Paris, France

After recently spending almost a month in Paris for work I was excited to show Jessie some of the highlights of this incredible city. I’d made a shortlist that we would need to cram into an afternoon and morning. We would have less than 24 hours between arriving from Norway and catching the train to Bordeaux. The Eiffel Tower and Champ Ulysses were obvious highlights. We also made a few food stops at places I had been before but never had the chance to try.

We dumped our bags in our “room for a night” 2-star hotel and hit the streets. The first stop was a coffee and baguette because what’s more French than sitting on the sidewalk eating a French baguette 🤷‍♂️. From there we caught the metro up to Hospital Invalides which houses the tomb of the great French military commander Napoleon.

The weather was stunning allowing us to just wander our way towards Arc de Triomphe passing the Grand Palais and Petit Palais (Big and Little Palace) and along Champ Ulysses. Top of the list of food stops was an ice cream place I'd taken the Princess a few times but had never got to have one. Time to find out what this was all about. Located in a fashion concept shop, KITH ice creams are kind of a McFlurry but with cereal and sweet toppings blended through ice cream. Definitely worth the stop but at about $18 each, fair to say sharing one was enough. After wandering up to Arc de Triomphe the next stop on my pre-planned food journey was Le Cristal Bar. Besides the ridiculously delicious Creme Brûlée, Le Cristal has seats right next to the roundabout with the Arc in front.

My schedule had us reaching the Eiffel Tower for sunset but as we were so absorbed in the espresso and Brûlée I realised we were going to be late. We jumped a few electric bikes that were available to hire from the sidewalk and got stuck riding against one-way traffic the whole way to Trocadero. Arriving right at sunset we found the perfect spot looking down on the greatest landmark of Paris. While we stood there savouring the romantic moment we turned around to find a girl behind us taking our photo from behind. Kinda weird but she was extremely nice explaining that it was such a great shot she couldn’t resist 😂. Thankfully she shared them with us and promised to delete them afterwards.

Getting late and now cooling down, we went back to the hotel to grab a jacket and found a small restaurant still serving food. Thankfully in Paris, that’s a city that never sleeps, finding dinner at 11 pm isn’t much of an issue. Hitting the last food stop on my itinerary we shared a Beef Tartare while the rest of the restaurant watched France beat whoever in their Rugby World Cup group match. Considering we started our day in Norway at 3:30 am for our early morning flight and had explored both Amsterdam and Paris, that was us for the night.Read more