Russ and I recently had the amazing opportunity to visit Paris, France, to celebrate our 10 year anniversary! Paris has been a dream vacation of mine for 15+ years, so I was thrilled it was finally happening!
In the planning of, preparation for, and participation in the trip, I realized how much I didn’t know about how to travel in France. And then even with help from my well-traveled parents, and after many hours of research for the trip, I still felt so overwhelmed by it all! So here are the 3 things I think everyone should know/figure out before visiting Paris (or, honestly, anywhere international!).
1. Why you want to visit Paris
When I polled my friends on the ‘gram about what they wanted to know about my Paris trip, I had some people ask me what my “top 5 can’t miss” experiences were, and others who asked me what sights were “overrated.” These are impossible questions to answer because they’re just so subjective. [[At the bottom of this post I’ll share some of my personal favorites, though!]] 5 things I loved might not be someone else’s cup of tea, and things I thought were overrated might be someone else’s very favorite things. This is why it’s so important to consider WHY you want to visit Paris in the first place.
Paris is one of those luxurious places that many of us are socialized to think will be a truly amazing vacation, but that all depends on what your interests are. Paris is full of art, history, cathedrals, food, and city life, but if you don’t like any of those things, it’s probably not the trip for you! I discovered early on in our planning that, though I had always wanted to go to Paris, I didn’t have any REAL reasons why. I’m pretty sure I’d been wanting to visit Paris simply because I had seen Anastasia as a child, and because I knew my parents enjoyed their trip to Paris when I was young.
Don’t get me wrong, we still had a wonderful time! And knowing what wasn’t important to us, we knew to stay away from a few of the “must-see” places. But truly the best part of being in Paris was having alone time with Russ, and that’s something we could get at any location. When you factor in the long travel time (10-hour flight) and the crazy jet lag we experienced . . . well, let’s just say Russ and I will likely not be pursuing more international travel for the time being. I don’t regret going, but having more clarity about WHY I was going in the first place might have altered our destination!
One thing I want to do before we do travel internationally again is spend more time learning about the destination before I get there, because that always seems to make a location more meaningful. We took a tour of Normandy (a WWII site) while in France, and Russ, who is quite interested in and knowledgeable about WWII things, absolutely LOVED this tour. I, on the other hand, know almost nothing about WWII (🙈), so while I found the tour interesting because I got to learn, it definitely wasn’t as meaningful for me as it was for Russ. Knowing why you want to go somewhere and what exactly you want to see when you’re there can help make those moments more meaningful when you actually get to them!
2. What Logistics to Consider
Jet Lag
I alluded to this above, but THE JET LAG was unreal for this trip. We had great plans about how we were going to beat the jet lag, and none of them worked out 🤣 Part of the problem was that our schedules varied so much from day to day — there were days that we needed to wake up at 5 or 6am for something we had planned, and there were days when we slept until noon because we were exhausted (and kid-less, so we actually could)! I talk about this a bit in my sleep travel guide, but the more quickly you can get on a consistent schedule, the better your body will adjust.
Walking
Even without planning endless walking tours for our trip, we still did quite a bit of walking! We clocked 8-10 miles most days. Before our trip, I was running daily on the elliptical, so I didn’t think it would be much worse but . . . it definitely was. I was exhausted at the end of every day, and my feet just plain hurt. Make sure to wear comfy walking shoes, and if you are bringing kids along (even older kids you might not usually allow to sit in a stroller at home!), strollers are a MUST.
Phone Data
If you can, get an international phone plan for your trip. To my understanding, they’re not that expensive if you only have a few phone lines on your account, but since we have a phone plan with my parents and many of my siblings (like 9 or 10 phone lines), the cost wasn’t worth it. Supposedly we had 2G data abroad, but we weren’t entirely sure how to access it and we weren’t always sure whether or not we were going to be charged extra for whatever we were doing on our phones. I didn’t think this would matter much, as I wasn’t planning on scrolling IG while I was out exploring Paris, BUT . . . turns out we use our phones for a lot more than we realize 🙃
Food
The main thing we struggled to do was find good food to eat! I was so excited to eat allllll the food in Paris, but we quickly discovered that you can’t just stop by any restaurant and expect it to be good. You HAVE to go off recommendations and/or star ratings. Unfortunately, if you’re planning to walk around the city all day, you might not know exactly what part of town you’ll be in come lunchtime, and you can’t just whip your phone out to search for a highly rated restaurant!
So again, if you can get yourself some better phone data, I recommend that. If not, figure out what area you think you’ll be in at a mealtime, and make sure to find a few highly rated restaurants. Lots of restaurants are small and require reservations, so keep that in mind, too!
Navigation
We used four forms of navigation on our trip: taxis, the metro, a train, and walking. For the most part, we stuck to the metro and walking. We took a taxi to and from the airport for convenience (since we had luggage to worry about), as well as to our photoshoot (to try to arrive on time). We took trains to Normandy and Versailles. We looked into renting a car for Normandy since it was quite a ways away (about 3 hours), but a train seemed like the better option for us since it meant we didn’t have to navigate foreign roads, and we got to sleep and read while we traveled.
Phone data factors into navigation as well, because you’ll need to download maps of the areas you’ll be in so you can navigate even without Google Maps. We also took screenshots of the metro routes we needed to use that day.
