At the beginning of December 2023, I get a call from my brother saying that my mom has expressed her wish to see Paris and if we should give it to her as a Christmas present. I say why not, she's just never been on a plane and as far as I know she didn't have much of a plan to change that. Anyway, we said we'd give it to her and see. After unwrapping the gift, she said she'd take a chance and we could start planning.
Paris - Louvre
I've been to Paris twice before and I have the know-how to do it in one day. But this time we are planning to slow down a bit and spread the event over a long weekend depending on flights. There is a ground option for those who don't want to fly. You can either take the Nightjet train from Vienna. Or you can buy bargain early tickets for fast trains from German cities via bahn.com. It just takes all day to get there and you won't avoid at least one change. The most convenient way is by plane, of course. I was surprised how few low-cost carriers like Wizzair and Ryanair fly from our Central European area. The latter does fly from Prague, but only to Beauvais, 100 km away. You can get a ticket here for 500 CZK one way, but you have to add transport to Paris, which is said to be 40 Euro for both bus and train. And that's not counting the time it takes to get to Paris. A more convenient option is to use the services of Transavia. This is a low-cost airline of Air France, whose advantage is, besides the fact that it flies from Prague twice a day, that it lands at Orly airport. This is one of the main airports of Paris. The price is not bad either, we got return tickets less than two months before departure for 100 Euro. By flying twice a day, it makes scheduling more flexible. We leave at 9pm on Friday and are scheduled to arrive at 2pm on Monday. During check-in, another advantage of this airline was revealed. It was possible to choose a seat at no extra charge. You don't see that anymore. We got our tickets. Now for accommodation. The most affordable is the Formula One hotel chain. These are one-star hotels, with rooms for up to three people, with shared toilets and showers. One level and star above that is the Ibis hotel chain. These already offer private toilets and showers in the room. Rooms can again be for 3 people. We chose this second option as well. Since our arrival in Paris was not until 11pm, we needed something close to the airport because getting to the other end of Paris that late in the evening is not exactly easy. Strategically, the most convenient was the Ibis Budget Orly Chevilly Tram 7, which as the name suggests is located on the tram line number 7, which also leads to Orly airport. The reception runs 24 hours a day and there should be no problem with late arrivals. This way we have all the important things taken care of and just have to wait for D-day.
Thanks to the fact that we are flying at 9 pm, I don't have to take time off, and I still have time to say goodbye to Janet and the baby after work. At 17:00 I get on the bus and go to Černý Most, from where I continue by metro to Veleslavín. From Veleslavín I will try the newly introduced long trolleybuses for the first time. They are comfortable to ride and surprisingly very quiet in the rear link. The only thing I think the trolleybus lacks is space to store luggage. I take the trolleybus to Terminal 2, where my mother and brother, who have come from Ostrava by train, are waiting for me. After the meeting we go straight to the security check. There is quite a long queue.
Prague - Václav Havel Airport
After the checkpoint, just find our gate and wait until it opens. As it is quite often the case in Prague, the time of closing the gate is in reality the time of its opening, and so we leave Prague half an hour late. I cut the flight short in style by watching a Netflix documentary called "Boeing Crash", describing what led to the two crashes of the new Boeing 737 Max. We land in Paris in the rain before 11:00. We were dropped off in an interesting place; we walked up a flight of stairs to the terminal, which eventually turned out not to be a terminal but just a sort of mezzanine. After using the toilet, we walked out and found ourselves at the airport bus, which had yet to take us to Terminal 3. It was already empty as expected. The tram stop is located just beyond Terminal 4, and getting to it takes a decent walk, which also leads through a solid airport maze. Tickets are bought from a machine at the stop. As for tickets, there are several options. Either the classic single (Single t+), which has rather special validity rules. It should perhaps be valid for 120 minutes for transfers between buses and trams. But if you take the tram, your ticket is no longer valid for the metro and RER (Paris' version of the S-Bahn or our Ska). Same thing the other way around. A ticket marked in the metro is only valid on the metro and RER and not on trams with buses. There are also day tickets in different variants where the validity is still limited by zones. The problem is that the hotel and Orly airport are in zone 4, but the day tickets are for zones 1-2, 1-3 and 1-5. For more information, I recommend the Cestujlevne.cz website, where the individual tickets are clearly described. There used to be a Carnet option, which was 10 single tickets, at a better price. This has now been discontinued and can only be bought for local card holders (it cost 2 Euros and could be bought in any vending machine). Based on all the calculations, we are only using Single t+ tickets because we will be riding so little that nothing else is worthwhile.
