Starting Off in Paris
Our big vacation trip for 2014 was to spend a week in Paris and a week in London. Felicia, Kendra, Susie and I spent the middle two weeks of August sightseeing in two beautiful cities and avoiding the Dallas heat. We wanted Kendra to get to visit more of Europe. Felicia found out that it would cost us less to fly into and out of Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) in Paris than flying into and out of London, so we went to Paris first and we took the Eurostar train from Paris, under the English Channel to London and then back to Paris. We started and finished our trip in Paris. If you look at our vacation photos from Sept 1998 and you will see that we went to a lot of the same places in London and Paris, but on that trip, we crossed the English Channel by boat with Susie and Larry. The boat left the UK from Dover (we saw the White Cliffs of Dover) and landed in France at Calais. The Eurostar was nice and fast, but I liked crossing on the ferry better.
Click on any photo to see a larger view
We started off our sightseeing in Paris by using the open top, double-decker bus tours, where we could hop on/off at any stop. We took a boat tour on the Seine River through the center of Paris, we learned how to ride the underground Metro trains all around town. We hired two pedi-cabs to drive us from the Eiffel Tower to the center of the Louvre, racing through the busy afternoon car traffic. We also walked for miles and miles. Despite my aching back, we covered a lot of ground.
The French people understand how to take it easy, walk slow, play and lay on the grass in their large, beautiful parks during the middle of the weekday, so we tried to keep up and lay down as much as possible.
We ate a lot, had too much coffee and wine and I laid down any time that I could.
The 2 photos above were at the Place des Voges in the Marais area of Paris. This is a 400-year-old park with 9 houses on each side and considered one of the most beautiful parks in Paris.
Kendra wanted to eat bread and cheese in the park (thanks Clint). That was one of my favorite meals in Paris. We also picked up some peanut flavored cheese puffs by mistake.
On our first days in Paris, we stayed at the Hotel Du Midi on Avenue Rene Coty (below) in the Montparnasse area, just south of the Luxembourg Gardens. Our hotel was close to a metro and RER station and right by the Catacombs and was about 1 mile south of the Seine River. The photos above show us laying down in the Luxembourg Gardens. The area around our hotel was filled with cafés, bakeries and sandwich shops. We ate croissants, wine, beer and cappuccino and let our 15-year-old kid wander around the neighborhood by herself (I guess that I have not watched the movie Taken enough).
Some of the things we did in Paris:
- Go to top of Eiffel Tower.
- See central Paris from double decker buses.
- Take the Metro all over the city.
- Eat a meal of bread and cheese in the park.
- People watch from the outdoor cafés.
- Drink a lot of coffee and wine.
- See the Arc de Triumph.
- Walk & shop along the Champs Élysées.
- Visit the Louvre (closed every Tuesday!)
- Decipher menus and try to talk to waiters.
We had great weather! It was cool & rained for less than one hour for the two weeks we were on our trip. That led some girls to buy 18 Euro umbrellas!
We walked for many miles, but central Paris is small. When we got tired of walking, we took the underground Metro to save time, or we just sat down and had a drink and watched people walk by. There are a lot of visitors to Paris in August, and it is a very diverse city we just enjoyed watching people stroll by, ride their mopeds or bikes around. We wanted to rent a bike to ride but we never did. You can rent them all over town and drop them off at a different location than where you rented the bike.
Kendra had saved up money all year, so she did a lot a shopping and got some very good deals on clothes and souvenirs.
Train to London
At right is the Gare Du Nord Train Station where we got on the high speed Eurostar train for a 2 hour trip to London, going under the English Channel through the tunnel.
Taking the Eurostar was convenient for us because we it was faster than going in and out of airports and it begins and ends near the centers of downtown London and Paris, so we picked close by hotels.
