Our honeymoon wouldn't be complete without a visit to Paris. A trip to the Eiffel Tower, the works of the Louvre and the magnificent shops on Champs-Elysees were calling our name. The first stop in Paris was a walk from our hotel in the Vendome area up to the Arc de Triomphe and the shops of Champs-Elysees. Along the way we passed the Louis Vuitton flagship store, all many stories of it, Pamela said the store reminded her of Christmas and I had a good laugh. On the way to the Arc we swung by the Prime Minister’s residence and the Grand and Petite Palais. It was a good looong walk there and back.
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| Checkin out the Arc dr Triomphe |
The next morning we woke up nice and early and headed for the Louvre. An exhibit of Alexander the Great (mostly in French), the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, Ramses II, and many-many more works of art filled our morning and early afternoon. It surprised me a bit that the descriptions of all the art was only in French, I guess we’ve been spoiled everywhere else in the world with descriptions in the local language and English. We saw so much in such a short time, by 2:00pm we’d had enough of the crowds and translating French so we sold our tickets to another couple and headed back to the hotel to regroup.
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| Morning walk to the Louvre |
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Outside the Louvre - We'd had enough. |
Regroup done, we were off to the Eiffel Tower. A walk through the Army Museum and Napoleons Tomb had us at the tower just about sunset. We had an amazingly good crepe with nutella and banana before heading up. We bought tickets on the stairs to the 2nd floor at a cost of 9.40 Euro ($13 USD) and started our walk up to the 2nd floor. You can take an elevator all the way to the top, with a change of elevators on floor 2, but we elected to walk up to the 2nd floor and go down. I’m (DW) not a big fan of heights so the 2nd level was as high as I needed to go, not to mention the queue for the top was very long. Going up the Eiffel Tower was a great experience and you can’t come to Paris without doing it, despite however long the lines might be.
We followed up our Eiffel experience with a nice pizza dinner at a restaurant on the Champs-Elysees and then a brisk walk back to our hotel in the Vendome section. We did quite a bit of walking over the course of our two nights in Paris. By the time we hit our bed we were both out like lights.
We followed up our Eiffel experience with a nice pizza dinner at a restaurant on the Champs-Elysees and then a brisk walk back to our hotel in the Vendome section. We did quite a bit of walking over the course of our two nights in Paris. By the time we hit our bed we were both out like lights.
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| A glittering Eiffel Tower |
Next morning we awoke to rain. I went downstairs and ordered a couple coffees from the bar area of our hotel. Twenty-two euros ($35 USD) later, a smug look from the girl who delivered the take-away coffee to me, and I was drinking the most expensive cup of coffee I’ve ever drank. Seriously, my $17 USD cup of coffee was gone in about 5 minutes. In any case, this about summed up our experience with our hotel, the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome. I used points to book two nights at the place which normally goes for about $900 USD a night (cheapest room). We were so looking forward to the hotel as we normally are really impressed with Hyatt’s all over the world and we really thought the Paris Vendome property would be something special. Unfortunately we were not very impressed with this property at all. The room was very small, our view was of the hotel interior courtyard, which could have been anywhere, and there wasn’t even a coffee maker in the room. For $900 USD a night you’d think there be a coffee maker in the room. Of all the Hyatt’s I’ve ever stayed at I think this was the most unimpressive of the lot. We informed the front desk staff it was our honeymoon but were not treated to any amenities, not even a card. In most of our other hotels we’ve been given at least a card, some, like the Hyatt in Kathmandu even delivered a cake. We will never stay at this hotel again and we wouldn’t recommend any of our friends to stay at this hotel either. It’s definitely not worth the price tag, even if using points to stay. You would be better off at a property that’s a quarter of the price but has a coffee maker in the room. Okay, enough of my whining about this hotel….sorry for that but sometimes you just need to vent.
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| Heading up the Eiffel Tower |
In any case our last day in Paris was nice. We walked around, had a good French lunch and took the bus to the airport for our flight to Istanbul. We had a really nice time in Paris, despite being disappointed in the quality of our hotel and look forward to going back someday.
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| Walking to the Eiffel Tower |
All our pics from Paris can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/ParisFrance?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Cheers for Now -
Pamela and Dave
Pamela and Dave
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