OH PARIS. you magical, amazing DREAMBOAT of a city.
i had a feeling i would love paris, but this city exceeded any and all expectations i had. it’s a big city with big city vibes, but it also has that small town charm with its tree-lined streets and lack of high rises. combine that with sidewalk cafes on every corner, cobblestone streets, and old palaces? perfection.
and can we just talk about french women for a second?! i think i had a girl crush on every french lady we passed by…they are so effortlessly chic! like every single one of them. it’s fascinating. another fascination we had with paris (and all of europe, actually) is that europeans are not glued to their phones! we rarely saw anyone take their phone out during the entirety of our [3 hour] meals. it was a refreshing thing to see and it made me want to be on my phone less (easier said than done).
where we stayed
we rented an airbnb in the marais and while it was super cute and in a perfect location on rue st antoine, i don’t know that we would stay there again. it was just a tad too small and all of the windows faced into the courtyard (and into the neighbor’s apartments) which made for a few awkward moments :)
things we did
my friend lauren sent us a million recs of things to do in paris and we pretty much did all of them! thanks laur.
rent bikes | riding bikes together is our favorite thing to do here at home so we had the best time riding bikes in paris! we biked along the seine to the eiffel tower at sunset on our first night and on our last night we rode around the city at midnight with friends. our biggest tip: return the bikes every half hour to a station and take other ones out! the bikes are commuter bikes so they aren’t meant to be taken out for super long periods of time. we were so dumb and didn’t read the fine print and kept them out for like 7 hours at a time in which the fee was growing exponentially with each half hour. FAIL.
flea market | sunday afternoon we visited the clignancourt flea and successfully walked away with some treasures to take home (notably this vase i got for 3 euro!). i wish shipping stuff home wasn’t so expensive because if you’re looking for mid century chairs, this is the jackpot.
the louvre | this place is incredible. we could have stayed all day, but were running out of time to visit other places on our list so we roamed around for a few hours and then got kicked out when it closed. other museums we wish we had made it to: musée d’orsay and the palace of versailles.
shop | there are SO many cute shops all over paris. i don’t remember a lot of the names but the ones i do remember are cos (very similar to zara), merci (aka home of the most instagrammed little red fiat there ever was), and kilo (a thrift shop where you pay by the pound!).
walk, walk, walk | our second day in paris we just walked and explored all morning. thanks to offline googlemaps we were able to save the places we wanted to go while we were connected to wifi and then pull up the same map when we were offline (a true lifesaver!). for the most part, we were able to get around without getting terribly lost. we walked all over…around the marais, along the seine on the île de la cité, around st germain, to the notre-dame, and all the way over to avenue des champs-élysées.
where we ate
for our morning coffee + croissants, we loved cafe kitsune located in the gardens of the palais royal (where we met up with friends from hawaii who were on their honeymoon), boots cafe, and la favorite.
our favorite lunch was cafe charlot in the marais. parisian charm at its finest.
our favorite dinner was pause cafe. we walked there in the rain and had a super delicious dinner outside on the patio. it was très romantique.
for dessert, we spent two of our nights after dinner on rue cler near the eiffel tower. we really loved both l’eclair and le petit cler. talk about ambience! and of course we couldn’t leave paris without visiting the famed laduree on avenue des champs-élysées. we were very cliche and sat at the bar sipping cappuccinos and sharing macarons.
okay i am officially done with our recaps and i promise i’ll stop with the ridiculous amount of photos and novels. until next time, europe! you’re always a favorite.
after our stay in lisbon, we flew into san sebastián, spain and rented a car to drive up to biarritz, france. (sidenote: driving in a foreign country can be a little tricky but it was actually much easier than we thought! my #1 suggestion is to upgrade and get the GPS! europe lovveees roundabouts. like i swear there is one every 2 miles. and some of them are so confusing! so make your life easier by paying the extra $65 and have the talking machine tell you exactly where to go.)