Travel Guide | Paris, France
I have been so excited to start sharing these blog posts because I feel like it will be such a fun way to document and remember this once-in-a-lifetime trip that Coop and I got to take together while it is still just the two of us. Hopefully one day we will be able to revisit these places once our family has grown and our kids (God-willing) can appreciate a trip like this, but for now, these blog posts will serve as a place for us to revisit over the years to remember just how truly wonderful France and Italy were.
Like I have previously mentioned over on my Instagram Stories, I am going to write four mini blog posts to capture our itinerary from each spot over our two-week European adventure. First up is Paris, France. This was the very first stop of our trip, so let's get into it, d’accord! I will also answer any questions you all DM’d me along the way as well, especially if it pertains to the specific location I am writing about.
Before I get into the thick of it, I also want to mention that we had the help of a travel agent to help us plan this trip. I got a lot of questions about how we planned our two weeks overseas, so I wanted to mention this in the upfront. Coop and I have chatted about it already, but we absolutely loved using our travel agent for this trip. It took the thinking completely out of how we were going to get from point A to point B because it was all coordinated in advance by Kim.
Could we have done it completely ourselves without a travel agent’s help? Of course. But for us, this trip was meant for us to truly relax and unplug, and having someone help with the planning allowed us to do just that. Our travel agent’s information is below. I cannot recommend her more. She also helped us plan our honeymoon to Morea and Bora Bora.
Travel Agent Information
Name: Kimberly Shannon
Company: Acendas Travel - Kansas City
Email: kimberly.shannon@acendas.com
Traveling to Paris + COVID-19 Regulations
First let’s chat a little bit about how we got to Paris and some of the COVID protocols for getting into France. For context, we flew out of Washington D.C. straight into Charles de Gaulle airport.
If I could provide any tip for when you are booking your airfare, I highly recommend booking an overnight flight so you can sleep (or at least try to - hah!). It was about a seven hour flight to Paris from D.C. which got us into France around 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning (we flew out on Friday night, arrived in France early Saturday morning).
Before we could even get on the plane to go to Paris, we had to show our vaccination cards, along with our passports. There was some other paperwork we had to fill out as well, so just make sure you check ahead in terms of what you will need to have with you in order to board your international flight from the U.S..
I shared this link on my Stories awhile back to those of you who asked for it, but I will share it again here below because we found it SO helpful before we left. The site basically tells you anything and everything you need to have ready to go in terms of COVID regulations for the area you are traveling to. For example, we didn’t have to have a negative COVID test to get into France from the U.S. (just our vaccination cards) but we DID have to have a negative test to travel from France to Italy. This website will tell you exactly what you need to do. Again, something our travel agent provided us to help ease our minds. Another reason I cannot recommend her more!
Link: https://apply.joinsherpa.com/travel-restrictions
Once we got to Paris, we did have to wait a bit at customs. I would say it took about an hour or so from the time we landed to the time we cleared customs, so not brutally long. It could have just been because we were one of the very first flights that got in that morning, but our travel agent did mention that we would likely need to “pack our patience” - hah!
Once we got through customs though, it was a breeze. Our travel agent had set up transportation to and from the airport/train stations for our entire trip and it was honestly such a nice thing to have had. Again, could we have figured out a way to get from the airport to our hotel once we landed? Absolutely. But it was just nice to not have to think about anything like that and just truly enjoy the trip.
Where We Stayed | Hotel Raphael Paris
Once we got to Paris it was about a 45 minute drive to our hotel. Since we got in so early, our room wasn’t quite ready so we ended up leaving our bags with the concierge and walking down the street to a little café that was nearby called Carette. One of our very first café experiences and it was delightful to say the least.
Another quick little tip for you that we figured out right away. When you order your meals in France and Italy, you order everything at one time, which is obviously different from how we order our meals in the U.S.. We could tell our waitress was slightly annoyed with us because we didn’t know what we wanted to eat, just what type of coffee we wanted, causing her to have to come back to our table (oops!). I honestly wish that was how we did things here too because it allowed you to just BE and not be bothered sometimes by your waiter/waitress.
Another quick travel tip for when you arrive - try and take a little nap once you get checked into your hotel. Coop and I decided to take a quick power nap and I feel like that definitely helped us avoid any jet lag and allowed us to not waste our first full day in Paris. The hardest part is to ACTUALLY get out of bed when your alarm goes off after an hour 😉
Anyways, let’s chat a little bit about our hotel. First of all, it was STUNNING. Like so beautiful. Our room was simple but so elegant. I felt like a princess staying there and we also had a little view of the Eiffel Tower from our balcony. Honestly, we didn’t spend a TON of time at our hotel, but the hotel staff was so attentive to every detail and to anything we needed. We had an early excursion one morning to go to the Champagne Region of France for our Champagne tour and they brought us a full spread breakfast with coffee at 6:45 a.m. before we left so we could have something in our stomachs. I could not recommend this hotel more. Probably our personal favorite from the entire trip.
