A Week in Paris

In our last post Carrie and I mentioned that we would be flying back to the US via London. We planned to spend four nights in Paris, and then three nights in London. We wanted to wind down and relax in two of our favorite cities. Well things certainly changed!

We planned to use our 60 day Eurail pass (which expired 10/30) to get us to London, where we could rest up for the last few days of our trip before our flight. That was a good plan, until we learned that we couldn’t get tickets for the Eurostar train out of Paris through our Eurail app. All the online ticketing sites told us the trains were either full or we’d have to pay about $500 extra (outside our passes), or go to a Eurostar ticketing agent (in Paris!) to figure things out. So we had to wait until we arrived in Paris, and hoped we could get reasonably priced tickets from the Eurostar agent at the rail station.

As soon as we got to Paris we walked to the Gare du Nord train station, which happened to be close to our hotel. The Eurostar agent looked at our Eurail passes, noting that they expired on 10/30, but somehow booked us seats on the train for 10/31, one day after our passes expired, all for about $75! In Business Class! We quickly cancelled our London hotel plans and extended our stay in Paris. We were thrilled to get seats on the train, although that meant we’d have to catch the train at 7:00AM on Tuesday morning, arrive in London about 9:30, and immediately take the Underground from the train station to London Heathrow Airport to catch our 1:30PM flight to the US. So, on the day we tried to board the Eurostar to London, the gate agents didn’t like the fact that our Eurail passes had expired, and yet we had a boarding pass for the train. After a few minutes, the gate agent just shrugged, and let us board. Whew!

Spending the whole week in Paris turned out to be just the right amount of time. We found all kinds of fun things to do and see, and we sampled as many bistros and brasseries as we could find. It was a great way to finish out our trip. We tried to do some off the beaten path sight seeing we didn’t get a chance to do in past visits to Paris. One of those things was searching out some of the old passageways that still exist. These are covered alleyways where Parisians shopped and dined in the great French restaurants for many years. The idea of the passageway is kind of like a version of our modern shopping malls, although there is so much more charm, color and architectural interest here.

When we think of Paris we always imagine the Belle Epoque, the golden age that Paris and much of Europe experienced between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. We also think of the great expansion of art here, especially with the Impressionists. We visited the Musee D’Orsay, which just happened to have a special new exhibit of Van Gogh opening. We stopped in at the Musee Marmottan Monet, a museum with the largest permanent collection of Monet in the world. They also had a special exhibit of the works of Berthe Morisot, who was Eduard Manet’s sister-in-law. We also visited the incredible Louvre, the Picasso Museum, and took a day trip to the Palace of Versailles.

While we enjoyed most of the museums on our own, some with audio guides, we did take a walking gourmet food tour around Paris, where we sampled delicacies from around the Marais district. We stopped and tasted at a bakery, a Macaroon store, a cheese seller and a wine shop, and also wandered through one of the oldest markets in Paris.

Carrie and I traveled the metro line all over Paris, with mostly good luck. We were only baffled a couple of times, when a line was shut down and we had to scramble to find another route. We purchased a pack of ten tickets at a time from the ticket offices in the subway stations. It was easy, but not nearly as easy as it is to use the Underground in London, where you don’t even have to buy a ticket, as you can simply tap a credit card or use Apple Pay from an Apple Watch to enter the system. It rained a little almost every day we were in Paris, so using the Metro to get around kept us nice and dry. It was easy to plan a restaurant reservation just about anywhere in the city and not rely on expensive taxis.

I hope you have had as much fun reading our blog as we have had presenting it to you. This trip is finished but we’ll have great memories to cherish for years to come. Cheers!