PARIS BLOG – Part I

Who doesn’t like the idea of sipping on some great coffee with some freshly baked croissant whilst enjoying the sight of a busy street in Montmartre & then a chicly dressed waiter walks up to you and asks in his killer French accent “Some more Coffee mam”? Yes Pleaseee!! Paris.. Paris.. Paris.. The city with some of the best boulangeries, patisseries, cafes and chocolatiers.It has always been my dream destination and I wanted to visit this beautiful ‘City of Light’. I wanted to know after all was this city really worth all the Hype?

Fayaz (Fayu) & I had visited my brother Last summer in London (Will be blogging about our stay in London in my following posts soon, hopefully) &  celebrated Eid with him. We had booked a train to Paris for the next day, very very early in the morning. Took a cab to the station, got there late! Great! Nothing new with me & Fayu, then we had to wait in the longest que to get through immigration and get our Passports stamped. We then had to rush to our High-speed train.

Still managed to take a quick selfie. Yay!

This Super-Duper fast train Journey on its own was great for me (Fayu wasn’t too impressed). After 2 n half hour journey we finally reached Paris, we dint have to go through immigration here, Great! Took a cab to the hotel, could’ve taken the metro but we had luggage so no thanks. Our hotels were booked in the most romantic part of the city, Montmartre!

We did not waste a minute in the hotel, dropped our bags and went on to explore the city. We were staying very close to Sacre-Coeur Basilica, a Roman Catholic Church and hence this was the first place we visited. On our way uphill towards the Basilica we came across a lot of aggressive artists who wanted to draw/sketch us, & boy were they aggressive. Knowing that we would come across such people we were well prepared and on a mission “do not to cave into requests from artists” huh, if they could be aggressive we could be strong headed and simply reject them! Did we succeed in our mission?…

No we did not. We got our portraits made.

Moving on, two words for Sacre Coeur – Exquisite Architecture. The minute details to this basilica was gorgeous beyond words. The basilica has managed to stay white in colour inspite of the pollution, thanks to the Chateau-London stones it’s made up of.

The Basilica is located on top of a hill hence making it the highest point of the city. Sacre Coeur has a breathtaking view of the city of PARIS, although the following picture sucks:

And ofcourse,

Mandatory selfie number 1:

Our next stop was Champs-Élysées, a 2 kilometer long street which has some of Paris’s great theatre’s, Café’s and luxury brands. Some great attractions like Place de la Concorde, The big wheel, Place Charles de Gaulle & Arc de Triomphe are also located on this stretch.

Arc de Triomphe & Fayu:

Also at this point I want to add is:

-PARIS is tooo touristy and too many people forcing you into buying things like souvenir’s, toys, decorative pieces etc which gets very very annoying after a certain point of time.

– Whenever we were at a crowded place or in the metro we always had to be super careful of our belongings like phones, bags, cameras etc as Paris is quite infamous for pickpocketing.

So the next place to check out was the ICONIC Eiffel Tower, thanks to my research I knew where to find a good view of the Eiffel. So we headed towards Trocadero. Trocadero really has a very good view of the tower.

Mandatory selfie number 2:

Is Eiffel worth a visit?

ABSO-BLOODY-LUTELY !! I mean just look at that beauty..

Annndd after a zillion pictures in front of the Eiffel our next stop was Moulin Rouge!

Moulin Rouge – The most famous Cabaret in the world, and bloody expensive. I thought Moulin Rouge would have great dancing, costumes and skin-show ONLY, but this place blew me away and it was SO much more than what I thought it would be. I was acting like a small girl who had seen Queen Elsa in real life – yes, that’s exactly how I would describe it. Moulin Rouge is one of those once in a life travel clichés that you must do when you are in PARIS. Is it worth it? Totally worth it!

Post the Cabaret we were toooo tired & headed to our hotel and ended our Day 1 in Paris. A Day 2 blog will follow s-o-o-n including what I loved most and what I did not love about Paris.

Until next time guys!

Au Revoir