Even this late in the evening the tram runs every 15 minutes and is quite crowded. We go almost to the final stop at Domaine Chérioux, which is close to the hotel. The journey took about 20 minutes. Check-in was uneventful and we get to bed before 1am or so.
The following day
In the morning we get up around seven o'clock. We eat breakfast and get ready to leave so that we can be at the nearby Carrefour for opening hours. Unfortunately, the stores here open that late. At the Carrefour, we buy a snack, browse the assortment and continue to the nearby M7 Villejuif - Louise Aragon metro station. The destination is Barbès-Rochechouart station, near Montmartre. We buy our tickets from a machine at the station. You enter the metro via a turnstile. Every time we leave this station, we see someone jumping over the turnstiles. The M7 line looks like an underground tram to me. It doesn't go very fast and it wriggles like a snake. Plus the cars are quite short and not many people can fit in them. It's not as hobbitty as London, but compared to the Soviet-style underground, it feels quite cramped. We go to Châtelet station, there we change to the M4 line, which takes us to Montmartre. This line is fully autonomous, i.e. driverless, and as it is a complete unit, it also has a more airy feel. The journey is made more pleasant by a beggar who walks across the packed unit asking for money.He always started with the words "s'il vous plaît" (which sounds like "sivple", please), and from then on we referred to every homeless person by that nickname "sivple".We get off at Barbès-Rochechouart and begin our tour.A little warning, to start.Unless you're used to a lot of walking, don't try this at home.The Montmartre district has welcomed us with its true face.There were piles of rubbish everywhere and occasionally we tripped over a homeless man.Yes, this is not like Emily in Paris, and as I was instructed, it has a name called the Paris Syndrome, which can be described as a major and unexpected disappointment from Paris, because it doesn't look as glamorous in reality as it does on TV.Speaking of television, the Montmartre district was made most famous by the movie Amélie of Montmartre. A novelty compared to previous years is that the chateaux of the Pont des Arts have been moved here. Of course, the local street vendors have adapted, and if you happen to forget your lock, they will be happy to sell it to you here, keyless of course, to make your relationship truly permanent.
Paris - Châtelet metro station (automated line M4)
Paris - Montmartre
Paris - Montmartre, Sacré-Cœur Basilica
From Sacré-Cœur we walk westwards through Montmartre. As we do so, we come across the church of Saint-Jean de Montmartre, whose brick architecture is more reminiscent of the churches in Polish Silesia. But the destination is the Café des 2 Moulins, where Amélie of Montmartre worked. Although it is located on a rather busy street (Rue Lepic), the café itself is rather inconspicuous. It was also the first time we were rained on here.
Paris - Montmartre, the menagerie
Paris - Montmartre, Café des 2 Moulins
A short walk from the Café des 2 Moulins, is the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret. From there we continue a longer walk to the Holy Trinity Church, continue to the Opera House, which is under reconstruction, so you can't see much of it, and end at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, which doesn't look like a church at all and looks more like an ancient building. There is no entrance fee to this church, so we take advantage of this and take a peek inside.
Paris - Moulin Rouge
Paris - Holy Trinity Church
Paris - Opera House
Paris - Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Paris - Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Near the Church of St. Mary Magdalene is the Presidential Elysee Palace. Let's go check out Macron's home. Between the church and the palace are a large number of designer fashion stores (a sort of bulkier Parisian street). You don't have to look hard, there really are a lot of them right across from the Elysee Palace.
From the palace, we'll head down Avenue de Marigny to the famous Champs-Élysées, which we'll walk along towards the Arc de Triomphe. This street, which reminds me of Wenceslas Square, is also home to a number of boutiques selling luxury fashion. The dominant brand here, however, is Louis Vuitton, which has several large stores.
Paris - Champs-Elysées
At the Arc de Triomphe we make a bathroom stop at a local McDonald's. We thought the French weren't up to it, but when I saw 12 ordering terminals and a line in front of each one, we changed our minds. Otherwise, the ladies' room charges one euro, unless you have a receipt, and the men's are free.
Paris - McDonald's
We will see the Arc de Triomphe and leave the roundabout at the third exit on Avenue Kléber and go to the viewpoint of the symbol of this city, the famous Eiffel Tower. Compared to previous years, there are fewer black people selling miniature versions of the famous tower. In their place is a fence around the fountain, which is probably being prepared for the upcoming Olympic Games.
