Epic France Trip: Paris Days 1 to 3

Here are all the details of the first part of our Epic France Trip where we started off our stay in Paris! Read on to see what we did, where we stayed, and what we Ate!

I am so excited to share this Epic France trip with you all! This trip was 2 years in the making. I absolutely love researching and planning trips!! I worked so hard on this one, and it was spectacular! Today, I’m going to share all about what we did our first 3 days in Paris!

Arrival Day: Paris Day 1

Our flight arrived at 8:15 am. I love arriving early!! By the time you get out of the airport and to the hotel, you’ve already lost a few hours. We took the RER B to get from CDG into the city and to our hotel. We downloaded the app Bonjour RATP to buy all our metro tickets while we were there. I found this video very helpful! We listed this card as our transit card in our Apple Wallet and used our phones to scan when we entered the metro. We liked CityMapper and Google Maps to tell us what lines to take. Now onto the fun stuff!

We checked in at our hotel, the Hotel du Louvre, a Hyatt property. It was in a great location, had a friendly staff, and it was super quaint! Our room wasn’t ready because it was so early, so we changed downstairs and went out to explore!

And what exactly does one do first on their first visit to Paris? We went to see the Eiffel Tower, of course. We stopped for lunch at Cafe Kleber, which was right near the Eiffel Tower. There was something so magical about getting off a plane and then finding myself sitting in a cafe in Paris!! I totally took it all in! After leaving the cafe, we rounded the corner and saw how massive the tower was! It brought tears to my eyes to finally see it! We spent time taking pictures and walking ALL THE WAY AROUND IT! That takes some time, folks. Pictures on Rue de l’Universite were on the list at this time, but I forgot and we ended up doing this later.

After the Eiffel Tower, we walked over to Rue Cler. This is a charming street with fruit/produce shops, cheese shops, a boulangie and patisserie, a chocolate store, and a wine store. It’s like all of Paris in one street! I had to buy my first baguette at Maison Julien. We also got some fresh strawberries and sampled some chocolate. By this point, we were getting pretty tired, so we stopped for a drink at a cafe here. Then we headed to the hotel because our room was ready!! I have a little room tour video along with our balcony here!!

We rested a bit in our room and changed for dinner and headed out. Our first destination before dinner reservations was to walk to Cour du Commerce St. Andre. It’s beautiful street filled with cafes including Brasserie Des Pres founded in 1776 and Le Procoupe founded in 1686 and oldest cafe in Paris. On my next visit, I will definitely make it a point to stop at one of these! It was a little busy at the time we arrived and we had dinner reservations soon.

Then we headed to dinner at Les Deux Magots. This is a beautiful restaurant in the St. Germain-des Pres area. Our dinner was delicious. I got a wonderful steak, and my husband is way more adventurous! He got the steak tartare, which was a little too not cooked for me.

After dinner, we had tickets to go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Since we had a little bit of time, we did head over to Rue de l’Universite for some more Eiffel Tower pics we missed that morning. It’s a good photo spot on one of the side streets by the Eiffel Tower.

I purchased tickets to top of the Arc de Triomphe at 9:15 pm a few months before trip. It was still very light outside. We waited until 10:00 but Eiffel Tower did not sparkle that night until later 😞 Isn’t it crazy how light it was at 10:00!!! I think after June 21, it sparkles earlier.

So that’s a wrap on Day 1!! At this point we had been up for over 24 hours. It was time for bed!

Here’s a little recap of what we did!

Paris Day 2

We had a big day in store for day 2. Up first was breakfast at the cafe right near our hotel, Le Nemours. Our breakfast was Parisienne perfection!! Give me all the carbs!

Then we headed right next door to the Louvre!! We really just wanted to hit the “must see” highlights, so we allocated a few hours for this. First stop was the Mona Lisa! Then we headed to see the rest of the must see spots like Napoleon’s Apartment, Apollo’s Gallery, and the French Crown Jewels.

We got right up to the front to see the Mono Lisa!! See my tips below! The crown jewels were fascinating to see who wore what! And of course, I had to get a picture for my kids next to Hammurabi’s Code, since they’ve all learned about it in school and love the song, “Euphrates River!” IYKYK!

My Louvre Tips (if you just want to hit the highlights):

Book your tickets in advance for opening time. I booked ours for 9:00 am on a Friday.
Arrive about 20-30 minutes before opening time. Enter through the Carrousel entrance. This is a level below the pyramid. To access this, head away from the pyramid towards the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Next to this will be some steps to go down below. Once here find the entrance line. There will still be a line of people because it isn’t open yet, but once it opens, it does move fast.
Once you’ve gone through security, head straight to the Denon Wing to see the Mona Lisa. There will be signs pointing to tell you where to go. By going there first, you stand a better chance of there being less of a crowd.
One of the best tips I heard is that once you enter the room with the Mona Lisa, stay to the side. The middle doesn’t move, but if you go up along the side, you can get right up to the front!
Other highlights we hit were: The Winged Victory and Apollo’s Gallery with the French Crown Jewels. Also on this same floor is Napoleon’s Apartment. Then we headed down a level to the Near Eastern Antiquities to see Hammurabi’s Code. In all, we were there for about 2 hours.

