August 12, 2013

7 days in Paris

Our goals for visiting Paris were simple: Wander the city, spend some quality time with friends and of course hit up a few record stores and patisseries along the way.

Each day, we picked a different neighborhood and then just explored its streets with few plans or ambitions. When you travel this way, you never know what to expect. Sometimes we would find ourselves lost in random areas with nothing going on, but other times we would stumble upon treasures like the little shop that specialized in hand-cut puzzles or the chocolate boutique selling some of best-made chocolates in France or a really great bookstore.
Along the way, we hit up the main attractions (Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, etc.), but we didn't pressure ourselves to do it all. As our friend Morten put it, "When you visit a city, don't go see everything. That way, there's good reason to come back."


On our last night, after all our friends had gone and we were so tired we didn't feel like doing much of anything, we had a dinner reservation at Violon d'Ingres. It's a place where a friend we trust claimed to have had the best meal of his life. How's that for an endorsement? After eating there ourselves, we had to agreeit was better than we could've imagined. And so we stumbled on a vacation tip we'll definitely use again: Go out on a high note. We could have easily gone to any nondescript cafe that night and ended our trip by basically just killing time; instead, we had a mind-blowing meal followed by champagne on the house, and a walk to the Eiffel Tower (which we hadn't yet seen up close). Parisians were still out picnicking on the grass when the lights went on, and the tower twinkled like a giant Christmas ornament. It was like Paris knew we were leaving, and this was the perfect finale.

3 comments:

Willy The Prince said...

How dreamy! J'adore Paris. ahhh

Christine | Life in a Dress said...

Great post, I'm going to Paris in September and I love the idea of going out on a high note.

Yvonne said...

@Christine, have a great time!