Communication
Communication wasn’t especially difficult, as you can usually find someone who speaks English. However, I didn’t anticipate how weird it would feel to not understand anyone around me! In fact, on our first day, on our first metro ride, a fight broke out right by us, and I had no idea what they were fighting about, which kind of made it more terrifying! I just had no idea what was going to happen! I was very happy to get off the metro after that 😅
Phone data would have been helpful for translation purposes, whether in face-to-face communication, or simply to more easily read menus. (Many restaurants had a French version and an English version, though, so be sure to ask!)
Money
How to Carry
My parents do a lot of international travel with various groups they’re a part of, so my mom was quick to talk to me about wearing cash in a concealed bag under my clothes.
However, this sounded wildly inconvenient to me (not to mention bulky in my outfits 💁🏼♀️), and I figured people who live in Paris surely aren’t carrying their money this way! So we took a chance and I wore a small, cross-body purse every day, and Russ wore a backpack with a chest strap.
Not saying everyone will have our luck, but no one ever tried to mug us 🤷🏼♀️
Foreign Transaction Fees
Our preferred credit card is American Express, which we were happy to see did not charge foreign transaction fees! Unfortunately, very few vendors accepted AmEx; Visa was the preferred card of choice in Paris, and our Visa card definitely had transaction fees! Therefore, if you want to save a little money, you might want to pay for more with cash.
Cash
That being said, I believe you lose money anytime you convert from one currency to another, so it’s a good idea to get as close as you can when it comes to getting euro for the trip. I believe we took 1150€ with us for our weeklong trip (and used it for some of our bigger expenses, like the Normandy tour and photographer), but we also used a credit card for many things. Toward the end, we used our card less to make sure to use up the cash we brought with us.
3. Who your photographer will be 😏
Of all the things we did in Paris, I’m most glad that we prioritized professional photography! You can get a lot of great pictures with selfies, but nothing like what you can achieve with a photographer. Plus, a local photographer knows all the best spots to go to get the photos you’re looking for! I am so happy with how our photos turned out that I’m making it a point to get professional photography on every vacation we take from here on out! There’s just something special about having beautiful photos that showcase the vacation’s location.
I found our photographer (and my makeup artist) by searching hashtags on Instagram, as well as doing a few google searches. Once I had selected a few, I looked through their photo galleries and took pricing into consideration to make a final decision.
I went back and forth about business formal vs. black-tie attire, and ultimately I couldn’t decide and was planning to do both — two outfits in two different locations. However, due to sleeping in on the day of our photo shoot 🙃 we were late to the first location. We did still get to do two locations, but we had to forgo the outfit change. And I’m actually very happy that we ended up with only our very fancy outfits. We looked great, and fancy outfits were the perfect fit for our fancy locations! I highly recommend taking fancy pictures at least once in your life post-wedding, and our 10-year anniversary seemed like the perfect time for it! 😁 (And in case you’re wondering, I got my dress from SHEIN for $46 🙌🏻🙌🏻)
A Few of my Favorite Things
Places/Experiences
Night cruise on the Seine River — We did one that included dinner and started at 9:15pm because we wanted to see the city all lit up! I liked the romantic setting, as well as the fact we got to see a lot of the city without walking all over the city 🙃
Sacre coeur dome — Going inside the cathedral is free, but it was totally worth the 7€ each to go to the top for the beautiful 360-degree view of the city. A million stairs to climb though!! 😅
Eiffel Tower — It really was pretty breathtaking to see the Eiffel Tower in person! My favorite thing we did on the whole trip was sit by the Seine River, across from the Eiffel Tower, waiting for the sun to go down so we could see the Tower lit up and sparkling. It was such a romantic setting and we had one of our best conversations of the trip while we were there (about what sorts of things feel romantic to us, ironically!) :)
Normandy Tour — We did a private tour, and our tour guide was great! He was incredibly knowledgeable and spoke excellent English. Like I mentioned above, Russ enjoyed this tour more than I did, but I still enjoyed it.
Versailles — We went inside the palace and walked the grounds, and it was a liiiiittle too much for me. I think I would just do the grounds if I could redo it!
And of course this is no help to you, but one of my favorite things was meeting up with my English friend Alex and his wife! He and I met 11 years ago on a weeklong trip to Korea, and we’ve stayed friends ever since!
See a video of other highlights from the trip here.
Food
Chicken Sandwich from PNY Burger
Croissants and hot chocolate from Le Grand Corona (we had croissants from a bakery near our hotel, too, but if you can get some fresh out of the oven, they’re WAY better)
Speculoos & Chantilly Belgian Waffle from Fred’s (the only thing we had twice! And I honestly wanted it every day.)
Sausages from an outdoor market and treats from a bakery, both right by St. Marie Eglise church (Normandy)
Savory crepes from Les Crêpes à Tonton (the sweet ones were good, but nothing earth-shattering) (Versailles)
Everything we tried from Cafe de Mars (appetizer, both entrees, and both desserts were all good!)
Other notes
We went at the beginning of May, and the weather was PERFECT. A little chilly in the mornings and evenings (the coldest morning was the day of our photoshoot, which worked out well since we both had long sleeved outfits!), but mostly just perfect — 65-75 degrees, I think.
