When in Paris
April 20th, 2025
A 6 am wake up to make it to the Geneva train station in time to take the 3-hour rapid train to Paris! The train we took goes up to 320 km/h, zoom zoom! Before boarding, Jenna got her favourite Butter Almond Croissant and I had a sandwich.
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Once in Paris we found our Airbnb fairly quickly, and we were greeted by two black cats, one shy and the other a menace. We didn't know their names initially, so we just called them Sir and Madame. After dropping off our luggage, we grabbed some butter chicken burritos for lunch from some random local restaurant nearby, followed by taking a quick nap back at the apartment to recover from our early morning travelling.
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Our next stop was a boat cruise along the Seine River. On our transit ride there we hit a 5-minute random weather event of pouring rain. Everyone was hiding in the subway station confused, as it was supposed to be a sunny day haha! Luckily I had my rain jacket on, but Nick was shit out of luck.
The boat's dock was right next to the Eiffel Tower. It was honestly larger in person than I expected, and looking at how high the second level of the tower was, I was beginning to worry that perhaps I shouldn't have agreed to climb the tower with Nick's dad in July! The height was nauseating. But still cool to see the tower in real life!
When we got to the docks, the line of people was huge, but we did book the cheapest company, so it wasn't surprising we ended up on a large boat packed like sardines! We even almost got a seat, but an American guy kept shooing people away saying he was saving multiple seats on the bench. I don't remember booking reserved seats on this boat! (I was tempted to just sit in the spot anyway, but we remained nice Canadians).
Unfortunately the tour guide's speaker was incredibly muffled (to the point where we had no idea if he was speaking French or English or some other language), so we mostly just had a relaxing ride down the Seine where we got to look at the pretty views and be on the water. The boat ride took us past many iconic bridges, Notre Dame, the Louvre, a big glass convention center and more (see the photos below). The people on our boat must have had a good strong cup of coffee because they kept cheering every time we went under a bridge, and there are a lot of bridges! We never heard this happen again from other boat cruises while walking along the Seine, so I guess our cruise was special! Also on our cruise, we saw a girl perched precariously on a high ledge along the seine just to get a picture (the things we do today for social media status)!
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Anyway, after the cruise we ended up in tourism town by the Eiffel Tower, with many dudes attempting to sell cheap trinkets. There were so many people around that we struggled to get data to work on our phones to buy bus tickets. We eventually figured it out and made it to our reservation at the Pastamore Italian Restaurant. Actually, we kept calling it Pastamore, but it's actually called Pasta Amore. Clearly we've learned nothing lol. Here I had the pesto ravioli, while Nick had a cream sauce ravioli. We shared a bottle one of the smoothest red wines we've had in a long time. We also accidentally ordered a huge bottle of carbonated water too. By the end of the dinner we were both so full! Then it was home and to bed!
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Day 2
April 21st, 2025
Today was our classic do-a-walking-tour day. We grabbed breakfast at Paul in Paris Pâtisserie for breakfast (this consisted of a very chocolate-y croissant and cafe latte pour moi). I also thought it was pretty funny that the staff responded to me in French, but responded to Nick in English (when it really should've been the reverse!).
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We were early to the meeting place for the tour, so we got time to chat with the people as they arrived. We had two Americans who were very adamant that they were not Trump supporters haha! Additionally, there were two Canadians (one a Newfie!), a young married German couple, a girl from Argentina who was trying very hard to be besties with the tour guide (can't blame her, he was awesome), and a couple from Brazil we picked up halfway through. It was super nice to have a small group! Our tour guide came from America and has lived in Paris for 3 years. He is in the process of trying to get France citizenship to stay.
We started at Place Saint-Michel which has a famous fountain. The fountain was closed for restoration as it was covered in a lot of bird poop and university students poured an entire container of laundry detergent into the fountain, so at one point the bubbles were multiple meters high! Also, we talked about the architecture in Paris, implemented by Napoleon after he crowned himself emperor. Paris used to be pretty disgusting, and Napoleon wanted to show people that France was the best country in the world. So, he kicked a bunch of people out of Paris, tore down all the buildings, and had one architect design all these new buildings, which today we see as classic Parisian architecture. Buildings were built with businesses at street level, large wealthy apartment on the first floor, then getting smaller all the way up to the 5th story with shoebox apartments with shared bathrooms and skylights as the only windows. These remain today and our tour guide started living in Paris in one of the shoe boxes.
