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Published: July 10th 2022
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Day 4: 5th June, 2022; Exploring Paris
Rise and shine! First morning in Paris and today we began with an 8am wake up call as we head down to the hotel’s lobby for some breakfast. We had classic French food such as croissants with Nutella, toasted baguette’s and of course, ham and cheese.
Following that delicious breakfast, we hopped onto the coach at 9:00am as we drove past the Seine River and saw a glimpse of Notre-Dame and the Efile Tower. As we were dropped off, we were told that we had a full day to ourselves but had to be back on the bus at 4:15pm in Concrode, Paris. We hopped out of the bus and went our separate ways. The boys and I found our way to Place De la Concorde.
We noticed there was a large crowd in the distance so we went to see what was the commotion all about, and on the way we saw the Luxor Obelisk, a giant obelisk with a golden pyramid on top that was delivered from Egypt in 1833.
As we
approached closer to the crowd, we saw that there was a marathon being help with at least 1 thousand racers in blue running past us. While we watched and cheered them on for a short while, we became quite thirsty so we decided to go to a local café to get something to drink. While the boys had a coffee, I had a hot chocolate with cream on the top and it was absolutely delicious.
After we hanged around at the café for a bit, we decided to go around Paris to explore. However, outside of the café, there were a few electric bikes we could hire so we all agreed that it would be extremely fun to hire the bikes and cycle around Paris. While we did that, the tricky part was cycling out of Place De La Concorde as the only way to get out of the area was cycling through the marathon. We waited by the track for a gap to go past, and once there was, we quickly went through. But I was slower than the rest so I got shouted at by one of the racers (understandably). As we somehow managed
to make it through, we ventured off. We decided to cycle down the famous the famous Av. des Champs-Élysées towards Arc de Triomphe which lucky for us, the road was closed that day so that made cycling down there was a breeze. As we cycled past, avoiding the busy crowd, we went past a Crêpe store, and I couldn’t resist. While the boys chose not to have anything, I decided to have a Nutella Crêpe. I was surprised at how nice the man at the Crêpe store was, usually French people gets a bad rep for being rude and snobby, but so far everyone I encountered were super nice and friendly. After some Crêpe’s which was delicious, we headed off towards Arc de Triomphe but one the way we stopped to admire the beautiful style of the Petit Palais which was an art museum.
After a 5 min bike ride from Petit Palais, we finally arrived at the Arc de Triomphe as we wanted to go into the middle of the Arch to take some pictures. However, it was almost impossible to take our bikes over to the Arch as it was surrounding by cars driving
around (as it is a giant traffic circle) and any attempt of crossing the road will most likely result in one of us getting run over.
The only way to get over to the Arch was to go through an underground tunnel that will take us to the middle. Another problem was it was full of people and we aren’t allowed to take our bikes through the tunnel. Thus, we decided to leave the bikes on the road but we had to find an appropriate place to park the bike in order for the app to let us end our hiring of the bikes. Afteer some difficulty of finding a parking spot, we managed to end our bike hiring but it costed us 25 euros to end it and we used the bikes for over an hour. Feeling a bit ripped off, we then walked towards the staircase leading to the underground tunnel. After shuffeling between more crowds of people. We finally managed to get to the middle of the Arch.
We spent around 30 mins taking pictures from different angles, selfies, group shots, and at least 10 other people asked us
to take pictures for them. Then we went over underneath the Arch to view the eternal flame, a memorial site for unidentified soldiers that died in WW1 and WW2.
As we left the Arch, we went to a local pub to meet up with some others that were on the trip for a nice refreshing beer. We had at least 4 rounds of Kronenbourg 1664 beers, a beer locally made in Parris. As we spent around 45 mins later, we decided to go see the Louvre to see the famous Mono Lisa. As we walked down the same way we came up, we went through the famous Tuileries Garden and decided to have lunch at La Terrasse de Pomone, an outdoor restaurant in the park for a nice healthy lunch, HOTDOGS!!!! Seriously though, those were some of the best hotdogs I had in my life. Paris sure do give out the best food. Then on, we slowly walked towards the Louvre until we saw a huge line getting into the place.
As we only had an hour left before meeting the others by the couch, we decided to go through a maze
and chill out on the grass. Then to pass the time, we decided to do a handstand competition, I lost. We got carried away while doing the competition and we lost track of the time. Realising we only had 5 mins, we quickly sprinted back towards the bus and let me tell you this, running on Crêpes, beers and hotdogs made it almost impossible and I never felt that unfit in my entire life. As we got on the bus, we noticed that we were the only ones and that everyone else was late. We felt so annoyed as we did that sprint across Paris for nothing. We got back to the hotel at around 5pm and had around 90 mins to get ready for tonight as we had to be back on the bus at 6:30pm.
We were heading towards Sacré-Cœur, which is the highest point of Paris, overlooking the entire city. It was an extremely steep hill to get to the top and it was cold and rainy. Not the best experience, and there were a couple of people trying to scam us by trying to put bracelets on our hands and make us pay
for them. But it didn’t work so lucky us. As we got to the top, we had a few minutes to look at the views.
After a few minutes we realised that the group went to the restaurant and left us behind. We were cluelessly wondering around the site looking for them, trying to call them but couldn’t get a hold of them. Luckily someone from the group texted us to tell them where they were and we met up with them at an authentic Parisian restaurant.
In the restaurant, they served us a whole range of French cuisine, including wine of course (I personally discovered that I’m more into white wine than red wine), a tray of snails with the shells on which was extremely difficult to open up and lead to a huge mess of shell parts all over the table, roasted duck leg for the main course, and a delicious chocolate cake for dessert. Following our lovely time at the restaurant, we all left as a big ground and we’re heading towards Moulin Rouge. I never knew what the Moulin Rouge was and what was I about to experience,
but to keep it clean, I had a great time while I was sipping Champagne and watching acrobatics do seemingly impossible stunts.
After the performance was over at around 12am, we all went out to a night club and partied the night away.
TLDR Summary: TLDR (Too long, didn’t Read), I head a great time in Paris. Even though it was extremely busy with tourists (and scammers), we still did a ton of stuff in Paris such as hiring a bike around time to the Arc de Triomphe and hanged outside the louvre, and emersed ourselves with the culture of Paris by having an authentic French meal and visiting the world-famous Moulin Rouge.
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