Paris – The City of Lights

Arriving in Paris Gare du Nord onboard Eurostar (read about that here), we had just over 24 hours in the French capital to explore and see the sites before we were due to catch a TGV to La Rochelle. However before we began exploring, we needed to make our way across the city to Montparnasse to drop our luggage at our hotel. 

Not realising that the Eurostar onboard café sold Paris Metro tickets until after we had visited it, we joined the snaking queues for the ticket machines at Gare du Nord, eventually buying a RATP day ticket for €13.55. These cover the Metro, RER, Buses and Trams within the central Paris area (along with the Montmartre funicular), however unless you’re going to be taking a lot of journeys its not really worth it. A single ticket is €2.10, so you need to make at least seven journeys to justify the day ticket.

Line 4 is the most direct route from Gare du Nord to Montparnasse-Bienvenüe, however its worth noting that at the Montparnasse end it is the furthest metro line from the SNCF station. There’s quite a few steps and a long walk involved, so if you have luggage, beware!

With our luggage dropped off at the hotel, we headed back to the metro and took line 6 towards Paris’ most famous attraction, the Eiffel Tower. Whilst we decided not to spend the nearly €30 each on heading up the tower, we had decided to spend some time being traditional tourists and so jumped onboard one of the Paris sightseeing buses.

I know I’ve mentioned bus tours in my posts about other cities, but I genuinely find them a great way to see the main sights and to get around. In Paris, as with most places, you can get either a 24-hour or 48-hour ticket which allows you to hop on and off the bus and this came to our advantage when part way round the circuit the heavens opened and it began to tip it down.

Initially heading downstairs on the bus, we eventually decided to bail at the ‘Louvre-Pyramide’ stop (just outside Pyramides Metro station) and find somewhere dry and indoors to have some lunch and wait for the rain to stop. Finding an ‘illy’ coffee shop, we enjoyed a relaxed lunch of pasta and were lucky enough to find the rain stopping as we finished.

As we left the café another sightseeing bus arrived so we hopped onboard to complete the circuit, with the second half passing the Louvre along with the College of Four Nations (now home to the Institut de France), the book sellers along the River Siene and the Orsay Museum (housed in the former Gare d’Orsay railway station).

We also passed the Holy Trinity Cathedral and The Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Centre which provided an opportunity for a fairly unique photo opportunity of golden domes infront of the Eiffel Tower. The tour also covers some of the other major Paris tourist attractions including the Arc de Triumph, Champs-Élysées and Notre Dame.

Finishing the bus tour back at the Eiffel Tower, we decided to head back to our hotel for a bit before dinner as the travel day was starting to catch up with us. After a short nap, we headed back out to the Montparnasse area to try and find somewhere to each and after a bit of wandering and weighing up optioned ended up at Café Montparnasse, a stones throw from the station and opposite the Tour Montparnasse.

Even better for me was that Café Montparnasse had a subtle transport theme, with a large map of the telegraph lines across France and its neighbours aswell as a plethora of railway paraphernalia. The food was also excellent with us both having French Onion soup and some perfectly cooked steak before I enjoyed on of the best Tiramisus I’ve ever had! Café Montparnasse was also reasonably priced with us getting a three course meal and a couple of drinks each for under €50pp in the centre of Paris.

With our train to La Rochelle not until early afternoon, we had a few hours on the morning of day 2 to explore Paris some more and started by ascending the Tour Montparnasse for breakfast feeling like we’d found a Paris cheat code. To ascend the tower to just enjoy the views tickets cost €21 for adults during the day, whereas a full breakfast included scrambled eggs, sausages and the views costs €26 (there’s also a continental option for €18). Essentially we paid €21 for the views and €5 for an excellent breakfast!

After breakfast we headed back down to the Metro and across Paris to reach the Montmartre Funicular. This is included in RATP day tickets or costs the same as a Metro ticket and is the best way of reaching the top of Montmartre to visit The Basilica of Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. The funicular is just a short walk from either Abbesses or Anvers Metro stations, however I’d recommend heading for Abbesses on the way there as it has a flatter route to the funicular. On the way back head to either, as Anvers is downhill.

The Basilica of Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre is free to enter and is a beautiful church, however the queues to enter were horrendous. With not enough time to do anything else we spent 20+ minutes queuing in the Paris drizzle before walking around the Basilica in 10 minutes being pushed around by the crowd. However, you can visit from 0630 until 2230 so if you can visit first or last thing when the crowds may be less. Having had our whistle stop tour of the Basilica and enjoyed the views from the steps outside, we made our way back to Montparnasse to catch our train to La Rochelle (read about that next week).

We also had an overnight stop in Paris on our way back from the main part of our holiday and after checking into our hotel near Gare du Nord, I headed out to explore the Paris Metro for a while (Bonus Blog coming soon) before meeting Beth at Trocadéro as night fell over Paris. Trocadéro is just across the river from the Eiffel Tower and is one of the best places to view the illuminated tower and light show at the top of each hour. However everyone wants to see the same view and so its extremely busy, with you needing to get there atleast half an hour early to get a decent spot.

Having watched the giant fairy lights, we headed down one of the roads radiating out from the Trocadéro to Frog XVI, a restaurant themed on a British pub. The food was good, service friendly but a little slow and the beer excellent. In fact they had a house beer named Burton Pale Ale in tribute to our home town and the home of British brewing, so I had a couple of pints of that! And they were actual pints, advertised as 56cl rather than the usual European 50cl.

On our final morning in France, we again had a few hours spare before we had to head back to Gare du Nord to catch our Eurostar back to the UK. Heading for the Jardine des Plantes near Austerliz station, we enjoyed a walk around the different plants before continuing with a stroll along the Seine. A quick stop at Odette, a tiny patisserie near Notre Dame for drinks and pastries with a view of the Cathedral brought to end our relaxed morning with us then needing to head back to the metro.

Whilst our time in Paris was short and quite broken we had a great time seeing some of the city’s top attractions. We had both been a bit nonplussed about visiting the French capital, with an underlying feeling it was overhyped as a city, however we thoroughly enjoyed our time exploring and both now want to revisit in the future. The City of Lights managed to convert another couple of doubters!