Around Paris

When planning the trip, we had to be conscious of the amount of walking needed. Early on, plans to visit The Palace of Versailles were scrapped because of the amount of walking required. Eventually, I settled on the idea that a hop-on hop-off bus would allow us to see all the main sights and provide easy transport between them.

Our breakfast stop was at a place called Sir Winston. It probably does very well with tourists like us. They cancelled our breakfast booking, but we decided to take a look anyway, and we found an almost deserted café open to serve simple French breakfasts of coffee and croissants with scrambled eggs or muesli if wanted. It was very friendly and allowed us a break on the direct walk from the hotel to the Champs-Élysées, where we opted to pick up the Tootbus tour. We set off with a circuit of the Arc de Triomphe before heading towards the river via Trocadéro to the Eiffel Tower. We decided this would be a good place for the first hop-off, so we took a circuit of the Tower before returning to the stop and catching the next bus. Our first bus was quite empty, but each bus got busier as the day wore on. Luckily, we managed upstairs seats in pairs for every leg.

We were only on for a few stops before stopping at Boulevard Haussmann for the large department stores. I was quite taken with the architecture of Printemps, and we ended up in a seventh-floor café with a stunning view—across the Paris rooftops—of the Eiffel Tower (which dominated the day). Mum and Dad went for Crêpes Suzette, flambéed tableside, which I thought pretty brave in a department store café. Not something you’d see in M&S.

We walked down Boulevard Haussmann to look at the other stores before catching a bus to our next stop, Notre-Dame de Paris. This was the busiest stop of the day. A lot of work is still happening around the cathedral, but it remains impressive. I’d hoped to take a walk by the Seine, but we couldn’t find easy access to a decent stretch of bankside, and the nearest was in use by a film crew and closed to the rest of us. Instead, we took the remainder of the bus tour (Musée d'Orsay and Concorde) to our Champs-Élysées stop and walked back to the hotel, where everybody took a break until just after 5 pm when I’d booked an Uber to take us back to the Île de la Cité where we had a restaurant booked.

Brasserie les Deux Palais was much more French than last night’s venue and busier with tourists. It was, nonetheless, friendly if a little expensive. Three of us had French Onion Soup, which came with a very healthy cheesy topping. My steak was perfectly cooked; I think Mum was surprised by the size of the croque monsieur that she had chosen as a lighter option. The waiter was unimpressed by our choice of wine, but we stuck to our guns and opted not to buy something more expensive.

The timing was just right; when we finished coffee, we walked to Pont Neuf to join our evening river cruise. When we arrived, there was an enormous queue for our sailing, and we ended up unable to sit upstairs, instead having a cramped seat in the bar. Even though the view was restricted, I think it would have been too cold to be outside, so we ended up in the best place. The main attraction was another view of the hourly light show on the Eiffel Tower: the boat stopped alongside, and the enthusiastic tour guide provided a ten-to-one countdown. Once again, it’s an impressive sight, and it struck me how Paris has refrained from adding towers in the old part of the city, which means the Tower isn’t obstructed in any way.

When we got back to the landing, I booked a car back to the hotel so we could all retire before it was too late.