Summer in Paris

Departure and walk through the Grand Boulevards

Let the dancing begin! Departure with an Air France flight at 7.20 from Marco Polo airport in Tessera (VE). We booked on the flight+hotel section. This way you can buy both the return flight and the hotel. We booked about ninety days before departure, spending just over € 300 each (flight+hotel). A real bargain, especially since as the months went by the price more than doubled. We decided to leave on the first flight early in the morning and return on the last one in the evening to make the most of the eight days we had available. We advise you to arrive at the airport not long after check-in opens if you want to sit in a particular seat on the plane, since the flag carriers assign seats when you collect your ticket. We left half an hour late and, once the turbulence caused by the bad weather was over, breakfast was served (included in the ticket price).

We landed at Charles de Gaulle airport only ten minutes late and, after orienting ourselves a bit with the French signs, we went to collect our luggage. The airport is about thirty kilometres from the centre of Paris, which you can reach by taxi (€40), by bus (Roissy-bus, €8.50) or by train. In Paris the city train network is called RER. These trains are similar to metro ones and are accessible with a single ticket valid for metro, RER and bus. On the website you'll find all the information on Paris transport. We opted for the RER. The line leaving the airport is B. The station is near terminal 2F (if you fly with Air France you land right here). A single ticket costs €8.10 each. Unlike in Italy, in Paris all the automatic ticket machines work only with coins and not with banknotes. Anyway, if you don't want to queue at the ticket office, right next to it there's a coin-changing machine.

The journey takes 35-40 minutes. We got off at Chatelet Les Halles and from there took metro line 7 towards Porte d'Italie, the stop closest to our hotel. At first you feel a bit lost with all the changes, but once you've found a metro map and located the signs on the walls, everything will seem very straightforward; remember to always check the terminus of the line you want to take. As in other cities, the Paris metro is also divided into zones: the ticket price varies according to the zones crossed.

The ticket remains valid until you leave the station, so with the same ticket you can get off one train and get on another, as long as the arrival station is in the same zone of validity as the ticket, otherwise the exit gates won't open! Less than a ten-minute walk from the metro stop is our hotel, booked on the Air France site: Holiday Inn Express Porte d'Italie, 1/3 Rue Elisee Reclus, Kremlin Bicentre, 3 stars. Once we showed the booking receipt at reception, we were given 2 magnetic keys. The room isn't very big, but it's clean, very cosy and well soundproofed. There's a TV with about twenty satellite channels, a radio alarm clock, a kettle for tea and coffee, the telephone socket for connecting to the internet (for a fee). The en-suite bathroom is complete with sink, toilet, bath, hairdryer, towels, soap and shower gel.

After eating a sandwich brought from home and resting a bit, we decide to set off to discover Paris. Once at the station we first of all bought two carnets of tickets (valid for metro, bus and RER within zone 1). There are several ticket options, which vary according to how you intend to use public transport: a single ticket costs €1.40, a carnet of 10 tickets costs €10.70, there's then the Paris Visite which allows unlimited access and is valid for 1, 2, 3 or 5 days, the Orange card similar to the Paris Visite but cheaper, valid however only from Monday to Sunday, the Mobilis valid for a single day. All the information and prices are on We opted for the carnets, having decided to get into the centre by metro every day and then move around on foot.

On this first afternoon we took a walk along the Grand Boulevards, seeing the Opèra theatre, the church of the Madeleine (free admission), Place Vendome with Napoleon's column. We then passed through Place de la Concorde, the Tuileries gardens until we arrived in front of the Louvre Pyramid, which we were impatient to see. Our walk then continued past the church of St. Eustache, then back to the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in front of the Louvre palace. Strange as it may seem, in Paris there are very few supermarkets and they're very well hidden too! So as soon as we spotted one we decided to buy a cold pasta dish and a salad and went to eat them in the hotel room since we were tired and the weather wasn't the best.

Versailles

Today we're going to Versailles! Wake-up at 6.00, we get dressed and go down for breakfast, included in the room price: coffee, milk, tea, chocolate, yoghurt, the inevitable baguette, jam, ham, brioche, orange and grapefruit juice, in short every good thing! Breakfast is served every day from 6.30 to 10.30, but if you want to find everything I've listed you'd better arrive before 9.30 at the latest! To get to Versailles you have to take RER line C and get off at Versailles Rive Gauche. Be careful, because some metro and RER lines split at certain points: before taking the train always pay attention to the terminus. A single ticket costs €2.70 per person; there are no reductions if you buy the return at the same time. In 40 minutes we reach our stop. To get to the palace you have to leave the station, turn right and then left at the first crossroads.

