In high school, I had a trip to Brussels for a choir festival and we had arrived a day earlier than we needed, so my choir and I made a day trip to Bruges. I remembering being very salty about that, because our “rival” school also arrived a day early and they got a day trip to Paris! (I put “rival” in quotation marks, because that school was my school’s rival for athletics and stuff, but not for choir festivals because choir festivals are about coming together lol.) Anyways, after many years, I’ve made it to Paris at last!
Arrival Day
We got held up at the airport because of some weird security thing that was going on whilst we were waiting for our baggage (an area was cleared and there was a loud *pop* but not sure what it was), but we finally made it to our Airbnb. Our host wasn’t there, but she had someone else there to greet us. He was cute and got us chocolate croissants for breakfast. Of the three Airbnbs I stayed in whilst on this Europe trip, this one was my favourite! I loved the open living room, the French windows that opened up to the Eiffel Tower, and all the minimal IKEA furniture.
After getting my brothers settled in, Mom, Dad, and I headed to the Champs-Élysées. Our first stop, Louis Vuitton. Our second stop, Hermès. Everywhere we walked, we were surrounded by people hefting huge brown Louis Vuitton shopping bags and boxes, huge orange Hermès shopping bags and boxes, and other huge shopping bags and boxes from other luxury brands. Mom was eager to join them. Capitalism makes me sick sometimes. You see that small Hermès bag in the photo above? Mom bought a small scarf from Hermès within the first ten minutes of entering the store because they were closing. She returned to Hermès the next day and also the day after that, but not to the one on the Champs-Élysées because that store is small and doesn’t stock many products. By the time we left Paris, Mom had bought me a Halzan in malachite (I thinkk?) and herself a Birkin in mykonos and some scarves.
We had dinner at Léon de Bruxelles, which was alright (mussels take so much effort to eat, and I don’t like accidentally crunching on shell sediments!), and ordered some extra food to take back for my brothers. Léon had really nice takeout containers and bags. After my brothers finished eating, Mom washed out the container and we brought the container and bag back home to Beijing with us…
Before leaving the Champs-Élysées, we popped by Ladurée, which is what I was most excited for! You’ll hear more about that in a full blog post on its own next Wednesday, so tune in for that!
We watched the sky get dark and the Eiffel Tower light up. Dad took a cool timelapse on his phone, but it was a vertical video, tsk tsk.
Day 1
So many things are closed in Paris on Tuesdays and I don’t know why?? So, I planned for a slow day at Montmartre and got some recommendations from the lovely Abby x Lace and Lilacs, who has been studying abroad in Paris! Unfortunately she was out of town when I was in so we couldn’t meet up, but she looked out for me over email!
We had lunch at La Cave Gourmande and stuffed ourselves with baguettes. Oh yeah, and we also had our main courses. Filled with energy, we hiked up to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. It was really hot and not the most pleasant experience for my brothers, and usually I’m quite terrible with heat as well, but the beautiful scene took my mind off of it. I took in the carousel, the beautiful flowers, the basilica, and the acoustic guitar that two girls were playing on the stairs up to the basilica.
When we finally hiked up to the top, we made a beeline to gelato from La Butte Glacée. There were many flavours and I didn’t catch all of them, so I panicked and went for the trusted banana gelato. Danny went for strawberry. Licking his ice cream, he said to me contentedly, “I’m glad learning French paid off,” to which I replied, “Why? So you could order your gelato?” to which he deadpanned, “Yeah.” (He played around with French on Duolingo for a few days, nothing too rigorous, but I mean, all you need to learn is how to order your fraise gelato right?)
With my brothers pacified with gelato, we briefly strolled around Place du Tertre before settling down at Au Clairon des Chasseurs. When we walked into the cafe, our waiter walked up to our table and didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what he wanted us to do until he asked us whether we wanted coffee or something. We didn’t have a menu and he didn’t offer one but he seemed pretty insistent about us ordering, so we just went for the generic ice lattes and ice teas. Whilst waiting for our drinks to arrive, we found a menu lying around and flipped through it to see what our options might have been. The ice latte wasn’t great, but the ice tea was pretty good.
