Recently, my husband and I celebrated five years of marriage!! To celebrate, we spent a few days in Paris with a day trip to London on the day of our anniversary. We had the time of our lives during this vacation and it fueled our desire to travel the world even more. I hope you’ll bear with me as I share post after post of our experience over the course of this month.
To start, I wanted to share our travel plan with you. I think it’s helpful to see what others try to do/fit in while they’re on vacation to give you a feel for the types of things you can do. When I conduct research in order to plan out our trips, I pull from many different sources, including blog posts to come up with a travel plan that will work for us. We had a full day of travel to get to Paris which spilled into the next day due to the six (6) hours (ahead) time difference. We then had four (4) days to explore Paris with one of those days being a day trip to London, then another full day of travel back to the States. With that said, we had a lot to fit in in a short amount of time and didn’t get to cover nearly as much as I would have liked.
Below is a high-level overview of what each day looked like for us.
Day 1 – Arrival Day (Paris)
- Find our way to our Airbnb rental on the outskirts of Paris, and get settled.
- Walk the streets of the city.
- Airbnb Meetup — We went to the wrong location and missed this :(.
- Dinner – Le Cercle
- Ride Metro — To get a feel for the system and how to get around.
- Rest — To try to shake off the jetlag a bit and get ready for the days ahead.
Day 2 – Tour Day (Paris)
- Breakfast – Cafe Gustave
- Eiffel Tower
- Lunch – Le Champ de Mar
- Louvre Museum
- Seine River Cruise
- Dinner – Boulangerie Patisserie de la Tour Eiffel
Day 3 – Anniversary Trip (London)
- Eurostar (train) to London
- On/Off Bus Tour
- St. Paul’s Cathedral
- Breakfast – Cafe Rouge
- Thames River Cruise
- Big Ben
- London Eye
- Westminister Abby
- Buckingham Palace
- Late Lunch/Early Dinner – Pizza Express
- Eurostar to Paris
Day 4 – Down Time (Paris)
- Anniversary Photo Shoot (w/ local photographer)
- Pastries + Things – Hure’, Createur De Plaisir
- Triumphal Arch
- Notre Dame
- Breakfast – Angelina’s
- Rest (8 hrs)
- Late Dinner in the heart of Paris – New-York a’ Paris
- Pack and get ready for early flight
In hindsight, I’d recommend nothing less than seven (7) full days to explore a place with one of those days being a rest day in the middle (not to include travel days). For this particular trip, we sacrificed sleep, getting only about 3 – 5 hours worth each night in order to maximize the time we had available. Most days we were up and out by 6am and didn’t return to the apartment until 11pm or later, then jet lag, among other things, kept us up later than normal.
I can’t say that I regret the duration of this particular trip due to the fact that we have young children that we were eager to get back to. Plus, a shorter stay meant lower costs. However, as our children get older, I look forward to taking 7, 10, and 14+ day vacations, both with and without them!
What are some “must do” things that you try to fit in when you’re on vacation?
Wow that is quick, but you packed in a lot. Between flight time and the jet lag I have to do at least 7 days, ideally more to justify the cost of the airline ticket, and so far I've been able to do that; but I totally get it that if you have X amount of days it's better to go and just really take advantage of the time you have there. I'm so intrigued by AIR bnb. We are spending a lot of money on hotels for our next trip, but I'm scared to use AirBNB. The one you used looks super cute.