Day 1 Paris -Love lock bridge, Notre Dame
Day 2 Paris – Lourve Museum, Tuileries Garden, Eiffel Tower (Night)
Day 3 Paris – Musee d’Orsay, The Arc de Triomphe
Day 4 – Versailles Palace
Tips for travelling in Paris :
1. Buy metro tickets in Bulk. 1 Single Ticket cost 1.70 EUR. But 10 tickets cost 13.70 EUR. If you’re not traveling alone, you can definitely finish using 10 tickets during the entire span of your 3 days trip.
2. So save on dinner, opt for a good lunch. If you’re on budget and still want to enjoy good food, I suggest to eat your good meal during lunch time. Lunch menu differs little from the dinner menu but cost more than 50% less than the dinner prices.
3. Buy the Eiffel Tower tickets online – to prevent yourself from queue-ing for 2 to 3 hours.
4. Keep an eye on your things, Paris is really one of the more “dangerous” european country.
Day 1 Paris -Love lock bridge, Notre Dame
After we checked in at the hotel, we decided to take a stroll around Notre Dam and check out the area.
After walking for a bit, we saw a lot of people on a bridge and we decided to walk towards the direction. There, we found the Love Locks which is situated Pont de l’Archevêche. It’s a pity that Daniel and I didn’t bring a padlock, so we couldn’t put a lock on it. We kinda told ourselves that we will be back in the next few days to do it, but we really forgot all about it until the last day. Ohwells. You can always purchase a padlock from random people selling it near the bridge, but bear in mind that it’s probably illegal and most likely charged at exorbitant prices.
We arrived at the town hall, which is in fact right in front of the Notre Dame, which explains why it’s so crowded. After which, we decided to hunt down our first restaurant as part of the quest in search of the best duck confit.
Ma Salle a Manger
street-address Dauphine Paris,France (Louvre / Place Vendôme)
Tel: 33 1 43 29 52 34
We did our research and read a few blog reviews on this restaurant and found out that they have one of the better duck confits at reasonable prices and made a trip there. Their lunch set, which includes appetizer, main course and dessert was just slightly above €15 and since we were on a poor-student’s-budget, this restaurant sounds too good to be missed.
Fried Goat Cheese – Not too bad, but the portion is really small even for an appetizer, too small for my monstrous appetite.
I think Daniel ordered a Beef Goulash thing. It doesn’t look too pretty on the photo but it tastes really good. I’d say give it a try.
Amazing duck confit! I really liked it a lot. The meat is kinda soft and really easy to pull it apart with your fork, and the sauce went really well with it. I wouldn’t say that this is the best duck confit I had in Paris, but I think it’s the 2nd best I had in my 5 days here. The potato thing that came with it was also super delicious.
Crème Brûlée for dessert! All I can say is, there really isn’t anything you can complain about because it’s so yummy! The sugar crust at the top was nicely burnt and crispy. The service was also amazing – the waiters were all rather comedic and they’d attempt to talk to you and tell you a few jokes here and there but it’s also funny because I don’t understand what they are saying in French and had to give them a not-so-condescending laugh. It is no wonder that this restaurant is so highly recommended by so many people.
Visited Notre Dame de Paris after lunch. It was just 10 minutes walk away.
Back view of Notre Dame. We were really tired by 6pm because we woke up really early our train to Paris and decided to call it a day.
Day 2 Paris – Lourve Museum, Tuileries Garden, Eiffel Tower (Night)
Decided to start the day off with our duck confit lunch hunt. Actually it’s really because lunch is a lot cheaper than dinner despite the same menu offerings. We kind of decided that we will have a good lunch and a hobo dinner (basically anything that fills our tummy. Usually bread and ham from the local supermarket) for our entire trip to keep our budget in check.
I’d like to apologize for the fact that I really don’t remember the name of this restaurant. The duck confit wasn’t great, so I guess it’s okay if you give it a miss. It was about 10 Euros for a lunch course and it’s in a restaurant 15 minutes walk away from Lourve Museum.
Paris is really cheap if you’re a student or a student on exchange in EU schools. With your student card, you can enter most museums for free! We entered the Lourve Museum for free (Hurray to freebies!) The down side was that we had to queue in the cold for about 20 to 25 minutes because there’s ALWAYS a long queue at these tourist-infested places in Paris. If you want to bypass the queue, you’d have to reserve your tickets online or get the Paris museum pass.
An adult ticket is €12
Paris Museum Pass prices
2 days – €42
4 days – €56
6 days – €69
You can find more information about it in the link below.
http://en.parismuseumpass.com/rub-the-pass-price-36.htm
Saw the famous Venus de Milo.
I think one of the main reasons why Lourve Museum got so famous is because it houses the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. But really, it falls short of my expectation because there were so many other huge and prettier paintings inside. There were a huge crowd in front of this painting, because everyone wanted to squeeze and take the perfect shot of the painting and maybe go “Waaa I saw the ORIGINAL mona lisa painting, I can die now”.
Okay, except that I wasn’t really kidding because I did overhear someone saying that. At that moment, I rolled my eyes, took a good look at that person, gave them my most judgmental glare and walked off.
Mandatory shot. There is actually a queue to stand on this thing lol.
Entrance to Jardin des Tuileries which is just outside of the Lourve Museum.
I took this picture because I love naked women ^^ Who doesn’t? 😀
There were many kids holding a stick and pushing their toy boats in the pond. I couldn’t quite figure out what they were doing until about 10 minutes later. They were all trying to get their boats to the center of the pond. This girl was rather successful as you can see from the pictures later.
