Here%26#39;s my trip report with my sister, my late 60s mother, and 11 y/o daughter arriving in Paris June 2 and leaving June 15.
The first part of our stay we stayed at Vacation in Paris number 123 which was really nice. I%26#39;ll post a separate review of it.
Jun 2:
Arrived in CDG 3 hours late due to our plane from Chicago being 3 hours late leaving for some obscure American Airlines reason. Used Shuttle-Inter to get to our apartment. It cost 65 euro for 4 people. Shuttle driver was waiting outside customs even though we were late, which was good, but he took us to Rue Vaneau instead of Rue Vavin even though he had Rue Vavin written on his paper. However, once I gave him the map that Vacation in Paris had sent us, he did take us to the right place. Fortunately, I was sitting in front and saw that we were on the wrong street so we didn%26#39;t even get out of the shuttle. The owner%26#39;s rep was there to meet us with the keys and went over the apartment and the appliances, etc with us. After that we went out to buy our metro passes at the Vavin metro station but we didn%26#39;t have coins for the machine and it wouldn%26#39;t take our American chipless credit card. There was a window but no one was in it, and it said they would be back in %26quot;quelques minutes%26quot; which didn%26#39;t seem like a very specific time so we decided not to wait. Tried again at Notre Dame des Champs, and the situation was the same there. Went and walked through Luxembourg Gardens and then got noodles for dinner at a take out place down the street and ate in the apartment. We also went around to a couple of stores in the neighborhood to see if they had distilled water for my mother%26#39;s CPAP machine but no one did and no one knew what it was so she used regular water. (We eventually found some right before we were leaving Paris, I had heart that it was called eau distilee, but what we saw was called eau demineralisee, I%26#39;m not really sure if it was the same.)
June 3:
Bought our metro passes at Vavin metro station with help from the attendant. We discovered there is a place off to the side of one of the machines that you can put Euro bills into. The attendant just got them out of the machine for us but didn%26#39;t put them together. Fortunately, I had printed a post from someone here on how to do it, and the directions were right on. I had brought the right size picture for everyone that I printed and cut out at home. I didn%26#39;t see any photo booths there, maybe they%26#39;re only at the bigger stations? Went to Notre Dame but we couldn%26#39;t go up in the towers because they were closing early for a %26quot;ceremony%26quot; and the police were blocking everything off. We found out later that it was President Sarkozy having some sort of tribute to the passengers from the Air France jet that had just crashed off Brazil. The cathedral was beautiful, though. We went to the Memorial de la Deportation but it was closed for lunch, so we crossed to Ile St Louis and got take away crepes and ate them in the park behind Notre Dame. They had some swings and a thing kids can spin around on there, which my daughter liked. After that we went to the memorial. It doesn%26#39;t take very long to see but it was sobering. Then we walked across to St Chappelle which was beautiful but seemed very empty since I don%26#39;t think they still use it for services. We bought museum passes there. We were going to the Conciergerie but it was closed due to setting up a new exhibit.
June 4:
Went back to Notre Dame to go up in the towers which was one of all of our more favorite things to do. There are a LOT of steps, though. It was great to be right up by the gargoyles. We had a competition to see who could take a picture most like the ones on the postcards. It turned out not to be hard to do. After that we went to the Musee d%26#39;Archaeologie, where there are Roman ruins that are pretty well preserved (it was closed the day before, too). That was really interesting. Those Romans were pretty smart! After dinner, we went to the Arc de Triomphe. There are even more stairs there than at Notre Dame. There is an elevator, but we couldn%26#39;t find it until after we came down, so my mother just stayed at the bottom. There%26#39;s a great view from the top. We were amused watching people drive around it, since there doesn%26#39;t seem to be any set lane or direction, and sometimes someone would ride a bike right through the middle of it as though they weren%26#39;t in danger of imminent demise. We also walked past the Eiffel Tower but didn%26#39;t go up as my daughter wanted to go up during the day and I wasn%26#39;t going to do it twice. We did get to see it twinkle after dark, though.
