Part 2: Let's talk Paris! We only had 2.5 days there and there was so much more we wanted to see. We loved our hotel as I talked about in part 1. With limited time we like to hop on a bus tour to see a lot in a little time and then decide what you want to come back to see up close and personal. My number one tip would be to check museum times and openings for your trip. Many are closed on Tuesdays or certain holidays.
The Louvre was both incredible and overwhelming to me. Hall after hall of the most amazing artwork -- you could stay all day and not see everything but I was ready to move on after 2 hours.
I was shocked at the bathrooms (maybe someone didn't show up for work that day??) and when a guy ignored the rope in front of a 13th century Renaissance work and leaned over onto the painting to get a selfie I couldn't handle it, I was done for that day.
Warning: you won't get much time to appreciate the Mona Lisa -- it's smaller than I thought and they give you a few seconds to take a photo and then herd you on.
Lest you think I'm down on the Louvre -- the beauty, talent, and history is incredible.
MUSÉE RODIN We loved this one -- much smaller, cleaner, and far less crowds. The grounds are beautiful! ( this is where the famous thinker statue is)
The Calife Seine Dinner Cruise We loved this! It was raining so it was perfect evening to be on a be on the enclosed boat (with glass windows), eat a lovely dinner and still be able to see so much. You need to call to make reservations on this one -- call early to get an upstairs table, but anyone can come out to the deck to get photos.
I love how they time it so you see the Eiffel tower sparkling right as you are coming past. We would highly recommend!
This place was fascinating! By far the longest lines of any place we went. I think kids would love this! We showed up 20 minutes before the opening on a Saturday morning and still had to wait for an hour. If you book online, ticket prices are almost double but that may be worth it to you to not have to stand in line. But I loved meeting the people in line and my favorite line of the whole trip was said while we were waiting - we were almost to the front and I had ran across the street to get a hot chocolate. When I came back there was an umbrella I didn't recognize standing next to our group -- they were obviously trying to sneak in next to us under the radar because they didn't want to stand in the now 3 hour long line! Our new friends from Australia said, "those cheeky buggards!!" I couldn't stop laughing.
It was humbling to see the remains of thousands of Parisians when they had to move cemeteries underground. I would definitely pay for the audio headset -- bring extra earbuds and you can plug 2 into a set.
Versailles -- we obviously need to save the best for last!! Plan this into your trip! You could easily spend a whole day out here, but we just had an afternoon since we had the dinner cruise that night. It's about a 45 minute train ride out to the palace and grounds. We took the RER 'C' train (I think it was like 7 euros?) and it was only about a 10 minute walk to the palace. The lines at the palace were also super long so we opted to just go around back and take in the grounds. The lines were much shorter as we came out from the grounds so it may be your best option to explore the grounds first and then the palace. The grounds are just full of mazes of greenery and trees and musical fountains! It is stunning.
I think anyone would love it out here -- kids loved being able to run free and hide in all of the mazes of bushes and trees. We saw lots of families renting golf carts too since it is so huge. If you walk to the back part of the grounds -- look how huge this place is -- where the bigger yellow circle is you can rent bikes and grab a picnic lunch. You can only ride bikes in the area above this but there is so much land! I can't imagine walking it -- bikes are the way to go. I think they were like 8 euros per hour?
The smaller yellow circle at the top is where we had our lunch and we literally had the place to ourselves for a lovely picnic lunch, well except for a few beautiful geese.
Those are our bikes up on the trail
I could have ridden all day!
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