Paris at Christmas is most definitely magical, the city itself always seems magical any time of year you go, there’s something special about Paris.
A weekend to Paris is so handy as the Eurostar is so quick. If you can get an early train you can be in the centre before lunchtime, so have the day to explore! Or you can easily fly too and get the train to the centre, public transport is great over there too.
I was lucky enough to spend the first weekend of December in Paris with my mum! We went for 3 days, leaving early Saturday morning and leaving on a late train Friday evening. We found an amazing deal on Voyage Prive and bagged ourselves a room in a beautiful 4 Star boutique hotel for a very reasonable price, the deal included breakfast and also a free boat trip along the River Seine (more on that later!)
We arrived into Gare du Nord and as the sun was shining decided to walk to our hotel to drop our bags off! Luckily the room was actually free so we could fully check in. The hotel was gorgeous, it was modern chic but also very elegant. Check it out Les Jardins du Marais
We decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower to make the most of the boat trip. We headed towards the river and onto to islands (Île Saint-Louis and then Île de la Cité Where Notre Dame is) then headed down next to the river and wandered under all the bridges including the love lock bridge, which is no more!
By this point we were feeling hungry so googled a supermarket and found an express carrefour to go to (we only wanted some snacks!). We headed north and to the Louvre where we took some funny pictures pretending the point at the top – classic! Then we headed along the Rue de Rivoli and grabbed some crisps from the supermarket. By this time it was getting later and we were cold and it would be dark by the time we got to boat, so decided to scrap that idea! We headed to the Ritz where there were some stunning Christmas lights and trees and took some pics. We headed further north and popped into Galaries Lafayette. We decided to head straight to the roof terrace for a view of Paris, and lucky we did because we arrived just as the sun was setting and it was simply stunning! Would reccomend this to anyone, especially as it’s free!
Then we went to the centre of the store to see the most amazing Christmas tree, it was all polar bear themed and even had polar bears in cable cars, so cute!
We hopped on a train back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.
For dinner we went to Cafe Breizh which is a creperie (pancakes to you and me!). We had a savoury pancake and finished with a sweet one, so delicious!!
The next day we woke up and had the most amazing breakfast at the hotel. If you visit Paris on the first Sunday of the month this means all the museums are free including the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Pompidou and you can even climb the Arc de Triomphe for free! We decided to visit the Pompidou however we have never seen queues like it, they snaked all around the building! We decided to head to some famous passages wandering some beautiful streets on route including Rue Montorgueil and then went to passage Vivienne. If I’m honest if I hadn’t visited at Christmas I wouldn’t have been amazed by it, but with all the pretty lights I’m glad we stopped by! We then headed to Jardin du Palais Royal where there are loads of columns, kinda a bit of modern art and we took some fun pictures!!
We decided to walk back to Centre Georges Pompidou and the quees weren’t as bad. The weird thing about this museum is that you most of the museum is paid exhibitions, so if you pay normal entry on another day not sure what you can really see apart from the viewing terrace which I didn’t think was that amazing anyway. To summaries don’t pay to visit here, and we were glad it was free!
As I work for Disney I get free entry to the park, so the afternoon was dedicated to visiting the park. We hopped on the RER to Disneyland Pais – yay!! Now I won’t go into too much detail because I could probably write a whole separate post about the park! However I would most definitely reccomend visiting at Christmas, it is SO magical! The Christmas parade, the huge Christmas tree and of course seeing Mickey and Minnie in their Christmas outfits. We watched Buffulo Bills Wild West show, which is an hour and a half show with a 3 course meal and unlimited beer! It was so great, the food was delicious and entertainment was fab!!
We ended the evening watching the amazing firework display which included Christmassy illuminations on the castle. The perfect end to the day!
The following day was grabbed another amazing breakfast and decided to visit a part of Paris we hadn’t seen before, the Canal Saint Martin. This looks a bit like Amsterdam but not as prettier, but nice to see. We then walked to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont and headed to a bandstand for a different view of Paris.
We then hopped on the metro to the Eiffel Tower to finally take our boat trip!
The boat trip may have been freezing cold as we decided to sit on the top deck to get good pictures but was worth it! The trip left from Pont de l’Alma and went all the way along the river towards the islands, around Île Saint-Louis, back past the Eiffel Tower and back to port. It was lovely seeing Paris from the river and we got some great pictures!
We then walked back towards our hotel to pick up our luggage. We firstly headed up to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and stumbled across a massive Christmas market! It was absolutely huge and I believe put Winter Wonderland to shame! If you fancy a tacky Christmas market in Paris then this is sure the place for you!
We got to the famous Ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde and headed back along the Jardin du Tuileries through the Louvre and back to Rue de Rivoli. We passed the Hôtel de Ville and ended up back at the Mariais district. We went to L’As du Fallafel for a falafel wrap which had been reccomend to us! It was delicious. We ended the evening in Pozetto with a proper hot chocolate, basically melted chocolate!
We headed back to the hotel, picked up our luggage and headed back to the gare du nord to catch the Eurostar home!
I have never walked so much in a weekend before, and ached for days after! In total I walked 66.97km over 3 days which is an impressive 98,637 Steps!
Other places of interest you may want to visit:
Sacré-Cœur
Palace of Versailles
Moulin Rouge
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Tour Montparnasse
Les Invalides
La Defénse