Paris

Bonjour jolie!

I wanted to write down my thoughts on Jim and I’s ten day long European excursion! We had so much fun that I think I gave myself a hairline fracture on my foot. I made us walk EVERYWHERE. That is one of my favorite things about European cities – the walkability, and IMO that’s how to find the good places, and hidden streets. However, ten miles a day was probably a little too much… had to justify all that cheese and rose I was having. LOL.

I’ll start with Paris. I found us CHEAP flights $450 round trip CLT > ATL > PARIS. However, we had some fun getting there. We got to the airport and hoped on the earlier flight to ATL. After we were sitting down, all cozy in our seats the captain gets on the intercom and says “Well folks…” and ya know how that goes. They were grounding the plane, and we for sure weren’t getting our seats on that next flight out to Atlanta. So we went back inside the airport and everyone on the plane made two lines to re-book flights. One of the ladies suggested calling a Delta hotline to try and re-route via phone, and wow was that easy. The guy instantly answered and I suggested the direct flight from Cleveland. He got us on that flight within the hour! YES! Jim and I sat to get our first adult bev of the trip (mimosa) and off to Cleveland we flew. The flight to Paris got delayed by two hours because of wild wind there so we used our Chase Sapphire Reserve card benefits and lounged it up. Finally, we boarded and away we went.

Our first hotel was in the 3rd arrondissement, which Jim highly suggested we stay because that is where the most restaurants/bars/life is. Our hotel was called Hotel Le 123 Sebastopol. If you are looking for hotels, look in this area!

We were pleasantly surprised because this was one of our cheaper hotels, as we were staying ten days and didn’t want to blow the budget on hotels. This one had everything we needed and more. The decor wasn’t necessarily my favorite, but it checked all the other boxes and was clean + a pretty balcony view. After showering, and unpacking we ventured to this adorable crepe window, and got a ham, cheese, and mushroom crepe. The walk there was adorable, so many shops to explore around here, definitely make a point to walk in this area! We then checked out Notre Dame (sad to see because of the fire earlier last year, but still really cool), walked by the river and headed to find a spot for a drink. There are cafes everywhere and they are all awesome. The one we settled on served olives with our drinks, and I quickly found out every place you get drinks does this – it was great!

I could spend all day detailing the rest of the trip, but I’m just going to go with my most recommended highlights:

Bar Hemingway, burrata pizza at Pizzeria Popolare, climb the Arc de Triophe in the evening to watch the sparkling lights from the Eiffel Tower. They go off the first 5 minutes of the hour when it gets dark, Lafayette Galeries for SHOPPING! OMG! Brunch at this delicious Australian cafe Hardware Société and then walk (climb stairs and work off that breakfast) to Sacré-Cœur for amazing views of the city. Aux Merveilleux de fred for pastries, and I highly recommend Moulin Rouge, and Versailles!

The last hotel we stayed at was perfectly lovely and in a great area a few block from the main shopping street Champs Elysées, Hotel Le A!

My main piece of advice to anyone traveling here is to make dinner reservations in advance!!! Most of the good restaurants book up quickly so do your homework ahead of time and it will pay off. Also, practice your French, they love when you give a little bit of an effort, even if it’s just hello + thank you!

Au revoir for now 😉