Discovering Paris Through Iconic Sights

During our anniversary cruise to Europe, we were able to go to Paris and do a walking tour through all the major sights. This was an interesting stop as I was rather nervous and didn’t want to go, but it turned out to be gorgeous and nowhere near as bad as I thought.

Somewhere, I got the idea that Paris was full of crime against tourists. People stealing phones and other stuff off your person, especially if you were near the major sights. Plus, I thought the French had a very abrupt personality, where they kind of hated tourists, and if you didn’t speak French, then they wouldn’t help you.

Thankfully, none of that was true for our experience! We had a wonderful but cold time wth some interesting twists.

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Table of Contents

• Eiffel Tower
• Arc de Triomphe
• Notre Dame and Exploring
• Louvre

Heading to Paris

To start, the cruise didn’t actually stop in Paris. For those geographically challenged (like me), Paris is a little further inland. We stopped in La Havre, which was a cute little town we could have explored, but the majority of people took the almost 3-hour bus ride into Paris instead.

Coming into port was a gorgeous, glass-like view of the English Channel.

We had 12 hours in port, so we were up extra early to get ready and get on the bus, so we were able to see some of the sunrise come up.

Once we had been sorted into our bus group and made our way outside, we realized La Havre is a major windmill port. There were rows and rows of blades and all the different components. I don’t know what it is about windmills, but I am always fascinated by how big they are, and this view just made it even better!

With that, we were off on our 3-hour bus ride. It was a pretty standard drive through the country with slight variance from what you see in the US. Like taking a bridge across the Seine! Which I won’t lie, it was not the prettiest river I have seen 😐.

We also had our first “food” stop, which turned out to be a convenience store along the highway. Having food restrictions sucked, but we are also road trip experts, so we loaded up on our snacks for the drive/day.

Eiffel Tower

Once we made it to Paris, specifically an area near the Eiffel Tower, we met up with our guide for the day. She was super fun, and actually from the Czech Republic, and she and her husband came to Paris for better opportunities in the tourism industry.

She was quick to warn us against playing any of the games out in this courtyard area. Its a VERY common scam to play cups and they will have a $50 or $100 buy in 😳.

After a quick walk, we stopped at Palais de Chaillot and the museums nearby, as it had a straight view and photo op of the Eiffel Tower.

Arc de Triomphe

After a short drive through the city, we stopped by the Arc de Triomphe.

Around the monument is a fascinating roundabout that has NO LANES. It is a total free-for-all, cars coming out, going around, and turning out whenever they see an opening. Even more surprising is how kind they were! No honking and yelling for cutting people off, just people maneuvering around.

Once we were back on the bus, we had a little bit of driving to our next stop. It was an incredible combination of old and new structures with the Seine running throughout the city.

We were surprised at how popular 5 Guys was! We saw at least 4 or 5, but not a McDonald’s.

There were also tons of mopeds, as expected. What was interesting is that it wasn’t exactly warm, so driving with the wind would be so cold! We noticed that most of the riders had a thick canvas-like blanket that was attached to the bike to keep their legs warm!

Notre Dame and Exploring

Our next stop was probably what Nathan was most looking forward to. Not only the rich history around Notre Dame, but also knowing that 6 years prior (in 2019), the cathedral had a major fire that destroyed the roof.

The interior had reopened before our visit, but we only had about 30 minutes to take a break and explore the area, and the line to get in was LONG.

It was really interesting to walk around the cathedral. From the front, it looks like nothing happened, but you turn the corner and see the extensive scaffolding and the repairs they are working on.

They have done a great job putting put information about the repairs and still making it accessible while restoring it.

This area also happened to be our break time, so we meandered around the shops and restaurants nearby. I regret not buying something from the street vendors now but we were a little intimidated and we didn’t have euros, only credit cards, and that can always be hit or miss at a street vendor.

The Croque M’s looked so good, and I thought it was fun and local not to call them their full name, Croque Monsieur. Plus, I wanted to try the “hot dog” that was clearly not an American hot dog 😄.

Nathan also ran into the same issue with the lack of drip coffee. The stands had hot chocolate or spiced wine to warm up with, which I thought was fascinating. Hot chocolate always felt like a very Mormon thing to me as a coffee substitute, but it seemed very popular across Europe.

Per usual, I had to give the local restrooms a try! Fair warning that if you don’t want to read about bathrooms, then you can skip ahead here; otherwise, come with me on an adventure!

First, this was a free public toilet, which was impressive; normally, you have to pay a $1 or something.

With that in mind, I was fully prepared for a national park-level pit toilet. This both exceeded those expectations but also confused me.

The right side was a urinal with a stall-like door, which was a little odd, but it meant you could see somewhat if it was occupied or not. Nathan said it was only weird because you are standing on a grate with water running down the side of the wall like a waterfall, and you just aimed for that 🤣.

The left side was an enclosed sink and toilet. When it was clear, the light turned green, and there was a sensor to slide the door open. Once inside, I was trying to figure out how to lock the door, but I was apparently hitting the manual open button, so after a few tries, I realized you just have to wait and it will automatically lock for you. Though I think that means you are on a timer or something??

Once inside, you have a toilet and a sink which was impressive because I had such low expectations. I also noticed that I was standing on a grate and everything seemed wet. I later realized that there is some kind of full room sanitation cycle in between users that kept everything reasonably clean.

When I went to wash my hands, I was slightly attacked by the hand dryer, which was pointed directly at the bowl of water, which was draining too slowly, so all the water was pushed out and back on you 🤣.

All in all, one of the more adventurous bathroom experiences, but still totally worth it when you need to go!

