On Monday December 9th, I went to work at Ryde but could barely contain my excitement. That evening Matthew and I would be flying to Paris!!
I caught a train from Portsmouth after work that would bring me directly to Southampton Airport and I gave Matthew specific instructions on how he could train to the airport from my flat. We ended up meeting on the same train and arrived at Southampton Airport just before 5pm for our 6pm flight. Gabel and I had never used Southampton Airport before so I was to be the guinea pig. It turns out, it's amazing! It's a small airport which is a blessing. From the second we walked in to the airport, to the second we were clear of security took maybe 7 minutes. No hassle whatsoever and not too many commuters. The other amazing part is how cheap our flight was. Only 48£ each to fly to Paris! At 6 we got onto our Flybe plane and had a laugh because it was such a tiny plane! It was a propeller one with only two seats on each side of the aisle and it wasn't very long. Both of our carryon luggage did not fit in the overhead compartment and it was quite a job to fit it under the seat. Luckily the flight to Paris is only just over an hour and so it wasn't too bad. We landed at Orly Airport at 8:20 (Paris is one hour ahead) and took a cab to our hotel.
As a side note, our hotel was AMAZING. We found it on Hotwire which is a website I highly recommend because we got our 4 and a half star hotel for very cheap. It was called Novotel Paris Tour Eiffel and as the name suggests it was a short walk away from the Eiffel Tower. The lobby area was decorated for Christmas like I've never seen with the most beautiful and unique decorations all made out of blue, green and turquoise glass. The hotel concierge delivered us the great news that they were going to upgrade our room to a superior room! We had a view of the Seine River and the Paris Statue of Liberty. We got settled in and had a quick nap because I was so tired from teaching. But at midnight we decided to go out and take pictures of the Eiffel tower.
It's so beautiful at night! The tower is all lit up in gold light and every hour on the hour all these sparkly diamond lights go off all over it for about five minutes. Matthew bought me roses :) and then we took a whole bunch of pictures. It was such a magical and romantic night. I think it was much taller than both of us realized it would be. We stayed out until 2 in the morning exploring down by the river before returning back to the hotel. The whole thing was just so surreal for us. Here we were, reunited again and standing in the most romantic city in the world.
The next morning we got up and went to the Eiffel Cafe and had the best breakfast. We each had a crepes stuffed with ham, egg, and cheese and then for dessert we shared a waffle with banana and chocolate sauce. I was really happy because I was able to speak to our server in french the whole time. From there we went back to the Eiffel Tower and saw it by daylight. It's still just as impressive. We decided to wait in the massive line to take the elevator all the way up to the top. It turned out that it takes three separate elevators to get up but it only cost us 13 euros. We were definitely lucky that we had amazing weather. It was a clear, sunny day and so the view was crazy! I didn't realize how huge Paris is. We stayed up top for awhile taking pictures, watching the hot air balloons, and gazing down the Seine River as far as we could see. From up top we saw some of the other sights we planned on visiting and were able to plan out our route!
Once back on the ground we both experienced the same sensation of feeling TINY! I felt like a little ant in a giant's world. We crossed the street to go over the bridge and took pictures overlooking the Seine. At the end of the bridge we were able to go to the Pallais de Chaillot which is made up of two really interesting looking and symmetrical curved buildings with lots of statues. The great part about it is that it offers some of the best views of the Eiffel Tower so we were able to get even more pictures (you don't even want to know how many we took!). After that we walked a kilometre and a bit to the Arc de Triomphe. At first we couldn't figure out how to get to it! It's surrounded by a massive six lane traffic circle that I would never want to drive through ever. Turns out you have to take this underground passage and you pop up on the inside of the Arc. I loved reading the inscriptions and then Matthew made us climb up the stairs to go to the top of it on the inside. We were feeling pretty tired after all those stairs so we decided it was high time to navigate the Paris Underground system.
The Arc de Triomphe has an underground station so we ventured down. I was actually pretty surprised by how shabby it is. The London Underground is much nicer. The Paris underground is also more difficult to figure out but we managed to do it. We hopped on a couple of trains that took us to the Notre Dame Cathedral. I was pleasantly surprised that we were able to go inside for free, especially when there was a mass going on. It was so beautiful of course, although I've been to some cathedrals in England that were more colourful on the inside. There was a massive Christmas tree outside all lit up though and I quite liked that. The Louvre is really close to the cathedral so we made that our last stop for the evening. I'm really happy we went there at night time because we got to see the glass pyramids all lit up. We had been under advisement not to actually go inside because it's so massive it easily takes more than a day and we didn't have that kind of time. To be honest, I was more than happy to just be on top outside. The whole gallery looks like an old castle and the pyramids are all surrounded by pretty ponds and statues. It was great to be there at night time. Underneath the main pyramid is the Louvre Mall and we found some really neat stores in there and of course the famous spot where the bottom point of the big glass pyramid almost touches the small stone one.
By this time it was getting on to 730pm so we decided to call it a day - a very successful day! Five major tourist attractions in a day! We took the underground back to our hotel and then got all dressed up. My dad and Annette were extremely generous and gave Matt some euros before he came. We were under strict instructions to use the money for a fancy dinner in Paris (well if we haaaave to!). We chose Benkay - a very fancy Japanese restaurant where you can sit around while the chefs prepare the food right in front of you and you can get sushi that literally melts in your mouth. It was nice and different for a change.
The next morning we were up bright and early and took a cab to the Charles De Gaulle airport and caught a plane to Berlin. We said a sad goodbye to Paris but were looking forward to Berlin.
My overall impression of Paris is that it's totally worth it. I had worried that it might be one of those cities that has too much hype but it definitely lived up to everything people say about it. It's so beautiful, accessible, and there's tons of stuff to do wherever you go. Everything is very reasonably priced as well - much cheeper than London!
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