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On our walk to the next location, we learned about the Flash Invaders project, a series of pixelated art works installed on buildings around Paris (illegally) starting in 1998. The art got very popular and the anonymous Parisian artist started doing it in more cities around the world. With the advent of technology, there is now a phone app so you can collect the pixelated art like Pokémon! Since our trip was short this time and very busy we didn't end up collecting any Flash Invaders, but we made up for it in our second Paris trip (post coming soon!).
Quote from our tour guide: "Let's stand away from the Souvenir shop. I have beef with them. I tried to work it out, but they burned that bridge."
We made a stop in the narrowest street in Paris, built in 1540, called le Rue de Chat Qui Peche (The Street of the Fishing Cat). The name came from an old fish mongerer, whose owner, Dom Perlet, owned a black cat known for its ability to catch fish from the Seine with a single swipe of its paw, and you could pay him a gold coin to him to get his cat to perform the trick.
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Next up was Notre Dame, built between 1163 – 1345. Allegedly, Notre Dame used to have painted bricks, which would have made it much more colorful than what we see today. It was also notably used for leather tanning during the French Revolution, so it wasn't very popular at that time since it smelled strongly of piss. There were also some jokes being thrown around about how the pope would rise again since he died on Easter.
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Quote from our tour guide: "My roommate once woke me up at 3:30 am to tell me she was going to be the president, and I was going to be her vice president. Needless to say, I'm looking for a new apartment!"
We also stopped beside a police station with a notable piece of history. During the end of the Nazi occupation of France, the women in Paris used guns that had been kept from WW1 to shoot the Nazi's out of the police station. The bullet holes in the rock walls have been left to this day as a reminder.
Since we're on the topic of Nazi occupation, nearing the end of WW2 Nazi's had placed many bombs under Paris's most important buildings at Hitlers Orders (Louvre, Eiffel Tower, etc.). The detonation of the bombs was initially delayed as Hitler wanted to get his photo in front of the Eiffel Tower. Near the end of the war, Hitler sent the order to detonate the bombs, but it never happened because the Nazi's had already fled Paris because they had already heard the Americans were coming. So Paris was saved by Vanity and Cowardice!
After this we were about midway through the tour, and so we stopped for a bathroom break. Here we picked up a couple from Brazil, whose tour guide had abandoned them because they were the only people who had booked his tour! How rude! Nick and I also tried to get some mulled wine from a local restaurant, but they were all out, which was devastating.
After walking by the old castle turned prison turned government building where Marie Antoinette had spent the months leading up to her execution, we saw Square du Vert-Galant. This is a cute little triangular park located where the Seine splits in two, and its name comes from Henry IV of France, who was called "Vert-Galant" due to having many mistresses. Apparently if you're a womanizer in Paris, you get a park dedicated to you! However, this king did get his karma in the end, because he was assassinated in his carriage.
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Quote from our tour guide: "I used to pretend to stab someone in the group to emphasize this story, but I got reported, so now I just stab myself which is okay I guess."
Anyway, this park was just off of the oldest bridge in Paris, called Pont Neuf ("New Bridge"). The king at the time promised it would only take 5 years to build, but it took 29 years.
We next stopped on Love Lock Bridge which is in front of the Institute of France. Love Lock bridge has been rebuilt with the locks removed as the locks were too heavy and the bridge was going to fail under the load, so no more locks allowed (people still try though haha).
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Our tour guide also talked about the French parliament building we were standing in front of where they decide what new French words or phrases will enter the language. For example, Wi-Fi --- Parliament officially set the word for this as "la connexion internet sans fil" (wireless Internet connection) but Parisians didn't care and just called it Wi-Fi with a French accent (i.e. "wiffy"). The word "uncool" is also apparently taboo in Parliament and one evening when meetings had extended to 2:00 in the morning, one of the people accidentally said it. Instead of trying to complete the policies and go home, they all started freaking out about how someone said "uncool".
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We ended the tour at the Louvre, with a view of the Eiffel tour down the way. At this point we were running a bit late, so we threw some money at our tour guide and hustled to the Opera Bastille without even grabbing lunch first.
