Paris Guide

Bonjour! We are back from Paris! Where do we even begin? Over the years of traveling together, this was by far our favorite trip. When they say Paris is a dream, they are not kidding. We are going to do our best to recap the entire trip in this post, along with vlogs — make sure you are subscribed to YouTube! So let’s get started.

We arrived in Paris on Thursday at 8AM and left the following Thursday at 10:30AM. If you remember from stories, we were originally supposed to leave Wednesday but we extended the trip by another day because we loved Paris that much. We had 7 full days to explore and felt like that was a good amount of time.

Hotel

We stayed at the Hotel Lancaster, steps from Champs-Élysées. We always get questions on how we decide what hotels to stay at when we travel. We book with American Express travel since we have an amex platinum. We purposely chose this card for the travel perks. If you already have this card, you know how great they are. When booking with a hotel included in this program, you get 5x the points, daily breakfast for two, a $100 on-site credit, and a room upgrade when available. Wild, right? Hotel Lancaster was on the list and we fell in love. Also, it was on the lower price end too — some of these Paris hotel prices are INSANE. For the price, this hotel was well worth it. We had the best experience. The service was 10/10. From the moment you walked in, you felt at home. The hotel isn’t very large, which is something we loved. We really appreciate that boutique experience. It feels like the hotel gets to know you on a personal level. One of the neat things about the hotel was its love for tradition. You aren’t given a key card to access your room, rather an actual key with a large metal knob on the end — almost like a paper weight. It totally transports you back to the time when the hotel first opened. It was such a treat. You know us and our love for an experience.

Both the restaurant and bar were stunning. They also had an outdoor courtyard with so much greenery. We loved sitting out there in the evening after getting home from dinner. It was all so relaxing. We did have breakfast at the hotel every morning — dreaming of the croissants right now. On our last night we had room service for dinner since we were busy packing and getting ready to leave. All of the food was delicious! Another 10/10 from us. We would absolutely stay here again.

Flight

Taking a step back for a minute, we did get some questions about the flight. If you remember from stories a while ago, we found an incredible deal. We booked these flights in the beginning of February at 10:45pm at night while cuddled up in bed. We had seen a few people in Paris on IG and thought it would be fun to just look at the prices, expecting to see a crazy price. We did not expect to find roundtrip tickets for under $500. SOLD. It costs more to fly to the west coast most days. We did have an hour layover in Boston but no big deal.

Language Barrier

Next on the list of questions deals with the language barrier. Well, there wasn’t one. Okay this is where we might go into a little rant so buckle up. Nearly every single person we came in contact with could also speak English. Alex took French in high school and surprisingly some of it came back on the trip so that was helpful. We truly had zero issues communicating with anyone. So this got us thinking. How lucky are we to be able to travel to another country and not think twice about being able to order food, get around, shop, you name it. But the same can’t be said to someone from another country coming to the states. For example, when we flew home, a few French people were on the plane with us. While picking up our bags, this woman was having the hardest time communicating with the airport employees. No one could understand her. It made us feel awful and oddly enough, guilty. Here we are coming off a week in Paris having not thought twice about going to another country and not speaking their language, simply expecting them to know English, all while the same can’t be said for the reverse situation. We say this all as food for thought. It made us want to be better with language. Also it made us realize that Americans really can be self-centered (pointing at us too don’t worry lol). We shouldn’t expect someone to understand us when they can’t expect the same in return. Okay, rant over. This was something we talked about a lot and just had to share with you. We’d love to hear what you think too!

Safety

Leading up to our trip, we were told by several followers to be mindful of pickpocketing. However we didn’t have any issues. We were always mindful of our surroundings but felt very safe. The same goes for LGBTQ+ safety. We didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. We saw plenty of LGBTQ+ people openly showing affection, holding hands, etc. We expected that but it was good when it was confirmed.

Transportation

We made one mistake with transportation while in Paris and that was trying to take the train from the airport to our hotel. We had 5 bags and wow it was a bad decision. We struggled so much and ended up missing our connection because we couldn’t get off the first train fast enough. Also, we lost a wheel off one of our bags flying to Paris so that just made things even harder. The kindest French woman saw us struggling and took pity on us. She said her husband was American and helped us carry our bags up the stairs to exit the metro station. Yes, you read that correctly. There was no elevator or escalator to use. We had to carry 5 bags up 2 flight of stairs. Don’t be like us and just take the Uber or Taxi. The ride is only 30 minutes and worth the money. We did this when leaving and it made life so much easier.

Now for getting around Paris, plan to walk a ton. We averaged over 20,000 steps a day! But our biggest piece of advice is to rent scooters and bikes when you need to get somewhere a bit further away. Guys, when we tell you it was so much fun. Paris is very biker/scooter friendly. The cars are very aware of the riders and always yield to them. There are scooters and bikes at almost every corner. You just download the Lime app and scan the QR code and you are set. For most rides, it cost about 5 euros. You also get to see so much more rather than just sitting in a car. We rode a scooter or a bike every single day, multiple times. Like scooting around the Arc de Triomphe is major main character energy!!

Montmartre

This was definitely our favorite neighborhood to explore. It was truly like walking through a painting. There is even a vineyard you can see as you walk through the streets. We loved how hilly this area was — some of the best views of downtown Paris! You also need to see the Sacré-Cœur at the summit of Montmartre. Absolutely beautiful.

Museums

Obviously we had to visit as many museums as we could while in Paris. We ended up making it to three — The Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris. They were all amazing. Seeing the Mona Lisa in person…chills. We loved learning more about YSL too. There is so much that goes into designing a collection and seeing his actual sketches was pretty incredible. We would recommend all three of these when you visit Paris.