Anyway, if you have any difficulty just follow the crowd! The castle opens at 9.00, but since the queue to get in was endless, we decided to visit the garden first. Admission is free except on public holidays when the water shows take place. The spectacle that will appear before your eyes is indescribable: an enormous expanse of green will enfold you. The gardens can be visited on foot, or by paying to hire a bicycle or an electric car, or on a horse-drawn carriage. After a good walk we arrive in front of the Petit Trianon. It opens at 12.00 and the ticket (€9.00) allows access to this palace, the Grand Trianon and Marie Antoinette's Estate. After wandering far and wide around these places we decide to buy a sandwich to eat sitting on the grass.

A tip: get over any craving for ice cream, since all over Paris a scoop costs more than €2 and a Magnum or a Cone costs a good €3.50! Over the top! Rested and with full stomachs we decide to visit the castle too. The ticket price is €13.50; after 16.00 you pay the reduced rate (€10). Louis XIV's residence is immense, furnished and frescoed salons follow one after another. The highlight of the visit is the hall of mirrors, a long sumptuous corridor whose walls are covered with mirrors, a rarity for the time. Unfortunately at this time the hall is being restored and can only be admired for half its length. For all the information, opening times, prices and to download the maps, visit the site Once our visit is over we take the RER again and go back to the centre. Here we decide to stop at a pseudo Italian pizzeria.

The pizza isn't bad but it has very little of either pizza or Italian about it! Since the Louvre museum is free on Friday evenings after 18.00 for visitors under 26, we decide to pop in and see the main works. We enter through the main entrance via the Pyramid. The Louvre is open every day from 9.00 to 18.00 except Tuesday. Wednesday and Friday until 22.00. The rate is €8.50, €6.00 after 18.00 on Wednesday and Friday. For information Since we planned to come back more calmly another day, we rushed to the Denon wing where "the Mona Lisa" is displayed. Our choice was a good one since there must have been ten people at most in front of the painting! We then saw "the Wedding at Cana" by Veronese, the "Nike of Samothrace", "Liberty Leading the People" by Delacroix, "the Oath of the Horatii" by David, "the Raft of the Medusa" by Gericault, "Cupid and Psyche" by Canova.

If you want to see the Pyramid lit up you have to wait until 22.00.

Pigalle, Sacre Coeur, City of Science

Today we're going to the place of perdition! We went to visit the Pigalle district and take the ritual photo in front of the Moulin Rouge. Joking aside, between sex shops and nightclubs, come prepared for what you'll see... Quickening our pace, we arrive at the foot of the little hill on which the Sacrè Coeur basilica stands. You can go up either on foot or by the funicular, accessible with a metro ticket. At the top of the hill you can admire much of Paris. The basilica, much criticised by Parisians, rises white and imposing above our heads. Admission is free, so we decide to go in for a visit. Once out and back down, we take the metro heading for Père Lachaise Cemetery, the largest in Paris, where many great names are buried, including Oscar Wilde, Amedeo Modigliani, Maria Callas, Marcel Proust, Jim Morrison, Moliere, Ingres, Gericault, Bellini, Rossini, Delacroix.

We advise you to buy a map at the cemetery entrance (€2.00) or to note down the tombs you want to visit by looking at the map posted just inside. On the website you can take a virtual tour of the cemetery. After eating a baguette with ham taken from the hotel in the morning, we head towards La Villette, to visit the City of Science and Industry, one of the largest interactive museums of its kind in the world. Information on The museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00 to 18.00, Sundays until 19.00. By buying the ticket (€7.50 full, €5.50 reduced for under-25s) you get access to the permanent exhibitions and to a 3D film with the special little glasses. The permanent exhibitions cover the whole universe of science: space, the car, aeronautics, energy, images, genetics, sounds, mathematics, physics, rocks and volcanoes, stars and galaxies, light games.

Suitable for both children and adults, it lets you get hands-on with everything learned over years of study. Once out of the museum you can admire the dome of the Geode, an immense cinema whose images are projected onto a huge hemispherical screen (for a fee). The outdoor park is immense, it's one of the few parks where you can lie on the grass! By now it's evening, we decide to eat at Quick, a fast food place similar to Mac Donald's, and then straight to the hotel.

Rodin Museum, Louvre, Eiffel Tower

On the first Sunday of every month most Paris museums are free. If you want to take the opportunity and visit them on this day, you have to bear in mind that you certainly won't be the only ones who had this idea! We had planned to visit the Musée d'Orsay but once we saw the queue waiting to get in, we decided to postpone the visit to another day. We therefore headed for the Rodin Museum (open Tuesday to Sunday from 9.30 to 17.45). We arrived a few seconds before opening and there wasn't much of a queue either. The museum is really lovely: a large garden houses numerous bronze statues, including "the Thinker" and "the Gates of Hell"; inside the building in the middle of the park, the Hotel Biron, the other sculptures are kept, among which the famous "Kiss" stands out. On the website you'll find, besides lots of useful information, the maps in pdf too.