Also, I was impressed that there was an outside sink and potable water, so anyone could use those facilities. I feel like in the States, they wouldn’t care at all about people passing to give them facilities like that so I thought it was cool.

By this time it we were due back with our group to continue on our tour. I will say things got a little drailed at this point but it’s overarching story so I will save that for the end!

Louvre

Instead of another bus ride, this time we got to walk through the city for a bit as we made our way to the Louvre.

The building and surrounding courtyards were stunning and massive! I can’t even imagine seeing all the artwork and history stored within. The guide said you need days in order to see the whole thing and I believe it. We also learned that it used to be a fort, so there is a moat surrounding the building.

As you can probably tell from the pictures, the sun had set and our tour had come to an end. While we only got to see the outer highlights, it was still a fantastic tour.

Drama! 🤣

So there were two funny stories that ran throughout the day, but didn’t have anything to do with the visit, so I didn’t want to distract from that.

First, had to do with our guide and a presumed single gentleman in our tour group. While we waited at Notre Dame for the second funny story, we noticed that this guy was chatting up the guide nonstop. We smirked and moved on with our conversation and such.

Once we started walking, we noticed he was always walking right next to her, chatting the whole time. We kept debating if she was just being nice and doing her job or if she was good with the attention.

There were few photo opportunities as we walked, so he would pause and take pictures and then realize that she kept walking, and he would do this little job thing to catch up to her, and at the last minute, slow down to look nonchalant. This happened multiple times, to the point that we were ready to catch it on video when he fell behind again.

At some point, I think Nathan had asked her a question or something, and she mentioned that she and her husband moved to Paris for tourism. Nathan and I started laughing once we realized she was just doing her job and being nice to the guy, but he stayed by her side the rest of the walk.

It was all completely innocent and no actual issue, but we thought it was just funny and silly to watch.

The second funny story is only funny now. It was actually kind of annoying and problematic in the moment.

So during our break at Notre Dame, we had like 30 or 40 minutes to wander around and had a clear meetup spot. We also exchanged phone numbers on the bus with our bus guide in case of an emergency.

At the agreed-upon time, Nathan and I are there along with the majority of the group… except 1 person.

Being nice and the fact that the tour guides can’t necessarily leave someone behind, we waited. Then the bus guide decided to go look around for the lady, and we waited some more. About 45 minutes passed the time we were supposed to meet, and the two guides talked it out and the bus guide is going to stay around Notre Dame in case the lady shows up, and the tour guide will keep us moving.

So we make it all the way through the Louvre, where our bus is parked in their garage. Still no word from the bus guide, and if this lady had been found yet. The tour guide decides that she is going to back and meet up with the bus guide and all of us are to wait in the bus.

Now, because we waited originally we area already 30ish minutes behind schedule. Thankfully we always book excursions through the cruiseline so Nathan and I are not that concerned. We are not that far from Southhampton, which was our destination for the next day and we knew whatever happened the cruise would get us where we needed to go.

The rest of the bus, however, doesn’t seem to realize this, and they start freaking out. First, it was repeating a joke that the comedian onboard had started about demanding a refund for any tiny inconvenience. Then some people were looking up trains to book a ticket to Southampton themselves, thankfully service was crap in the basement of a cement garage, so I don’t think they were actually able to do that.

After that, there was panic that the bus driver was lost. The bus was turned off (because, ya know, the environment and exhausted fumes in an underground garage), and so the back of the bus was now convinced we had been forgotten about and were stuck on the bus.

It would have made more sense if we were on a pub tour of some sort, give their odd behaviour the excuse of being drunk, but nope, they were all sober adults acting like the world was ending.

Thankfully, after a while, someone up front got the attention of the bus driver to open up the doors because it was getting a little toasty inside. It also helped calm them down that there was a representative of some kind.

At some point during all of this, they tried calling the bus guide, who we had exchanged phone numbers with. All they could get was a dial tone, and Nathan realized later on that they were entering the wrong number because her 1’s looked like 7s, which apparently is common in Europe??

After an hour of sitting on the bus, the driver was able to get a hold of the guides, and we made our way through the city to meet back up with them.

We said our goodbyes to the tour guide, and the bus guide joined us to head back to La Havre, where she lived.

Nathan and I felt so bad, the bus guide was so sweet but she was clearly beyond flustered with the situation and had no problem doing a tell-all for us 🤣.

The lost lady had apparently called a taxi from Notre Dame to go back to the cruise ship, but didn’t tell anyone. If the story were were told is to be believed, they had to call her emergency contacts from the ship to finally get in contact with her and figure out where she was.

So we spent almost 2 hours waiting for this person, and they were long gone.

This meant we were 100% late to get back to the ship, but not much we could do since we still had a 3-hour drive back.

When we got to the dock, instead of parking where we had been picked up in the morning. The bus literally drove up to the gangway so we could walk straight on, and the ship took off almost as soon as we were done transferring from the bus.

Food was all long since closed except for the one 24-hour pub, so you had a bus load of people all heading there for food, since we really weren’t fed at all during the day.

I was a little nervous because we hadn’t set our bags outside our room before we left, and we were long past the time they were supposed to pick them up. We took the chance, and thankfully, they were still picked up and appropriately placed out the next morning in Southampton.

Like I said, it’s funny now but maybe not so much in the moment. Thought it made our day memorable!

Just like our day in Berlin, we missed so much in this city, especially really diving into the details of the different sights. You could easily spend a week here and probably still need more time.

Surprisingly, I want to come back to do just that, and I truly didn’t think I would say that at the start of this trip. But for now – au revoir, à la prochaine fois!