How to Visit Paris in 2 Days

First Day - What an early wake-up!

Here we are, setting off, my girlfriend and I, alarm on Saturday morning at 4:00. The plane is at 6:30 from Malpensa airport and since we live very close we can get up a little later since we'd already checked in online. Easyjet flight bought 2 months earlier for 60 euros round trip each. We land after an hour and a half, Charles de Gaulle airport is immense. To get to the metro we follow the "Paris par train" sign, which after a 10-minute walk takes us to the ticket office, where we decide to get the "Paris Visite" card zone 1-6 for 38.50 euros for three days (it includes, besides the metro, RER trips to and from the airport and the RER to Versailles).

We set off and in about 40 minutes we find ourselves at the Gare du Nord station where we can take the metro to go to our hotel, also booked a couple of months earlier online (Ibis hotel in the Opera area at 55 euros per night per person). We decide to leave our luggage in the hotel's courtesy room and start touring the city. First stop is the Eiffel Tower, the day is very cloudy but the rain spares us for all three days, by now it's 10:30, we decide to get in line to buy tickets. We manage with a 40-minute wait, we get tickets to go all the way to the top, 12 euros per person by elevator. It seemed over, and instead you wait another 10 minutes in line to go up. Once we reach the second floor we realize it wasn't a great idea to get tickets to also go all the way to the top, the clouds already block our view and as if that weren't enough there are another 40 minutes of line to go up.

Once we got to the top you couldn't see anything, money and time wasted, too bad. So a piece of advice I'd give you if you have little time or if the day is cloudy, avoid wasting time and don't go up. It's almost 1:00 PM, we decide to get a sandwich and a coke each (cost 22 euros) at the first food stand heading toward Trocadero. After looking at the view from the Seine for a few minutes, we set off on foot toward the Arc de Triomphe, first along the Seine and then cutting through to see the American Cathedral from the outside. We find ourselves after about half an hour under the great arch, the usual ritual photos, we decide not to go up (I'd already been there a few years before and it wasn't worth it) and we go catch the metro to Place de la Concorde. At 2:15 we're there, the square is immense, the fountains are beautiful and the obelisk has its charm too.

From there we enter the Tuileries gardens, walking toward the Louvre, which however we decide to enter the following morning, given the line. We take the metro and around 3:30 we find ourselves below the Sacre Coeur church, perhaps one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen. We also visit the interior, unfortunately you can't take photos, I would have wanted a keepsake because even though it isn't as immense as Notre Dame in my opinion it's even more beautiful. Once outside we take a stroll in the Montmartre neighborhood, beautiful and full of artists, you can barely walk there are so many people. It's 5:00 PM and we decide to go back to the hotel to take a shower and get ready for dinner.

At 7:00 PM we go out and the best destination to eat something at a good price is definitely the Latin Quarter, you can find all types of cuisine at any price, we of course stop to look at the menu at an Italian restaurant where the "tout" grabs us and without realizing it we find ourselves seated at the table. We ate a very generous first course, a second course, dessert, half a liter of wine and coffee for a total price of 30 euros. As soon as we saw the bill we thought it was a mistake, and not knowing whether it was right or wrong, we rushed to pay before they could change the price:) At 10:30 PM, dead tired and also a little tipsy, we went to the hotel right after watching a few street performances, since the next day we had another good long walk ahead of us.

Second day - Tour de force

8:00 AM wake-up, we want to be at the Louvre for the opening and indeed by 9:30 we're already in line, luckily there are only a few people ahead of us. At 10:00 they open the gates and we immediately run to buy tickets (8 euros) to be able to see the Mona Lisa without too many people around. We spend a couple of hours visiting the museum, truly a fairy tale, it would take more days to appreciate all the works, but we also have other things to see. At noon we're outside, we set off and start heading toward Notre Dame, in 20 minutes on foot we get there. Beautiful from the outside and even more beautiful inside, moreover we were lucky enough to visit the church during a service. The music of the great organ is heavenly. Leaving the cathedral we head toward a small church not far from there, the church of St Julien, tiny but nice.

At this point we were heading toward the Luxembourg Gardens when, looking at the time, we realized it was still only 1:00 PM. We still had the whole day ahead of us. We therefore decide to go to Versailles and indeed by 2:00 PM we were already in front of the gates, after another hour of waiting (so as not to lose the habit) and having paid 17 euros we started visiting the palace, very beautiful, the thing we liked most was the Hall of Mirrors, though everything else deserves it too. After visiting the palace for an hour and a half we decide to go to the garden where there was a special event, the entrance was 8 euros. The gardens are worth the whole cost of the trip, they're perhaps the most beautiful in the world, and the combination of all those colors put together made the landscape unique. The flowers were so beautiful they looked fake!!! At 5:30 PM we decide to return to Paris.

We find ourselves at the church of Saint-Eustache around 7:00 PM, we wander a bit in the Les Halles neighborhood, which we find very engaging, and we stop to eat something at a pizza-by-the-slice place where we could easily have dinner. Around 8:00 PM the last stop of our tour de force. Place de la Pastille, a square that doesn't say much, like the next square a few hundred meters away, Place de Vosges. At this point, with our legs in pieces, we decide to go back to the hotel. Aurevouare Paris Fabrizio