Our journey to the City of Light

Bonjour,

After sharing our Central Europe adventures, let us take you back to our earlier journey across Western Europe, starting with the City of Light, Paris.

Why did we plan a Europe trip?

We didn't have a plan to go to Europe in 2024. It all started with a phone call with a client who wanted to travel to Europe.

“Sure. Why not? Let us plan it for you.”

That's all. We only realised after putting down the phone, the mammoth task we had undertaken to plan the trip. Since the client had never travelled to Europe, we wanted to ensure that they would be safe and could easily manage the trip, with our daily support through chat.
As we dove deeper into the planning process, a thought began to nag at us.

“Why don't we go to Europe too? Why only them?”

Very soon, we applied for a Schengen visa and secured a one year visa. Yes! That's why we went to Europe in 2024 - FOMO!

Our Plan

With our visas secured, we dove into the planning process. We didn't have a clue where to begin, but we knew we wanted to go to Switzerland and stay longer. We started looking at flights and narrowed down to a flight to France. As we were planning to stay longer in Switzerland (around two weeks), we decided to only spend a week in France (it's not enough!).

After weeks of planning and anticipation, we finally found ourselves touching down in Paris at night.

Arriving in Paris

We took public transport and had to walk a little to reach our hotel room. As we walked through Paris around 11pm, we were quite surprised to see many young women happily roaming at night without much fear. Even though it was dark, we didn't feel any need to fear. There were people, mainly friends cheering and walking on the roads.

As we settled into the rhythm of the city, we began to form our first impressions.

Our impressions of Paris

Over the next couple of days, we explored the public transport in Paris. We were disappointed to learn that the public transport in Paris was quite expensive. In fact, a few locals told us that the government hiked the prices due to Olympics '24. We also learned that Paris had limited Airbnbs and the hotels were quite expensive, as expensive as stays in Switzerland.

Surprisingly, Paris was not crowded (outside of the touristic areas) and many residential areas of Paris felt empty, at least during our visit. When we asked a local, we were told that Parisians love to get out of Paris during summer, so much so that they didn't really care about staying back for Olympics.

Of course, no visit to Paris would be complete without seeing its most iconic landmark.

Eiffel Tower - yay or nay?

The Eiffel Tower didn't stand as a giant among the Parisian houses but it stood like any other small tower. Once we went inside and looked at it, we understood the engineering effort to build something like this using technologies that existed in the nineteenth century. It certainly did not blow us away, but we understood how it could have marvelled the people of those times.

To truly understand Paris beyond its famous monuments, we decided to explore the historic neighborhood of Montmartre.

Walking through the history of Montmartre

Walking tours are among our favourite activities in a foreign country, especially Europe. Our walking tour guide, Raj from India, an up-and-coming artist who has been living in Montmartre for the last 10 years, was super enthusiastic and gave us the history, the stories and the legends behind this bustling area of Paris, Montmartre.

Link to book a free walking tour

One of the most fascinating stories our guide shared was about Vincent van Gogh, the world-famous impressionist painter who once lived in Montmartre. He struggled with mental health during his life, and constantly struggled with self-doubt and confidence. During one distressing moment, when he fought with his friend, he allegedly cut off part of his left ear. He was also known to be a very generous person, and would give away his paintings to anyone who asked for them. His paintings today are some of the most expensive in the world.

But van Gogh wasn't the only artist who found inspiration in Montmartre. Our guide then led us to learn about Place du Tertre, the area's most famous attraction, where licensed street artists sell their work, primarily paintings, portraits, and caricatures

Mesmerising Moulin Rouge

The main attraction of Montmartre is Moulin Rouge, a famous cabaret in Montmartre, established in 1889. It was famous for the breathtaking French Cancan dance. Back in the day, Moulin Rouge was a place where a lot of famous artists (including Toulouse Lautrec) used to frequent. One of the famous paintings by Toulouse Lautrec, shows a dancer, La Goulue of Moulin Rouge. The story goes that she would tease the male audience by swirling her raised dress to reveal the heart embroidered on her knickers and would do a high kick while flipping off a man's hat with her toe. She would walk up to her guests' tables and down the alcohol in one shot. While wine wasn't popular, absinthe was the drink of choice. The stories of these performers and their daring acts added to the mystique of this legendary venue.

Our week in Paris was a mixed experience. While some attractions like the Eiffel Tower were underwhelming, the walking tour in Montmartre was definitely our highlight. We found ourselves drawn to the quieter parts of the city and the stories behind its artistic heritage. From Paris, we took a train south to Marseille, a city I had learned about from a famous Telugu novel, eager to discover what southern France had to offer.

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