Pierre Herme Paris.
They have quite a number of outlets in Paris, so do check them out online. We went to the one closest to the Tuileries Garden and the opera house. It is said that they have the best macarons in the Paris.
€12.50 for a box of 7, €2 for each individual macaron.
Hefty price indeed. I’d say give it a try so that you can show off to your friends “I had the best macaron in Paris!” To be fair, we had the Rose, Peppermint Tea, Salted Caramel and Chocolate macarons and they were all wonderful. In fact, the Salted Caramel one was rather impressive.
We decided to visit the Eiffel Tower next. That was also where we made our BIGGEST MISTAKE in our entire Paris trip. We did not buy our entrance ticket online and made the decision to queue for it. QUEUE-ING FOR IT. It definitely took us more than 2.5 hours to get to the ticket counter and another 30 minutes or 1 hour to get to the tower. Seriously, if 3 hours doesn’t sound a lot to you, add in the fact that we were waiting in the cold (because we went in February) and definitely NOT romantic at all. So I’d say, skip the queue and buy your tickets online. About 13 EUR to get to the top if you’re a student.
View from the top of the tower.
The Eiffel Tower sparkles every hour starting from 9pm to 1am. It only lasts about 5 minutes each time. We caught the one at 12am just when we were leaving the place.
Day 3 Paris – Musee d’Orsay
Had our breakfast at Brioche Doree. After having so many crossiants from many random bakeries, I declare Brioche Doree to have the BEST Crossiant.
Head down to Musee D’Orsay after breakfast and spent almost the entire there. It is FREAKING HUGE and free for EU students ^^ Free for us 😀
After which we head down to SADAHARU AOKI for the best pastry in Paris. We have heard raved reviews about this place and decided to hunt it down. The pastries were really amazing and they are also a Matcha specialist. Known for their Matcha pastries, we bought a few to try and it was truly heaven on earth for fans of green tea. I strongly advise you to make a trip there if time permits.
Sadaharu Aoki Pattiserie
35 Rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris, France
+33 1 45 44 48 90
http://www.sadaharuaoki.com/profil/en.html
Day 4 Paris – Palace of Versailles.
First of all, the reason why I HAD to include Palace of Versailles into my itinerary is rather immature. I read an article on Buzzfeed that says “19 penises you need to visit before you die” and apparently Palace of Versailles is one of the 19 places. You can click on the article if you’re interested but please do not judge me afterwards. Daniel gave me a mega WTF face when I showed him that and I remembered his reply was “I’m really speechless, I don’t know what to say to that” Okay.. to my huge disappointment, I couldn’t find it despite scrutinizing every room thoroughly. 😦 Leave me a comment if you managed to find it.
It’s about an hour train ride from the Paris City, so make sure you wake up early so that you can have more time at the palace. Food inside the palace is also exorbitantly priced, do bring some bread and snacks so that you can picnic while enjoying the beautiful scenery in there 😀
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tanyachen/penises-you-need-to-visit-before-you-die
Palace of Versailles is really really really HUGE. There were so many gardens, rooms and gardens. I’d say this is by far the LARGEST palace I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to a fair number in order to make this sweeping statement.
Wanted a Taylor-Swift-like dreamy shot in a palace. Didn’t happen because I’m obviously not Taylor Swift and therefore do not look like a princess.
Saw a pasture with many lambs on it before exiting. This shot is to express my love for kebab which is usually made of lamb meat. I really couldn’t resist taking this shot and to those visitors who saw this, sorry for freaking you out, not all asians are weird like me.
We had kebab for dinner at a random kebab place because seeing the lambs in the afternoon induced my kebab craving.
Day 5 – AU PETIT SUD OUEST – WE FOUND THE BEST DUCK CONFIT & FOIE GRAIS
AU PETIT SUD OUEST
46 av. de la Bourdonnais. 75007
Paris. +33 1 45 55 59 59
We tried to make a reservation for dinner, but it was fully booked and we booked it for lunch on a friday afternoon. To my pleasant surprise, it was almost empty during lunch hours and that meant that we had a nice quiet restaurant to ourselves.
There’s a bread toaster on every table for you to toast the bread. The first restaurant I’ve ever been to to have such awesome practice. I think in the long term, it’s good for the restaurant owners too, because they get to keep their bread for many days and nobody would ever complain about having stale bread because bread always tastes good when they are toasted. A pretty damn good idea right?
Foie Grais for appetizer – A freaking generous portion. 2 huge fillet of foie gras for only 20 EUR. I mean where can you get foie gras at the price, definitely not in Singapore! Usually, I don’t really like the taste of foie gras because they always have this fishy, powdery weird taste that I can’t really describe. But this foie gras is life-changing, it has changed my perspective of foie gras and now I’m a fan 😀 We got the one that is cooked with truffles, and the combination is amaaaazing!
The best duck confit in Paris 😀 Actually, I enjoyed the potatoes alot as well. I really have no idea how they made their potatoes, it isn’t oily, it’s rather fluffy and light. Fluffy potatoes, can you imagine?
Daniel had a braised duck in red wine sauce, which was really good too. Tender meat and delish sauce, there’s really nothing more you can ask for. I’d say this restaurant is a MUST-GO and it’s really affordable during lunch hours. We had the above 3 courses and creme brulee for dessert and it cost us a total of only 60 EUR. A reasonable splurge for the high quality of food 😀
EatYourTofu 