June 5
Versailles. We took the RER to Versailles and since we now knew how to use the metro ticket machines, we could buy them ourselves. We got there around noon and were glad we had the museum passes because there was a huge ticket line for everyone else and we basically walked right in. There was a line for audio guides, though. You also have to go to the cashier%26#39;s desk in the same room as the audio guide line and buy a ticket for the audio guide, you can%26#39;t pay at the audio guide counter. Versailles was beautiful, but there were way too many people. The gardens were nicer, we thought. My daughter and I walked down to the Grand and Petit Trianon and Marie Antoinette%26#39;s Hameau which is a long walk, and once you get to the hameau, you have to go way back the way you came to get back to the chateau. There were hardly any people down there, though. I almost wished we had spent the night in Versailles because we really felt like we didn%26#39;t have enough time. We were worn out after all that walking and just came back and went to bed.
June 6
Went to Musee d%26#39;Orsay but didn%26#39;t see a very large percentage of it because my daughter was getting museumed out. After that we walked to the Musee Rodin and looked in the gardens which were really beautiful, one of my most favorite things we did. It was getting kind of late by then, so we didn%26#39;t go in the actual museum. Afterwards we went to the Invalides and saw the tomb of Napoleon and various other people who were important enough to have gigantic tombs, some of which I had never heard of. We then went to Place de la Concorde and found the Champs Elysees all blocked off from traffic so we walked right down the middle. Got down to near the Arc de Triomphe and there were a bunch of police making everyone go behind barriers and then we discovered that President Obama was driving by so we saw his limo go past us. We never saw the president when we went to Washington DC, I guess you have to go to Paris to see that. Go figure.
June 7
In the morning we went to the Bastille Market which was mostly produce but did find some shoulder bags for my daughter and her 2 best friends. Then we took the metro to the Arenes de Lutece and imagined we were watching gladiators. Really we were watching pick up soccer (football), though. Next we went to the Musee de Moyen Ages (Cluny) and found Nicholas Flamel%26#39;s tombstone (for all you Harry Potter fans). Then we split up and my mother and sister went back to see the inside of Musee Rodin which they said was good, and I took my daughter to the Musee de l%26#39;Armee where we saw an exhibit about the French Resistance and one about WWI and WWII. My daughter%26#39;s very interested in WWII. She really liked it and wanted to go back but we didn%26#39;t have enough time. She also wanted to see the section about the knights, but we didn%26#39;t have time for that either, that place is HUGE. Most of it is in French but some is translated into English. An English audioguide would have been nice but they only have an audioguide for the room with Napoleon%26#39;s tomb. They don%26#39;t tell you that when you buy it, though.
June 8
Dedicated to the Louvre, which we liked. My mother didn%26#39;t go because she was tired and wanted a day to rest. We saw the Mona Lisa which wasn%26#39;t really hard to get to, there was no line, just a big group of people trying to take pictures. I%26#39;m not sure any of them were even really looking at it, just taking pictures. We also saw the Venus de Milo. After that we walked around the old walls of the medieval Louvre and saw a temporary exhibit about how they took everything out of the Louvre in WWII and hid it in the country. We saw the Egyptian exhibit, which was also really interesting. They had translated a bunch of hieroglyphics into French. Unfortunately, they didn%26#39;t translate the French into English, but I do read French better than hieroglyphics. After that we just wandered around an looked at paintings and amused ourselves with all the people who did double takes to see what we were looking at and whether maybe they should take a picture of it. We thought we should get a group of people to go stand in front of random paintings and see how many people we could get to take pictures of them.
June 9
In the morning we went to the Eiffel Tower. We got there about 9:30 AM and waited about an hour to go up. By the time we got to the top, it was really windy and raining, but my daughter loved it anyway, (Maybe better because of the rain) By the time we got down to level 2, it was sunny. Very changeable weather in Paris! Afterward we went to Breakfast in America (restaurant) because my daughter was craving breakfast food besides croissants. It was actually good, but not French (obviously). That evening we went to Shakespeare and Company because my sister wanted to get a book for the rest of the trip and the plane ride home. It was a cool old bookstore with an eclectic collection of English books. We had gyros for dinner nearby and saw Rue du chat qui peche which is reportedly the smallest street in Paris.