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We were attempting to rush tickets for the Sleeping Beauty ballet since I didn't have one (we barely got a single one for Jenna weeks before). There was very little communication on how the process worked and Jenna and I were getting hangry. In the end, they had about 50 people sitting inside waiting and only 2 people got tickets. So, I left for food immediately after that fiasco and poor Jenna had to wait until the intermission to get food as the cantina wasn't open before the show.
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That's correct, Nick. I sat through the entire prologue and act 1 thinking almost entirely about food. At intermission (which was like 3pm I think?) I made a beeline to the cantina and got myself a smoked salmon sandwich. It was on a black coloured sandwich bread, which was a little strange, but boy was it tasty. I snarfed it down and almost went back for another. Then I bought one of the ballet books (since they didn't give out programs) and learned that the choreography is almost completely preserved from the ballet's very first production (or rather, the first production with Tchaikovsky's score). Which made sense, as I remembered a lot of the variations and movements from when Nick and I had seen it performed in Vancouver.
And the ballet itself was very good! The Sleeping Beauty is often said to be the pinnacle of classical ballet (although personally I'm a sucker for Swan Lake) and it was very well performed! There were lots of very beautiful sparkling costumes and fun variations. In Act I, my favourite is the Fairy of Songbirds variation, which is very quick and full of jazz hands, and in Act III I love the Blue Bird Pas de Deux. There's also a very silly Pas de Deux with Puss in Boots and the White Cat. Though I have to say, I don't know if anything will ever hit as hard as the National Ballet of Canada's The Nutcracker!
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While Jenna was in the show, I went for a lovely walk in the Garden of Plants. At one point, I was chilly so I went into the Greenhouse which was a lovely escape.
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Nick met me back at the ballet once the show had ended, and we were off to our dinner reservation at Bellanger Brasserie. The place looked like a cool place to hang out, and it had a very stocked bar! For dinner, we decided to split bangers and mash, and then tried two desserts: a dish with meringue and fruit, and a sort of tart full of apples and almonds. We also ordered this bottle of house wine, where you only drink as much as you pay for (we had about a third of the bottle for only 10 euros)! After all this we were pretty full, but we couldn't resist ordering something from the bar! I of course got an espresso martini, and Nick had an old-fashioned that came to the table smoking! But after this we really were full, and it was time for a good sleep.
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Day 3
April 22nd, 2025
This morning, we got pastries at a local well-rated pâtisserie. Then we quickly swung by the train station to store our bags for the day. Since we didn't have anything planned until the afternoon, we wandered around the Louvre and its gardens in the morning, taking pictures with the pyramid and making fun of the many statues.
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For lunch, we stopped at a restaurant across the seine from the Louvre, next to the Musée D'Orsay. We sat at the little tables outside (as one does in Paris), and split a tasty cheese pizza drizzled in honey.
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In the afternoon, we visited the Musée D'Orsay. This museum used to be an old train station, and it was GORGEOUS. This museum also was given almost all the post-impressionistic paintings from the Louvre, so we spent most of our time battling walls of people to see those paintings.
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There were many famous paintings: Monet's water lilies, Degas' ballerinas, some Renoir portraits, Van Gogh's self-portraits, and so much more ... What a great era of art!
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There was also a series of paintings of Notre Dame that were all done at different times in the day, in different weather conditions, etc. It's always so interesting to see the same thing painted in so many different ways!
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However, my absolute FAVOURITE (which is probably actually my favourite painting of all time) was Starry Night Over the Rhône. It was so textured and full of color and it made me very emotional. I honestly could've stared at it for hours, except we were in a sardine can, as this painting was clearly the most sought after one in the museum. But it was truly so funny to watch people wade through the crowd in front of the painting for ten minutes and when it was finally their turn up front, they snapped a picture and left without looking at it for even a second! And of course these six rooms of impressionist pieces were wall to wall people while the rest of the museum was practically empty!
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Also look below at this crazy glass floor where you could stand directly over the city!!! It was so spooky!
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Just kidding! This was actually a miniature of the city that they had in the museum! The picture does throw you for a loop though, eh?
We wished we could have stayed in the museum a lot longer but we had to make our train so we took off after only a few hours (though I did grab some macarons from Ladurée on the way home). We ate some greasy bagel sandwiches at the train station, then had a sleepy ride home.