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Paris In 48 Hours | Versailles, Picasso & Notre Dame

Saturday 8 September 2018


Hello and welcome back to another post!! It's been a while again and this time I'm not going to say this is the end of my slump and I'm back for good but we all know that's not necessarily true!!!

Anyway, as you'll know if you follow my Instagram (if you're not, you should) me and my housemate Rhiannon recently spent a bit of time in Paris and I thought I'd tell you about it because not only did we do it on a budget, but we also did it in about 48 hours, which was tough but we made sure we had a list of what we wanted to see before we went which made it easier!!

We flew in at 2:10 on Tuesday 4th and landed at about 16:35 Paris time - we had a bit of a fluster at the airport because we had no idea that a T+ ticket doesn't get you from Charles de Gaulle to the centre of Paris and instead had to spend €10 on a different type of ticket, so if you're flying into CDG and have to get public transport just be aware of that!! The queue to buy train tickets at the airport was also huuuuge so it took us about two hours to get out of the airport!! Another hour later we'd made it to the hostel - we were staying at St Christopher's Inn Canal, which was one of the cheaper ones we found through HostelWorld, at only £17 a night it was a really good bargain! Unfortunately we found out that you only get free breakfast if you book direct and not through HW but it wasn't too expensive for breakfast added on. Our first dinner in Paris was a cheeky Maccies since we just needed some food and our beds at this point, the stress of trains had really got to us!!

On Wednesday we got up suuuper early because we spotted a €20 shuttle that the hostel provided to Versailles which was really cool!! I'm interested in Versailles just because the period of history was so interesting and it also all ties into Les Mis which (as you know) is my absolute favourite musical, so the shuttle made it really easy to visit! We wouldn't have managed to fit it in/afford it if we'd taken public transport so it was really helpful for us. We got the bus at 8:30 in the morning and then arrived back at the hostel at about 1:45 so managed to explore Versailles in it's entirety (or what felt like it!) in that morning and to be fair, you do need that amount of time because it is just huge on a completely insane scale!





Wednesday afternoon we headed back out, eager to cram as much as we could in and went to Le Maison De Victor Hugo (the Victor Hugo house) which I dragged Rhiannon to because, you know, Les Miserables, and also Hunchback of Notre-Dame which I haven't read but know the story which is incredibly good. We then went to the Picasso Museum which was interesting, sure, but also we hit a rather large slump at this point during the day. The sun had seriously come out and we had to queue for agesss (just because they weren't letting people in, not for any other reason!) and then realised we didn't need to queue that much because we technically already had 'tickets' with our passports - if you're 18-25 and have an EU passport you get free entry to a lot of museums, so just so you know you don't have to go in the 'visitors without tickets' queue!!

(just a very gay bakery that we found that I loved)

But, we had a hot chocolate/coffee and felt much better after that and headed down to the Pompidou Centre. We didn't actually go in because it would have taken ages and we would've had to pay entry but it was still really cool to see the building, it's so incredibly ugly it's sort of beautiful in it's own way!! Next, we headed to Notre Dame to have a wee look at the cathedral and...just wow. Possibly up there with one of the best things we saw the entire day, it was just beautiful, and we were lucky enough to go in when a service was taking place, and trust me when I tell you you don't have to be religious to appreciate how awe-inspiring a service in a building like that is. Chills for sure.



For dinner on Wednesday we decided to splash out a little (since we only visited museums where we got free entry) and treated ourselves to a proper French steak at Le Relais de L'Entrecote. They specialise in one type of steak so it's a set menu, but for €26 you get a salad starter and two (!) portions of steak and chips and it was sooo good! I had mine cooked 'saignant' which is basically like having rare steak (sorry to any vegetarian readers!) and it was absolutely perfect! Afterwards, we hopped on the metro just up to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up in the dark, and then finally headed back to the hostel for some well earned rest. We clocked just under 30,000 steps on Wednesday, which was crazy but managed to see six different attractions in just one day which I'm incredibly impressed with!

For part 2 of my 48 Hours in Paris watch out over the next few days - I decided to split them up because it was literally going to be a year long blog post if I didn't!!

Em xx

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