One can never go wrong with Paris, with so much of history behind it, natural beauty & soaked in beautiful architecture , it has always been a travelers delight.
Unlike my last trip, my current trip to Paris was planned in advance . All bookings including hotel & travel were pre booked.
This was to be my fourth visit to this beautiful european city. So far I had only travelled to Paris as a bachelor but this time it was along with my better half.
The trip was for three days & in order for us to maximise our time , we started planning early.
I had bought the trusted National Geographic travel guide book of Paris, fortunately for me , this book was on sale , so got it in the cheap.
I was tasked to be the planner by my better half , so read through the book and made up a plan . We were looking forward for the trip.
The journey to the French capital was by a coach . As is often said, nothing actually goes to a plan.
The first thing that happened early on in the trip was that our coach journey was extremely difficult , unlike our previous coach journey to Amsterdam , this coach had smaller leg space & we suffered quite heavily due to lack of space.
We arrived on early Friday morning , weary and tired . Our bodies were aching , I had anticipated that we would be tired , hence had booked an extra day for our stay which will enable us to rest ourselves and tour the city .
Just as we were looking forward to check in to our rooms, we were told by the hotel staff that our booking had been cancelled, however there were rooms available for the next two days covering our itinerary , we had no choice but to book the rooms but could only check in at noon.
We had about five hours to spend before check in time, we decided to put our belongings in a locker .
We did just that and we went to nearest train station. Once there , we purchased a three day travel card which gave us unlimited travel in the city.
Our first port of call was Opera , this is where ballet and great operas take place. However it was too early for it to be open, so we had to do with few snaps from the outside. From there we made our way to Starbucks to kill some time, fortunately they also had free WiFi and we made optimum use of, little did i know , how decisive knowing this startbucks would be later on the trip.
We then made our way to Place Vendom, marked in the history , this place has a central tomb and is a visitors delight.
The Trees gave way to the Concorde palace and the beginning of Champs Eleysee, we walked across to Les Invalides , the army museum , everything was just beautiful.
Then we made our way to Arc De Triomphe , the arc of victory . Exhausted we had a brunch consisting of cappuccino and sandwich , toughest part was making people understand the concept of vegetarian, which was a tough thing to achieve in this trip. Post visiting the Arc, we made our way back to the hotel to check in and refresh ourselves, couple of hours of rest and we were raring to get out again.
We toured the length and breadth of the city , starting at the two islands, Ile de la Cite & Ile Ste Louis, formed by river seine , this was natural beauty , we walked across key points of the islands as explained in the national geographic guide, we were blown away by the natural beauty of the islands and to top it all the architectural marvel of Notredame, which was the highlight of the day . The Notredame was simply stunning, it was architectural brilliance at its very best.
Three hours later , we were at the end of the second island , from where we made our way to Bastille , where the central tomb carries the victory flame , am not so sure what the significance of this tomb was but certainly looks very important given it's place in centre of the city.
We then made our way to Gare Du Lyon , one of the biggest railway station in Paris from where millions of people make connections to other European destinations year around.
The next on our agenda was Effiel tower but before that we had to finish lunch , it was already 18:45 pm and we were starving .As usual there was no vegetarian food , even in Mcdonalds, we had to do with two croissants.
Post our walking lunch , we made our way to Effiel tower. I had been here before and climbed the tower & watched the light dazzle the spectators before , however for my wife, this was an experience , which she isn't going to forget, it was magical.
Exhausted we made our way back to the hotel , as the hotel did not have a attached restaurant, we had to do with a veg burger & potato chips from Mcdonalds , the burger was nothing but fresh bun and lettuce .
We both crashed to reenergise ourselves for the following day.
Next day was a beautiful day , started off with a solid continental breakfast at the hotel and then we made our way to The Louvre.
We spent four hours in the Louvre , going through art, architecture and artefacts from the past . The Louvre , one of the largest museums in the world boasts of some of the impressive collection .
The collection is not limited to European history but also ancient Asian, middle east history .It also contains paintings of Leonardo da Vinci , sculptures of Michaelangelo , Napoleon Bonaparte collections just to name a few.
Just when everything seemed to be going so well, we had to cancel our next intended plan to visit Luxembourg Palace due to travel issues and cancellation of metro in that route, this was decisive in what followed next.
Instead we revised our plans to visit Ronald Garros , one of the circuit that make up the tennis grand slam.
I was so happy at this turn of events , the tour of the tennis court was a blessing as we made our way into players interview rooms, the media centre and of course to the court itself.
With a joyous mood , we made our way back from Roland Garros to Montmatre , the place of Sacre cour .
It was drizzling and we climbed the mountain to see Sacrecour , we left in a joyous mood and wanted to make our way back to our hotel as it was 20:00 hours . Just when everything seemed to be picture perfect , someone stole my purse in the crowd.
My wife spotted some one pushing me and by the time I could realise that something was wrong , everything was over. In the rain and in a land where English isn't even a second choice language , i struggled to make people understand what had happened , it was so difficult to get my point across about complaining to the police.
I gave up in vain , between i had to ensure that money was safe in my account , I immediately took the necessary steps to deactivate all my cards and used technology to check all was ok.
It was a beautiful day marred by such a silly incident.
I did learn a couple of things due to this incident.
1 Never put your eggs in one basket
2 How important it is to never write pin numbers anywhere ( fortunately I hadn't)
We made our way to our hotel distressed , confused and bitter . We couldn't do much , we consoled ourselves and slept.
Next morning I was too nervous to go out but took courage to venture out to few places before we left .
Just as am finishing up this journey , time and again am reminded that travel teaches a lot of things and this trip hasn't been an exception.
It's been a learning , there were fantastic moments , some dull ones and one extremely bad incident which has left a scar on the trip .
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