A weekend in Paris

Paris is my favourite City! Only a 2 hour plane journey away, we don’t take advantage and visit it enough. I decided last year to take an impromptu trip to the City of Lights and I spent the weekend with my husband, my mother and sister.

We stayed at Mercure Hotel at the Gare de Lyon, one of the main train and metro stations in Paris, a hub for transport that will take you anywhere in the city. All weekend we used the metro to get around, it is the fastest and cheapest way with multiday passes that can be purchased at the station or a city pass can be purchased before you travel. Paris hotel rooms are known to be small but the rooms in the Mercure Hotel were clean, modern and comfortable and the location was great.

We headed into the City Centre to the Champs-Élysées where we started our Hop-On Hop-Off tour. The bus tour is always the first thing to do, it gives you a full tour of the city and the top attractions. You can take the full tour and then decide which attraction you want to visit after or like the name suggests - hop off at each attraction and hop back on the bus which will take you to the next stop.

Paris is such a beautiful city with magnificent buildings and architecture; it is hard not to fall in love with Paris. We spent the whole weekend taking in all the sites. Place de la Concorde is lovely to visit at night because you get to enjoy the most amazing view of the Eiffel Tower as it sparkles, very romantic. The tour of Notre Dame was a nice treat, I had never been inside Notre Dame before. You can hire an mp3 tour guide that allows you to enjoy the Cathedral at your own leisure. With the commentary of the mp3 player, I had a very enjoyable walk through the beautiful Cathedral learning about its fascinating history.

Paris is famous for its Bistros, and you cannot visit this city without enjoying a café au lait while sitting outside on a busy Parisian avenue. A visit to one of the many bakeries to try some famous fresh pastries is another must. My absolute favourite was the River Cruise down the Seine and once again you are blown away by how beautiful this city is; the history, the art, it really is something to experience. We did our river cruise in the afternoon and when I return on my next trip I plan to do a dinner cruise along the Seine, something I’m looking forward to already!

Our hotel recommended a private transfer back to the airport, comfort is very important when you’re travelling and this certainly did the trick for us. We were back home in Dublin Sunday night, such a treat and a great way to spend a weekend.