After eating a sandwich, we headed for the Louvre. Here too the queue was very long. However, we entered through one of the two entrances located at the sides of the Carrousel arch. These entrances are also listed on the museum's official website, but few people decide to enter from here and insist on queueing to get in from the Pyramid side. Once down the stairs you find yourself in the museum's underground corridors until you come out in front of the inverted pyramid that many will know from having read or seen "The Da Vinci Code". After five minutes, map in hand, we were already in front of paintings and statues. As everyone says, it's impossible to visit the Louvre completely in a single day. So, unless you want to see all the works, decide before you start which areas you want to see. In the free guide handed out at the information desk, all the most important works are listed.

Photos are forbidden in some rooms; the guards seem very strict with those who break the rules! Today the crowd in front of the "Mona Lisa" is really big, so we passed by quickly since we'd already seen it on Friday. Once the visit was over we headed for the Musée de l'Orangerie ( also free on this day. Honestly, after an hour of queueing, we expected to find something better. Don't get me wrong, Manet's "Water Lilies" are on display, but apart from these, nothing else of note. So we continued towards the Eiffel Tower, finding it before us in all its majesty. But can you get right up to it and not go up it? Certainly not! So we went over to the ticket office to buy tickets: there are 3 ticket windows, two for going up by lift and one for going up on foot.

Given the queue there was for the lifts and given the prices, we opted for the stairs! With €3 each (reduced rate for under-25s) we got up to the second floor. For all the other prices and information, visit After 328 steps at a height of 57.63 metres you reach the first floor. The climb isn't very tiring; the stairs are nice and straight and not very steep. On the first floor there are a few little shops, a restaurant and the post office. If you bring your postcards here, they'll send them off with the special stamp depicting the Tour Eiffel. The view is already breathtaking, but climbing up to the 668th step you reach 115.75 metres and arrive at the second floor. From here the view is much more striking. Here too there are other souvenir shops, another restaurant and the ticket offices if you want to go up to the top of the Tower (only by lift).

We decided it was better to go down and fill our bellies in the shadow of the great steel monster. After resting seated in the Jardin du Champ de Mars, we decided to take the metro and go back to the hotel to rest our weary limbs.

Notre Dame, Picasso Museum, Pompidou Centre

Yesterday at the Musée de l'Orangerie we bought the Paris Museum Pass and we start making the most of it from today. With this pass, available for 2, 4 or 6 consecutive days, you can visit about sixty Paris museums free of charge, almost always avoiding the queues because where possible you enter through a priority entrance. All the information on The 2-day Pass costs €30, the 4-day one €45 and the 6-day one €60. You can buy it on any day at all the participating museums; then you just write your name, surname and the start date of validity in pen. We tried to group together all the museums where we could use the Museum Pass, so the 2-day card was enough for us. We therefore started with Notre-Dame Cathedral ( Admission to the cathedral is free. You then have to go out and head over near the north tower if you want to go up to see the famous gargouille.

The waiting queue was more than an hour long since 20 people go up every 10 minutes for safety reasons. For the same reason there's no priority access for Paris Museum Pass holders. Anyway, with the Pass you avoid paying admission to the Towers which costs about €6. The stairs to go up this time are spiral, about 300 steps, and you arrive panting at the gallery of the chimeras, located 46 metres above ground, which owes its name to the statues decorating the corners of the balustrade. Here you see the stryge, the winged creature featured in many postcards which, with its pensive attitude, seems never to tire of contemplating the panorama of the capital.

Passing through this open-air corridor, you reach the south tower where you can see the cathedral's largest bell, a colossus of 13 tonnes to which you must add the 500 kilos of the clapper! Once back down we went to have lunch in the garden at the tip of the island, near the Pont Neuf. Today it's cold pasta and a big salad bought from one of the rare supermarkets! Once we finished eating we headed for the Sainte Chapelle ( a church built on two levels: the lower chapel, reserved for the servants, whose vaults frescoed like a starry sky rest on slender columns with hooked capitals, and the upper chapel where Gothic architecture reveals itself in all its splendour: the high vaults float above the decorated stained-glass windows that wrap around all the walls. Admission to this church is for a fee (€3.50), free for Pass holders.

