So much to do, so little time! I arrived in Paris with my 2 friends around midday on a train from Amsterdam. Once there we had to figure out another public transport system, this time in a language that we understand very little of! Luckily Paris seems to be pretty good at the transport thing and it really wasn’t hard to figure out (with the help, of course, of Google Maps). All the routes are colour coded on google maps as well as in the stations, which makes navigation pretty easy.

The only thing that was not easy was all the stairs! Typically you travel on more than one metro train which requires a lot of walking from one platform to the next. On one of such occasions I decided to take a video of our walk.

There are many signs up inside and outside the trains, such as this cute bunny saying that you should be careful of getting your fingers stuck in the door and this sign indicating that you are about to do a lot more exercise than you initially intended. This sign would have been really helpful to actually see the first time, as there was a lift that we could have used! (Which my friend did point out but I argued “how many stairs can it be?”).

Up the stairs we went with all our luggage. I was really glad to have had a backpack and not a trolley bag at this point.

At our hotel our first obstacle was to actually fit in the lift which is supposed to fit 5 people. We eventually managed to manoeuvre ourselves in such a way that we could fit. We reached my room where there was an awesome air-con ready to help us fight off the heat from the walk to the hotel. Having just spent the last 7 nights sharing hostel rooms with other people, this room was absolute luxury to me.

After cooling off a little bit in the room and changing into less hot clothes as it was raining in Amsterdam, but sunny in Paris we decided to go exploring. We did not get far when we saw a bakery and a coffee shop luring us in. We had coffee (and irish coffee) and amazing cheesecake at the restaurant and then we got croissants at the bakery. Got the first french thing to do checked on our list!

The hotel we stayed at was in Montmartre, which is a really nice area to walk around in. It is also quite close to the Sacre Coeur, so we decided to go there next. Even though we were walking distance from there, we did not plan for the elevation. Here is a map with the 2 X’s marking where we stayed and where the Sacre Coeur is.

So we walked a bit more… It was at least worth it. The whole area around there is filled with little shops and art exhibitions. Close to the top there is a square filled with artists who do on-the-spot portraits of people. There was even a guy cutting out silhouettes of people from black paper while they stand in front of him! I unfortunately didn’t get any pictures of that area, but here are some of the walk to (photo taken after climbing the steps), and of the Sacre Coeur.

Up to this point we have not seen the famous Eiffel Tower yet, and we decided that we want to start moving to the other side of town to do so. We first made a stop at the Galleries Lafayette department store where you can go to the roof (for free) and get a pretty view of Paris, and the Eiffel tower from far away. I played a bit with my zoom lens to get another shot of the Sacre Coeur, this time 2km away.

The department store itself was also really impressive. Many floors of selling everything you can think of. Next up was getting closer to the Eiffel tower and find food. We thought it would be a good idea to go to a grocery store, buy cheap lunch and go sit at the Champs de Mars (ie the park by the tower).

Instead of taking the train again we opted for sharing an Uber. This was a terrifying, yet interesting experience! You thought South African Taxi’s are bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet! It didn’t seem like there were any rules, except that you have to try and swerve between cars without indicating as much as possible and also drive as fast as you possibly can and making emergency stops every time something gets close (so every 100m). The uber driver also did this while arranging 2 tinder dates on his phone – sending voice notes and text messages. Luckily we survived and we got to have our lunch and see the tower from closer up.

While sitting in the park there were at least 4 people coming by trying to sell us beer, wine, cigarettes and Eiffel Tower souvenirs. We managed to dodge them mostly and after lunch started making our way even closer to the tower. We realised that the prettiest view is probably on the other side where the fountains are – at least according to all the photos we’ve seen before and embarked on a journey to the other side, while posing for several types of photos at different angles of the tower.

The photos don’t really do it justice, the tower becomes more impressive the closer you get to it, and the fountains are super pretty. We made some video calls to family from this point, took a million photos, and just enjoyed the peacefulness of the water with this amazing view (at 8pm)

From here we went to Pont Neuf where our other 2 friends met us to go on a boat cruise on the Seine river. The uber we got this time was a lot better except that the guy could only speak french. Luckily we didn’t need to talk to him much, so it was not really an issue.

The cruise along the Seine was really cool and we got to see an overview of Paris by night. I did take some photos, however, because of the lighting and the movement of the boat they didn’t really come out great.

There was a tour guide on the boat telling us what we were passing as it happened and giving us a brief history. We sailed passed the Notre Dame which we did not try to visit as we assumed with the restorations happening after the fire would not be accessible (I never did more research on that, it might be?).

After the cruise (+- 10pm) we were all quite tired from a long day and we went back to our hotels to get some sleep. On the way I saw this view on the one side with the moon lurking behind the building. Paris by night is truly a different city entirely!