June 10
Took the train from Gare Montparnasse which we could walk to from our apartment and went to Rennes for our trip to Mont St Michel and Normandy by rental car. They only post the track about 15-20 min ahead of time, so be ready to run when they post it because they leave right on time. We were in voiture 19, which was a LONG way from the start of the train as they had 2 trains linked together and we were at the end of the 2nd one. That train was a TGV and had the voiture number and train number in a little display next to the door. There are luggage racks by the doors but they fill up fast, and the overhead racks are very high, so don%26#39;t take anything you can%26#39;t lift a long way. I%26#39;m 5%26#39;4%26quot; and had trouble reaching them.
June 10-14 Mont St Michel and Normandy
June 14
We drove from Bayeux to Caen to drop off the car (from Europcar through Auto Europe). This was a Sun and the office was closed. They have a drop box for the keys but no directions about where to leave the car and no signs for rental car return. I asked in the train station, and they only knew where to leave the car if you rented it from Avis. I called Europcar and they transferred me to the closed office. We ended up leaving it in long term parking and returned the parking lot ticket with the keys. I called Auto Europe this morning and they said there shouldn%26#39;t be any extra fees but they would help me with them if there were any. The other problem returning on Sunday was that we couldn%26#39;t fill up the car because the only gas station we could find only took cards with chips and there was no attendant. We%26#39;ll see what happens. Took the train back to Paris. On the SNCF train from Caen to Paris, you didn%26#39;t have to run the length of the train, but the voiture numbers are on the inside of the car and so difficult to see. I would never have found them but some nice English speaking man saw us looking lost and told us where the numbers were. The seat numbers made absolutely no sense to me (they don%26#39;t go in order) and people seemed to be sitting anywhere and getting up if someone made them. There were people sitting in 2 of our 4 seats but when I showed them our tickets with the seat numbers on them they moved. We stayed this night in the Best Western Folkestone Opera which had rooms that were small but clean.
June 15
Took Yellow Van Shuttle (the hotel called it for us) to the airport. Our flight was at 12:00 and we left at 7:15 because that%26#39;s when the shuttle could come. The driver drove like a maniac but so did everyone else on the road. We were going to take the Roissy bus because we were in walking distance from the Opera Garnier but decided that this would be easier with the luggage. It was 17 euro/person. We had plenty of time at the airport before our flight out.
General notes: There is a lot of walking in Paris. Even when we took the metro, some stops have a long way to the connecting line. There are a lot of stairs in the metro too.
We didn%26#39;t eat at any fine dining restaurants. We did eat at Hippopotamus, which is sort of a TGI Fridays level restaurant but has better food. There are bakeries everywhere. We walked down and got croissants most mornings. We didn%26#39;t sit outside at any cafes because the outside is very smoky due to all the smokers banished from the inside. Also, the tables in cafes are REALLY close together, enough so it looks hard to get in and out unless you%26#39;re really skinny. If you are tired of trying to think in French or want a more American breakfast, go to Breakfast in America. The servers all speak English and the menu is pretty much like a diner here. A lot of the time we ate crepes or baguette sandwiches because they were cheap and easy and didn%26#39;t require sitting at a restaurant table for hours. The sitting for hours does kind of grow on you, though, as long as you don%26#39;t have anything else you want to do.
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Wow, thank you for such a detailed trip report! It sounds like an amazing trip! A very excellent read, indeed! :)
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Thanks so much for the useful posting - and thanks for the laughs too!
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It was really an awesome trip. My mother used to teach French before I was born but had never been to France, so this started as a trip to fulfill her dreams of going to France and turned out to have a little for everyone.
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Thanks for your detailed trip report, I really enjoyed it. I%26#39;m glad your mother got to fulfill her dream and you got to share it with her.
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Just an update on returning the rental car after hours. I just got a bill from Europcar which included a refueling fee and a charge for fuel but no charge for having left the car in long term parking.
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