We then took a walk around Ile Saint Louis, the second island surrounded by the Seine. Here it feels like you've been transported to another world: speed and frenzy are replaced by calm and silence, the great crowded streets of the metropolis give way to narrow lanes crossed only by pedestrians and bicycles. Perhaps it's the last place in Paris not to have been transformed by cosmopolitanism. We cross the Pont de Sully and find ourselves back in modern Paris! Our next goal is the Picasso Museum. The museum is open every day from 9.30 to 18.00, closed on Tuesday. The ticket costs €6.50, €4.50 for under-25s, free for Museum Pass holders. For all the information The museum, entirely dedicated to Pablo Picasso, houses 251 paintings and 160 sculptures, as well as ceramics and numerous drawings. We're sure that lovers of this artist will find such a museum very interesting.

The last stop of the day is the Georges Pompidou National Centre for Art and Culture ( The building certainly doesn't go unnoticed: it was designed by the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers who decided to bring all the load-bearing elements, the stairs, the air, water and electricity ducting outside, so as to reserve as much space as possible for the exhibitions inside. This makes the Pompidou Centre look like a strange brightly coloured box. In this museum too you get in free with the Pass (otherwise €10 full, €8 reduced). The museum houses the most important collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, from the beginning of the 1900s to the present day. Honestly, it was the museum we liked least. Tonight we're dining at Pizza Hut, a pizza chain we had already tried last year in London. The pizza isn't bad, even if it has nothing to do with the pizza we're used to!

Orsay Museum and walk along the Champs Elysee

In the first part of the morning we'll go and visit a few churches. We start with St. Severin (free admission) but we only see it from the outside since it opens at 12.00. We then move on to the Pantheon (

Back to being kids at Disneyland!

Today we become kids again! Disneyland Resort Paris awaits us! You get there easily in 40 minutes by taking RER line A heading towards Marne la Vallée-Chessy. A one-way ticket costs €6.25 per person. The train takes you right to the doorstep of the amusement park. The admission ticket price is a bit exorbitant (€43), but by the end of the day we discovered it was truly worth it! As soon as you enter, you find yourself on Main Street and you're completely enveloped by the Disney magic: music, cheerfulness, costumed characters — it really feels like being inside a cartoon. This is the area full of souvenir shops and where the parades with cartoon and fairy-tale characters are held.

Besides this, the park is divided into four other worlds: Discoveryland where you can ride the new attraction inspired by Toy Story, a screaming Space Mountain that will take you to the edges of the universe (do it on an empty stomach, you'll feel a bit queasy when you get off!), a space shuttle, and a 3D cinema with the characters from "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." Then you move on to Fantasyland with the famous Sleeping Beauty castle, the carousel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, the Alice in Wonderland maze (very fun and immersive, you have a blast!). The last two areas are Adventureland with a thrilling roller coaster inspired by Indiana Jones and the Pirates ship inspired by "The Curse of the Black Pearl," and Frontierland with Big Thunder Mountain and the haunted house. Six attractions have the FastPass service that lets you skip the long waiting lines.

It works like this: insert your park admission ticket into the FastPass machine at the entrance of the attraction; you'll be given a ticket indicating the time slot (half an hour) when you can come back; in the meantime go visit the other attractions. Once you return within the indicated time slot, you can access the attraction through a priority line. All the information can be found on Unfortunately evening has come, if you want you can stay for the fireworks around 11:00 PM. Remember though to check the RER schedule since the last train to the city center leaves shortly after midnight.

Last day

Unfortunately, as always happens with beautiful things, the last day has arrived… Today we can sleep in a bit later, we pack our suitcases, have breakfast, and hand in the room keys. Since we'll be taking the flight in the evening, we leave our suitcases in the hotel's luggage storage. For today there isn't much left to see. We take the metro to the Palais de Chaillot where you can get the most beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower. We then decide to head towards the center. Getting off at the Tuileries stop on line 1, you find yourself in front of a self-service restaurant. The lunch was truly excellent and succulent, spending about ten euros each. Since we still had a few hours available, we sat down to sunbathe in the gardens in front of the Louvre. The last photos in front of the Pyramid and we went back to the hotel to pick up our suitcases.

Retracing the route we took on the way there, we took RER line B at Chatelet Les Halles and arrived at the airport. The flight leaves at 9:05 PM, so we have plenty of time to have dinner, check in, and do some last-minute shopping. The plane took off on time, luckily this evening the weather is clear. At this hour the seats are almost all empty, it almost feels like having the whole plane to ourselves! The flight attendants serve us some snacks and drinks. Everything goes smoothly, so much so that we even land 15 minutes early.

I hope you found our story interesting and that maybe it brought back nice memories if you've already been to Paris or that it sparked some curiosity if you were planning to go. If you have any questions, want information, or for any other reason, you can write to me at matfino@tele2.it. Bye and see you next time!