A week in Paris - Day 1

 

We arrived in Paris nice and early, after a very long 18 hour journey, numerous movies, a stop in Dubai which included Fruppacinos at Starbucks and a delicious Shake Shack burger.

After going through immigrations and collecting our bags we made our way to the trains.
Our first culture shock...trying to get a train into Paris without any internet connection to google which train we needed to take, we knew where we were going but not which train to take..the fact that everything was in French didn't help much either.

So, we did it the old fashioned way! Queued at the ticket office and bought our tickets from them, then we were off...to Gare Du Nord! When we arrived we were even more confused, the train station was huge with no escalators and a ton of stairs, not ideal when you're lugging 30kgs of luggage...each!

Anyway, we eventually got to our platform and after much deliberation we hopped on a train that was actually going in the right direction. First unguided, help free train ride conquered!!
After a short ride we got off at Lamarck Caulaincourt, in the beautiful arrondissiment of Montmartre! Our home for the next week!

After checking in and a quick freshen-up we set off to explore the neighbourhood and take in everything that Paris has to offer.

First stop, the Sacre Coeur Basilisca...from a few different angles...because why not!

Gazing in awe at the Sacre Coeur.

I was constantly intrigued by all of the pretty, big doors in Paris, they are so mysterious, it just added to the charm of the city.

On the way to the Montmartre Cemetery we came across upon a tiny little creperie that makes the best nutella crepes that we had the entire time we were in Paris, they were so good we ended up looking for the creperie again later in the week. The Montmartre Cemetery is home to many famous French artists and actors and the beautiful tombstones and graves date way back into the 1600's.

We dashed into the Galeries Lafayette to escape the cold for a little while and wander through the huge department store, the intricate detailing around the balconies and the stained glass roof are fascinating and I found myself having to remind myself that this is just a department store and Parisians are actually used to this. We discovered that there is a sort of viewing garden on the roof, from here we got our first real glimpse of the Eiffle Tower.

We made our way back to Montmartre, stopped by the Sacre Coeur Basilisca again, it's even prettier at night, this time we went inside and wandered around listening to the organs playing.

We proceeded to wander through the cobblestoned streets of Montmartre, following the roads with the prettiest lights, until we stumbled upon Place Du Tertre, a beautiful little square adorned by blue fairy lights, surrounded by Parisian cafes and bustling with caricaturists and artists.

After wandering around following the lights for about an hour, we found ourselves back near the Montmartre Cemetery, the baguette I had bought at a patisserie in one of the little roads near the Place Du Tertre was ice cold, we whipped out our map and made our way back to the hotel to enjoy a truly French dinner of baguette, cheese and red wine. The perfect way to end off an amazing first day in Paris.

So this is where I leave you today. I didn't realise the post would end up this long, and I'm not even photo overloading here...we took 1080 photos in 5 days...Crazy!!! I also realised I need to learn ow to take straighter photos LOL! So instead of doing the intended 2 day posts, I'll be posting about each day we spent in Paris separately.

I hope you enjoyed reading about our first day in Paris, we've already decided we'll be going back (soon hopefully) to take some awesome photos (once we've gotten used to the new camera), and to do all of the things we weren't able to do in this visit.