight in GOLD this morning as we were able to walk right into the museum…after a short security line.  We promised the kids that we would only see the highlights so we headed straight to the Mona Lisa (by “straight” I mean we headed to where she is SUPPOSED to be, but she has been moved so we ended up walking aimlessly around the Louvre before seeing the 45 minute line-up to see her.  OMG.  Not another day of this, PLEASE!

We finally got our pic with Mona, found the Venus De Milo and Tod took the kids back to the Airbnb to rest while Lindsey and I decided to spend the rest of the day catching up over wine.

We had an amazing day together despite the rain.  We visited the Shangri-La, had dinner on the Champs Elyses, and even made our way to the top of the Arc de Triumph for a gorgeous view of Paris at night.

 

After all is said and done, we had an amazing time in Paris despite the random hic-ups.  We realized that slow travel is more our speed and the hustle and bustle of the big city is a lot for us to handle day after day.

Our time in France was not over yet though.  Before heading to Spain we spent 2 days in Reims for some Champagne tasting and relaxation.  That experience was equally as awesome and random, but at the end of the day…Champagne.  Lindsey and I enjoyed touring some of the Champagne houses before our French adventure was over.  More to say on that, but will save for another day.

We are now in Spain for the next month and I will do my best to update again in a week, but no promises.  I’m quickly learning to enjoy the moments and not put too much pressure on myself to post on social media/blog etc.  So grateful to have this opportunity to experience this with my family, and even more excited to help others do it too.

Don’t forget to reach out to me at sandra@sandramdavidson.com to find out how you can create income in your sleep with the Break Free Project and travel wherever and whenever YOUR heart desires.

Adios,

Sandra