Once everyone was well-fed and well-rested, we called an Uber to take us to Tuileries Garden. Leaving Montmartre, we passed by the most picturesque cafe that I later found out was La Maison Rose. It had a pink exterior and a wall of plants, and I was really surprised by how quiet that corner was, as Montmartre is always teeming with tourists. If I had known about it, I definitely would have made my family walk down there before calling our Uber. We whizzed by it on the Uber, and I was the only one who caught it; they were all on their phones or dozing off.
Anyways, we made it to Tuileries Garden, were met by the summer fun fair, which looked really exciting, but my family didn’t seem interested and just walked past it, all the way to The Louvre, even though it was closed as it was Tuesday, and hung out around the pyramids. As to be expected, I took a bunch of photos, and at one point I lowered my camera and found Danny running around like a very happy child. The reason? For a Pokémon raid. It was so funny!!! He looked soooooo blissful. Pokémon Go is how we get my brothers to go anywhere tbh.
For dinner, we hit up Cafe de Mars. Our waiter had such a soothing voice and cool hair. I wish I could have gotten a picture of him.
Before tucking into our Airbnb for the evening, we popped by our neighbour, the Eiffel Tower, and bid her goodnight.
Day 2
We started our second day in Paris with lunch, again! Thank goodness sunset in Paris isn’t until 9:30PM. The menu at Le Comptoir du Relais was all in French, so we struggled with mobile translators. Hey, that’s how you know you’ve found an authentic French place, right? Dad had some Microsoft app where he could just take a picture of the menu and then the app would translate the words from the photo, so you didn’t have to type it into the translator word for word, but even with the menu translated to English, the names didn’t mean anything. I ended up just pointing to something randomly on the menu and hoping for the best. I think I ended up ordering some kind of cold duck meat. It wasn’t bad. The latte was good.
Whilst waiting for the food arrive, I dragged Mom over to Cafe de Flore for photos. It was just a short walk away. I had seen photos on blogs of the lush florals on the exterior of the cafe, and wanted to get a few shots myself! Since we were about to eat lunch, I knew that we wouldn’t have the stomach to actually dine and drink at the cafe, so I sufficed myself with photos. Anyways, I heard that it’s a hot tourist place and that it’s overpriced. The cafe front was impressive but was more leafy than floral, probably because it was the dead of summer, but I bet the cafe looks even more stunning in the spring!
After lunch, Mom took my brothers home (that was Ken’s birthday gift–the gift of staying at home) whilst Dad and I headed over to the Shakespeare & Company bookstore and Notre-Dame Cathedral. I was on a tight schedule because I needed to meet friends later in the day, so we didn’t have time to dilly-dally! On our way over, we came across a bubble tea store called Chamie, and of course I made a pit stop there.
Dad and I parted ways at Notre-Dame Cathedral, and I made my way to Arts et Metiers to meet Ariane. The Paris metro system was a little daunting, so I decided to walk all the way over. According to Google Maps, walking was only five minutes longer than riding the metro anyway. Along the way, I passed by the cafe front of Au Vieux Paris. I am in love with the exterior. I’ll have to check it out one day. I wouldn’t have seen it if I took the metro!
According to their website, Arts et Metiers is free for EU nationals under 26 and non-EU nationals under 18, and students get a discount. Somehow I got in for free. I had shown my student ID expecting to get a discount, but the dude asked me for my age (under 26) and then let me go in for free. I didn’t question it! Ariane and I hung out at the museum for an hour (my favourite exhibit was the bike exhibit), and then we made our way to Hubsy cafe, where we met up with Can. You’ll hear more about Hubsy in a full blog post on its own next Monday, so tune in for that!
I reunited with my family for dinner at La Fontaine de Mars, and then we headed back to the Airbnb to celebrate Ken’s birthday with pastries from Angelina that we had bought the previous night. You’ll hear more about Angelina in a full blog post on its own this coming Friday, so tune in for that! What a way to end our Europe trip (:
Have you visited Paris before? Do you have any other recommendations?
Up next on the blog, you can look forward to a blog post on Angelina on Friday, a blog post on Hubsy on Monday, and a blog post on Ladurée on Wednesday!
PS: snapshots from paris, 2 days in cambridge, 2 days in london