Next, we were off on the metro to grab one of these viral sandwiches at Chez Alain Miam Miam. You got to pick your meat, cheese, and veggies. It was kind of like Subway, but way more French Gourmet!!

After that we walked over to Rue Montorgueil, which is another beautiful street filled with shops and cafes. We visited Stohrer, which is the oldest patisserie in Paris. I got a Fanancier, which is a French almond cake. Then we walked a few blocks to E. Dehillerin to check out all the cookware!!! This is where Julia Child shopped. I found myself wishing I had way more room in my luggage!

After heading back to the hotel to rest for a bit, we headed out again to see Galeries Lafayette, which is this beautiful mall. I mostly went to go to the 6th floor to get some souveniers, which are fabulous! I was wishing my suitcase was bigger here too! Then we headed up to the terrace to get another view of the city!

Then we headed to Montmartre, and I basically fell in love with this part of the city! Montmartre is located on a hill and has views of all of Paris. We took the metro to Lemarck Station, which gave us the perfect walk into this section of the city. Our first stop was to grab a drink at Chez Ginette. Then we made our way to Rue de l’Abrevoir, which is a beautiful street that ends at La Maison Rose. Then we made our way to Le Consulat.

On this beautiful Friday afternoon, we sat at Le Consulat and had some wine and some cheese. There was beautiful music being played right near our table, and it was just perfection!

We then walked through Place du Tertre and finally to Sacre Couer. I’m so glad we took the time to go inside Sacre Couer. It was so stunning! And the view from there is something worth seeing as well!

Then we headed to dinner in Montmartre at Le Vrai Paris. It was a delicious ending to a perfect time in this section of the city!! Montmartre is a must see experience when in Paris!

The last thing of the evening was on my list of things to do for a while. I had heard about Le Caveau de la Huchette, which is a jazz club in the Latin Quarter. After leaving Montmartre, we headed by metro that way. We were in line for opening time at 9:00 pm and there was already about a 30 minute wait. Lines typically aren’t our thing, but I really wanted to see inside! There was a cover charge, and it was VERY crowded. It was pretty much standing room only. Had we gotten there a little earlier, I may have enjoyed myself more with a better seat. Don’t get me wrong. It was neat to see the jazz band in this cave-like atmosphere, but it had really been a long day by this point so we didn’t stay very long.

We made our way across the Seine and saw this beautiful sunset. Our hotel wasn’t too far way, so we continued our walk.

We stopped in the hotel bar, which became our nightly routine before heading up for bed. I enjoyed a Coke Zero each night, and the staff was great! It was a nice quiet reprieve from being in the busy city with lots of crowds all day. That wraps up Day 2!!

Here’s a little recap of what you can do on Day 2!

Paris Day 3

Oh how I LOVED Day 3!! It started off with another wonderful Parisienne breakfast at Cafe de Flore. I had waiting quite a long time to try their hot chocolate, and I can see myself replicating this at home for sure!

Next, we headed over to City Pharma…sorry no pictures. I was overwhelmed! City Pharma is this amazing french pharmacy that sells TONS of skincare products. I got a few things for my girls and myself. After that, we headed to Chapon on Rue du Bac. This is a chocolate mousse store. I had to give it a try…and now I was overloaded on chocolate for the day, but it was delicious!!

Next, we went to Le Grande Epicerie and grabbed a bunch of picnic supplies (sandwich, butter, chips, a little custard, grapes, assorted jams). I’m obsessed with this place! I will go back there next time too! The butter and yogurt section…oh my! We opted for the smoked butter, and it was absolutely amazing spread on bread!! I also got this little dessert in the yogurt section. Wow, was it good!

Then we headed on the metro with our goodies to Place de Vosges, a beautiful little park. This was located right next to our baking class, so we had a little lunch picnic before heading to our croissant class. I consider this moment in the middle of a park in Paris absolute perfection!

After this, we headed to our croissant baking class. I booked this class through Viator, and I highly recommend it! Our teacher was excellent and I’d say we did pretty darn good. It made for such a fun experience!

We really learned the entire procedure and got to take them with us! It was our breakfast for next few days!!

After the class, we headed back to the hotel to rest and change for the evening out, which started with mass at Notre Dame!! This was such a cool experience!! We went to the Saturday anticipated mass. Now it was in French, which was a bit challenging, but we knew what was going on for sure!

After mass, we walked around the Latin Quarter a bit, but it was really crowded on this particular Saturday because Paris was celebrating the Summer Solstice and has music all throughout the city drawing lots of crowds everywhere. It was very neat to see, but wow there were a lot of people.

So we headed to dinner, which was probably one of my favorites! We went to La Grille Montorgueil. We had the best time! There were so many people walking the street with the music festival, so we did a lot of people watching.

Then we enjoyed our dinner. I got the most delicious Croque Monsier and we also tried the Eggs de Mayo, which really reminded me of deviled eggs in the south with some Cajun-creole flair!

That about wraps up our 3 glorious days in Paris! I would say we packed a lot into those 3 days. Did we do it all? No way! But that leaves more to do next time. The next morning we headed out early to our next France destination!! More on that to come!

Here’s a little recap of Day 3 things!

If you are interested in my Paris map I created for our trip, here it is! It has everything from lunch and dinner stops, sights to see, wine bars, jazz clubs, creperies, and flea markets.