The rooftop also had a beautiful terrace that had an AMAZING view of the city and especially the Eiffel Tower. The cocktails were pretty darn good too 😉
Paris Itinerary
Day One
After we got ready and enjoyed a cocktail at the rooftop bar, we set out to explore the area around the Eiffel Tower. Coop had been to Paris before, but I was seeing it for the very first time and let me just say, it is so much larger in real life than you could ever imagine 😂 It was pretty touristy and crowded, but I never felt overwhelmed by the crowds. We didn’t go up in the Eiffel Tower or anything like that. Just sat on the lawn and enjoyed the views, aka people watching galore.
The first night we were there we went to a restaurant called, Mokus L’ecureuil. The pizza was wonderful and if you missed their bathrooms on my Stories, here is another picture just because 😂 The coolest bathrooms I have ever been in. I felt like I was in a rocket ship. Also, every night after dusk, the Eiffel Tower puts on a little sparkling light show at the top of the hour. Coop and I loved taking it in from the balcony of our hotel room. A perfect end to our first night there!
Day 2
The second day we woke up and decided to take a little jog up and down the Champs-Elysees. The shops were super super close to our hotel (about a five minute walk), so getting to kind of scope out the area while running, was super fun. I know not everyone is into working out on vacation and to be completely honest, it was kind of nice to have a break from my normal workout routine, but running on trips with Coop is one of my favorite ways to explore a new place.
After that, we got ready and went to see the Louvre. We didn’t actually go into the museum (not really our cup of tea) but we walked around outside for the majority of the morning. The Louvre (very similar to the Eiffel Tower) is much larger than you realize. Very beautiful. Since we hadn’t had breakfast yet, we grabbed lunch at a spot right across the street from the museum called, Café des Beaux-Arts. They had a live jazz trio playing music while we were there and it was a great little spot.
After scoping out the Louvre and grabbing a bite to eat, we hit up the Champs-Elysses to do some shopping. While you are in Paris, you have to grab some macarons from Laduree. You can actually eat lunch there (or just grab breakfast) but you have to make a reservation. You don’t however need a reservation to just buy their macarons and that is all we needed. They were delicious and 1000% worth the hype.
Probably one of our highlights from Paris was when we visited the Montmartre neighborhood. This spot came highly recommended by a couple of our friends and we also cannot recommend it more. The most beautiful basilica sits up high on top of a hill and you can see the entire city from this spot - it is truly breathtaking.
We were able to watch the sunset here and it will be a memory I will never forget. We also grabbed dinner while we were up there as well at a spot called Le Bimbo, and I highly highly highly recommend it. Their cocktails were amazing and the food was probably the best we had while we were in Paris.
A quick little plug on how we got around the city. So I will say that we did a TON of walking. However, in order to get to Montmartre you would either need to take a taxi or the subway. Since Coop had been to Paris before, he had sort of remembered how their subway system worked, so we actually took that quite a few times if we were going somewhere really far. I would highly recommend taking the subway if you can. It is pretty easy once you get the hang of it, fairly inexpensive and it is just a fun/different way to experience a new place.
Day 3
This was our last full day in Paris and was when we decided to take a tour to visit the Champagne region of France - aka where all champagne comes from. If it doesn’t come from this region, then it isn’t champagne 😉 I am linking the exact tour we did because it was wonderful. It was just Coop and I and then another mother and daughter who were on a trip together. It was a small group and a wonderful way to experience the region.
Our tour guide picked us up from our hotel and it was about a two hour drive to get there. Our guide was a certified sommelier and shared a ton of knowledge about champagne and the process of making it during the drive. It was definitely a full day excursion, so if this is something you would like to do, I would definitely plan for a full day. We were gone from 7 a.m. to about 5 p.m. that day.
We stopped at three spots throughout Champagne, France to taste test different champagnes. Talk about my dream day - hah! Our first stop was the Mercier Champagne House. This was a more touristy type of tasting, but it was really cool to learn the ins and outs on how champagne is made. They even took us down into the cellars for a tour (pictured above).
Our second stop in the champagne region was called, champagne de vignerons. This spot was a beautiful chateau type building that sat on a row of champagne houses basically, where smaller champagne houses can showcase their bottles. Our last stop on our champagne tour was at Jacques Copin, which was probably my personal favorite. It is a family run business and they even had their Bernese Mountain dog there too, which obviously instantly won my heart over.
After the champagne tour, we had a little time left for one last night on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower. So we grabbed dinner near the Tower and took a mini bottle of champagne from Jacques Copin and our Laduree macarons with us to enjoy one last romantic evening on the lawn - highly recommend some sort of picnic or time spent just relaxing there, especially at night. It is SO romantic.
Traveling from Paris, France to Venice, Italy
Again, our travel agent had coordinated all the travel for us from our hotel to the airport, so that was so nice to not have to worry about. Since we were going from France to Italy, we were required to show a negative COVID test upon entry to Italy 72 hours prior. In Paris (and similarly in Italy), there are little tents around almost every corner/block or near a pharmacy for you to get a rapid COVID test done. Please know that COVID tests in Europe are not free and do cost money. They were more expensive in France than Italy, but still, just something to be aware of when you are traveling there.
Alright, that pretty much wraps up Paris. If you made it this far, I applaud you because I could have written so much more 🤣If there are any questions about Paris specifically, please feel free to email me or you can DM me over on Instagram. I am already excited for my next blog post on Venice, but until then, please enjoy the rest of your weekend/week. Happy October, friends!
With love,
~Katie