Three Perfect Days in Paris (Got that from those travel websites!)

October 25, 2016 · by Dano · in France

Well, pretty close to perfect but Paris has a few quirks. To sum it up in a word, Crowded! To sum it up in two words, Crowded and Expensive! We visited during the early part of October and the lines were still incredible. Not unheard of to wait 2hrs for a tour of the Eiffel Tower or an hour to get into the Louvre. To add to the delay, most all sites now have metal detectors and a search handbags / backpacks / etc. That’s all fine with me, I prefer extra security precautions be taken. Although you do have to ask for a cavity search.

For the three days, 15-18 October 2016, we booked a hotel. Staying in an apartment didn’t make sense for such a short time. Our hotel was the Mercure Eiffel Center located about 3 blocks from the tower. Nice hotel but the extras were a little expensive. For example, breakfast, which was a buffet with my favorites, egg soup (scrambled eggs floating in water), crepes, small little pieces of bacon, pastries, salami, cheeses, breads, etc. There was a single coffee machine that also provided hot water for tea for the close to 100 people having breakfast. This turned out to be a great idea. Most people ate their breakfast while waiting in line for coffee so tables never needed cleaning! Pretty cool! All this for a mere 20EU each!

Pont Alexandre III bridge

View from our hotel entrance

Our adventure in Paris began when we decided to drop off the luggage and then return the rental car back to the airport. Charles de Gaulle airport is 20 miles from Paris! So, not to worry. We have a GPS that for this trip only got us lost once, down one way streets the interesting way about 10 times, and through a few pedestrian districts but hey, nothings perfect.

Found the hotel with only one wrong turn, I’m calling that a success, so we dropped the bags and headed for the airport. It was around 10:30am on Saturday, how much traffic could there be? Plenty! Using the ever-faithful GPS, we plotted the most direct, shortest, fastest route to the airport. Straight through the Arch de Triumph round-about. Biggest damn round-about I’ve ever seen! We needed exit #7 of probably 12 or 13 exits, no lane markings (good thing), and a few hundred cars trying to get around. Into the abyss we drove.

Suddenly, I felt something touch my shoulder and heard a soft, angelic voice say, “ease to the right, it will be fine”, so I did and amazingly, we exited the round-about without contacting a single car! Undeniable example of divine intervention or it could have been Collette waving her arms wildly outside the car stopping traffic while yelling at me to watch out. Piece of cake! Like the parting of the sea……

Smaller round-about. How’d that guy get in the middle?

Since our trip to Ireland last year, we’ve been hooked on trying a hop on-hop off tour of new cities to get a feel for what we wanted to see. Paris was no exception. We booked a 2-day HO-HO bus with “Big Bus” company for 40EU, total. Reasonable price for two people / two days. I would say the bus was probably not the best tour but after making Collette walk beaches, museums, fields, forest, to sub pens and through cities, a bus ride was a welcome change.

We did consider biking around Paris so we bought a bicycle to give it a try. Locked up nice and secure, we’ll test it out tomorrow! Didn’t work out quite as planned.