Paris - Arc de Triomphe
Paris - Eiffel Tower
Now it is the first time we see the Seine River, which we cross directly over the Pont d'Iéna bridge. It's etched in my memory with an influencer quirk, where an influencer was running around in a pink dress in the middle of the road in full traffic. Of course, one shot is not enough, so this bizarreness was repeated several more times. Otherwise, the aforementioned black people have moved to the other side of the Seine under the Eiffel Tower, so you won't be robbed of their goods.
Paris - Seine
Paris - Eiffel Tower
Paris - Influencing
The Eiffel Tower is surrounded by a Plexiglas fence and can only be reached via a turnstile. From the absence of a never-ending queue, I assume that it is closed today. Behind the tower is the Champ-de-Mars park, which is also closed in the central part because the stands for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games are being built there.
Paris - Eiffel Tower, view from the Champ-de-Mars park
Our next destination is the Invalidation Centre. But before that, we want to eat. But we hit a dead end, where there is a minimum of restaurants and the few that are open are always occupied. In the end, the only empty restaurant with the name La Medita turns out to be Lebanese, so we get to sample some of that Arabic cuisine in Paris, which is actually not entirely un-French. Otherwise, food in restaurants is the most expensive item, with menu prices hovering around twenty euros. The menu (French for "Formula") usually includes an appetizer, a main course and a dessert, in our case a drink in the form of mint tea. We chose moussaka for our starter and koftas for our main course. As soon as the starter came in the form of a small bowl of moussaka, I saw the hunger satiation as pretty miserable and we slowly started to figure out which McDonald's we were going to finish at. The main course, however, was in a different league. Two meat sausages, three kinds of hummus and a vegetable salad kept me sufficiently full until late in the evening. It was an unusual meal for us, but very tasty.
Paris - Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral
Paris - Musaka
Paris - Kofty
We continue eating. The weather is constantly April, and it alternates between sunny blue skies and rain. Still, it doesn't stop us from continuing to Invalidovna. Under Napoleon, this building served true to its name, and today it is a museum of warfare. A statue of Napoleon watches over you from above in the courtyard, and hidden behind the courtyard is St Louis Cathedral in Invalidovna, which is freely accessible.
Paris - Invalides
Paris - St. Louis Cathedral in Invalides
Paris - Invalides
Leaving the Invalides, we cross the Seine on the iconic Pont Alexandre III bridge and continue upriver to the Louvre.
At the Louvre, once again there are clouds of people and an endless queue to enter the glass pyramid that serves as the main entrance to the picture gallery. Here Mum reports that she is finishing up, we will have to leave the rest for tomorrow. My watch shows 38,000 steps today, which I estimate to be about 20 km for the day. In my younger days, I still managed to walk the Luxembourg Gardens, Notre-Dame Cathedral, Place de la Bastille and the train journey to Gare du Nord that day. But now we have two whole days to spend in Paris, so we can afford to leave something for tomorrow.
Paris - Pont Alexandre III
Paris - Orsay Museum
Paris - Louvre
Paris - Invisible House
Paris - Automated line M1
On the way to the nearest metro, we get caught in the heaviest downpour of the day, which causes the nearest station to be packed with people and an endless queue at the ticket machines. So we decide to walk to the next metro station. As the centre of Paris is criss-crossed with individual lines, there are literally stations on every corner and you can't get much more than that. At 5pm on a Saturday like this, the M7 line is pretty busy, and we ride sardine style for a substantial part of the journey. But we're seeing some nice multicultural cooperation. There's a black man sitting, a little Chinese man sitting, and another black man standing in the aisle. It's not a joke, it's part of the story. The little Chinaman is tired, falls asleep, his head falls off and he leans on the sitting black man. Sometimes it jerks in the subway, so his head falls over to the other side, where he is secured by black man number two standing in the aisle. And they go on like this for several stops, when the black man in the aisle gets off and is replaced by the father of the little Chinese man. From the subway we go straight to the Carrefour, to buy wine, cheese to go with it, and breakfast for tomorrow. We end the day with a cheese and wine tasting in our hotel room.
Paris - Snails in promotion
Tomorrow we will see Notre Dame, the Latin Quarter, the Luxembourg Gardens and the Orsay Museum.
Užitečné odkazy:
Transavia
Hotel ibis Orly Chevilly Tram 7 ***
Hotel ibis Orly Chevilly Tram 7 **
Transport company in Paris
