One Day Walking Tour of Paris

Consider this your fair warning: if you keep reading, be prepared to see too many photos of the Eiffel Tower.

If you ever go to Paris, I challenge you to not take just as many as we did. Also, keep in mind that these are only a select few of the ones that actually ended up on my camera. So let's start with one of my favourites from the day:

We only had about two days in Paris, and the first one was spent at Disney. There is so much to do in Paris, so we knew we would have to pack a lot into one day. Even though there is so much to see, it really was not that hard to see so much. Everything is so close that we did a walking tour of some of the city's biggest attractions.

We started by taking the train to our furthest destination the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Visiting the Notre-Dame was a highlight of the day for me. It was so beautiful that is was overwhelming. I even saw some people crying as they walked in, it was that much to take in. Of course, it is always hard to appreciate the detail that is in this building in pictures, but I could have walked around in awe for hours.

We then took a short walk along the river in Paris to find the Sainte-Chapelle. We got a little lost doing this because I read the map wrong, but the walk was nice nonetheless. We had plans to go into Sainte-Chapelle, but because we were short on time, and had just walked through Notre-Dame, we decided to skip it. It was still beautiful from the outside, but looking back, I wish we would have gone in as I have heard it is beautiful.

Next, we hopped on a bus to the Louvre. The Paris metro system is fairly straight forward (even though we made a few wrong turns), and we got the day pass for 12 euros, which I would definitely recommend. Although we didn't use it that often, being able to hop on/off whenever and not worrying about purchasing tickets was super convenient.

The louvre was closed on the day we were there, so we only walked around the outside and took some pictures. We noticed that some places in Paris were closed on days you might not think about, so it is something to consider when planning a trip. Because it was closed, the famous pyramid was also covered up, so we mostly took in the views from around the louvre.

We then took a nice walk through the Tuilleries Garden that leads to the Place de Concorde. I'm sure our experience did not do the garden justice as much as it would in the summer, but it was still a nice walk to get us to our destination.

We then made our way down to the Alexander bridge which provided a great fall-coloured view of the Eiffel Tower. We also walked past the Grand and Petit Palais, which we may have toured if we had more time.

We then headed back in the direction of the Arc de Triomphe. This road is lined with shops and cafes, so we stopped here for lunch and had some crêpes. I also ran into Sephora, which was so crazy busy. Again, if we had more time, we would have explored this street a lot more.

As I'm sure you have heard, the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe is insane. Simply sitting and watching the drivers maneuver around is entertainment in itself. We are super glad we only used transit, I can't imagine trying to figure out the driving here.

We then took another bus toward the Eiffel tower. We had seen it in the dark, and from a distance but we of course had to see it closer. Cam let me take a few typical and cheesy photos, which I'm sure will likely be the last time for awhile. But hey, it was a special occasion.

I wasn't entirely set on going up the tower, because I was worried about missing our shuttle to the airport. The line to go up the elevator was so long and they only had one side open. The had another side open with the sign "stairs". We almost didn't do it, because it looked like so many stairs. As we turned to go, Cam changed his mind and said he wanted to. I am so glad he did, because as reluctant as I was, I really enjoyed it.

It ended up being not as bad as we thought. You actually only climb the first two floors, and then can take the elevator to the very top, and all the way back to the bottom. I'm sure if more people knew this, they would have went for this option. It is cheaper, and saved us a ton of time because there was barely any line!

I do have one tip: if you're going up the elevator, make sure you didn't ride the Tower of Terror at Disneyland the day before...

And of course, the views were incredible:

We then headed back in the direction of Paris' Statue of Liberty. This was a longer walk than I thought, so I wish we would have hopped on a bus.

This walk was long, but gave us some different views of the Eiffel Tower.

We ended our day by catching a train back to our hotel, to catch a shuttle to the airport. This is also something I would recommend. The train will take you directly to the airport, but it is huge. This way, we knew we would be on time and be dropped off right at our terminal.

Our stay in Paris was short, but was so amazing. I will definitely go back and see more if I get the chance.

For more pictures, check out my "France" page.