First-Timer’s Paris Travel Guide

Paris, the City of Light and the French capital is one of the most visited cities in the world, for its well known beauty, history and romance. If you are in Europe, and have about 3-4 days to spend in the city, here’s a great Paris travel itinerary compiled just for you to explore all that the city has to offer, and its must see places in the limited time that you can spare. Specially if you are someone like me, visiting this beauty for the first time, you’ve magically landed on the right page!

How to get there and How to get around in Paris

It was the Summer of 2018 that we decided to go on our first trip to Europe. We started the trip off with, no points for guessing, none other than Paris! We could get to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris directly from our Miami airport, and Charles de Gaulle airport is one such airport that is so well connected and having direct flights to most of the major cities around the world. So, it should be fairly easy to get there for any of you.

Paris is a very large city, so despite having a great local transportation system like the metro train or the buses, be prepared to walk around a lot too in order to explore the city and what it has to offer to the fullest.

The Best time and duration for visiting Paris

The peak season for visiting Paris has to be Summer hands down, like you might have guessed, and to be more specific, between April and October. There are also other periods that run peak like the Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day. This also means that the prices will be higher, and that there will be more crowds. If you are especially traveling on a budget, you might want to considering visiting out of these dates.

As for the duration of visit, you don’t need to go there for a week! Contrary to what most people suggest you to, you don’t need to stay in Paris for more than 4 days. If you do have an explicit purpose to do so, then you might have to, but really not otherwise. Also, to be really honest, Paris did not turn out to be my favorite city, I found other European cities to be rather interesting, so maybe that is why. Now if you belong to the lot who tend to fall in love with Paris, then you might absolutely want to spend more time. So, that was my take there, and I hope not to have offended anyone here with my personal opinion.

Where to stay in Paris

We for one, happened to stay at the Ibis Hotel, a little farther from the Paris Central, but nonetheless, it was a great accommodation. It was spacious enough to store our huge checkin bag unlike most European rooms not having enough room, like you might have already heard of. The downside of it though was that we had to travel up and down to the Central. This actually turned out to be a little tedious for us with all the public transportation and walks involved. On a fateful day, we were almost messing up with our itinerary because of a bus route that was canceled, so there is that caveat too. So, keep that in mind while booking your hotels specially if you’re running on a tight schedule! Luckily for us, we managed to somehow get around this situation and catch up on our itinerary.

So, this is the main reason why I suggest you to stay somewhere Central although it might be a touch more expensive. You might even end up saving more on the public transport over the course of a few days.

If you really are on a tight budget then you might want to consider staying at Hostels that happen to be a go to for many Backpackers!

Places worth visiting in Paris

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower…. Now this, without any doubt, has to top everyone’s list! And yes, you said it right, how could any Paris trip ever be complete without a visit to the iconic Eiffel Tower? So no surprises here, it had to top our list too! I’d also like to mention that while you are at it, be sure to get to the top of the Tower as well to catch a 360 degrees view of the beautiful city of Paris. Also to mention and like you can see from the below image, you can beautiful artworks of the Eiffel Tower captures by different artists, and like we made it a point to get back home with one of those, I highly recommend that you get one for yourself too!

The Louvre Museum

Being the biggest museum in the world, the Louvre has to be the next important place to visit after the Eiffel Tower, so be sure to make this a part of your agenda, even if it is just for a couple of hours. Being the best art museum in the world, it has a beautiful architecture and hosts wide variety of artwork from across history. The most famous work of the Louvre has to be Mona Lisa, so you cannot at any cost afford to miss that one while you are here.

Palace of Versailles

We set out early in the morning to visit the Palace of Versailles. We took the train to get here and more than half of our day here before heading for an evening view of the Eiffel Tower. As planned, we soaked in the gorgeousness of the Palace to our heart’s content in the time that we spent, and I have to mention that we found the Hall of Mirrors to be the most enthralling part of it. Another beautiful hard to miss part of this Palace while you’re here is the beautiful garden of Versailles.

Arc de Triomphe

We made our short trip to Arc de Triomphe monument on the day we landed in Paris. We kept this short and sweet exploration of ours solely for this day considering our long travel exhaustion all the way from Miami.

While you are here, it’s a very good idea to walk down the 2km long Champs-Elysées Avenue that runs right behind the Arc. This street will definitely leave you impressed with the majestic monuments lining up on either sides of it. It might also get you on some shopping spree if you’re interested. 😉

Sacre-Coeur

Standing on top of the hill of Montmartre, Sacre-Coeur, a place of worship, also happens to be the second highest point of the city after the Eiffel Tower. It has a stunning architectural style, no doubt. But the sole driving factor for us to visit this hill top monument was to get some interesting views of the Eiffel Tower, and, we were not disappointed! So, you might not want to give this a miss either!

Some Final Tips Before You Go

• Take all precautions for your personal safety: Paris is known for notorious pickpockets. So, I can’t stress this enough. Be extra careful about your belongings! Like they say, it is better to be safe than sorry.
• Be prepared to walk, like a lot: Although there is the public transportation system that is well connected and convenient enough, you will still have to walk a lot to get around places in Paris.
• Get Skip the line tickets for all major attractions: Be sure to get this before hand. You wouldn’t want to wait in queues specially if you’re short on time!
• Don’t forget the macaroons (or other French pastries): When in Paris, it is hard to resist your temptation to eat those colorful macaroons and other cute French pastries peeking from all those French pastries store windows. Also so you know, they taste even better than they look!
• Stick to the public transport and Metro: Cabs can be expensive and have heard Uber isn’t always reliable. The city is well connected with the metro and the bus system that are also clean, cheap and more reliable.

Your takeaway…

So, there you have it! Hopefully I’ve shared enough travel inspiration and tips to plan your upcoming 3 or 4 days trip to Paris. I know I haven’t covered too much food and where to eat. I’m of Indian origin so our inclination was towards the number of Indian restaurants that we found in almost every street in Paris. There were actually two of them across the street from the hotel where we stayed, so we stuck to those almost every day of our time there.

So, that should be a wrap for this post, and you ought to stay tuned for more coming from this blog, so do not forget to subscribe to my list! 😉 I’d also love to hear your highlights about your Paris trip once you are back, in the comments section below. Bye for now, and enjoy your trip to the City of Love!

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