Europe Day 7 – Paris

It seems like we’re at a different place every single day of our trip, doesn’t it? It was tiring indeed, but we had tonnes of fun sight-seeing!

So next stop was Paris!

We stayed at a nice little hotel called Eurotel, almost directly opposite the famous Moulin Rouge theater! The hotel was pretty alright, rooms were clean and staff were very friendly too!

The best part was, we just had to cross the street to get Halal food. Alhamdulillah!! Rice, fried rice, chicken, beef, veges etc you name it, they had it. Price was affordable as well, they charged you by how much food you take, weigh it, and then key in the price. Memang best!

Throughout the day we walked around the city of Paris, visiting as many famous tourist sites as we could.

Alisha pulling a hair-blowing-in-wind pose in front of Moulin Rouge!

Arc de Triomphe

Look at all those macaroons!! (At a shop along Champs Elysees)

Jumping for joy at Palais du Louvre (Louvre Palace)

Touching the tip of Pyramide du Louvre (The Louvre Pyramid)

Ahh…the Eiffel Tower… 🙂

I must however mention that Paris is definitely not baby friendly. If you’re travelling with toddlers, babies and strollers while lugging around huge luggage bags, you’re definitely going to find it a challenge. You see, one of the best ways to get around Paris is via their Metro (subway). Unfortunately, to get in and out of the Metro stations or to move from one platform to the next, you’d have to climb several flights of stairs. This is fine if you’re travelling light.

In our case, we had a baby, her stroller, a heavy backpack full of baby essentials, two elders who really didn’t find climbing up and down stairs a lot of fun on their knees and on top of that, we were exhausted from all the travelling.

It was worse when we wanted to get to the Gare du Nord train station, to get to our next destination. The taxi driver only took us as far as the Metro station entrance and we had to find our own way there. So we had about 5 enormous luggage bags, and several tiny ones and we had to climb down MANY MANY MANY stairs. It. was. torture.

At one point, I think God took pity on us and sent a superhero to help.

The husband was on his 3rd trip down the stairs carrying our luggage and I was waiting at the top of the stairs with the last two biggest bags. Suddenly this young man stopped midway, looked at me, pointed to my bags and downwards as if asking “you want to bring this down?”. Of course I gave a flustered YES. Without a word, he picked up a bag in each hand and swiftly brought them down to where my parents were waiting. I say picked up, not carry, not lifted but PICKED UP because he looked so effortless when bringing the bags down! It was as if they weighed nothing but mere grams of salt!

I stood there with my mouth hanging open, literally. All of us had our mouths open! Giler hebat mamat tuh!!! He didn’t even wait for a thank you but just left on his way as quickly as he helped us. Perhaps he was annoyed at this bunch of Asians who blocked the way with their huge luggage but Alhamdulillah for his help.

Monsieur, if you should ever come across this site some day, MERCI BEAUCOUP!!

 

* * * * * * * * * *

Links to my Europe trip posts:

Introduction – Europe Trip!!
Europe Day 1 – Hellooo Manchester!
Europe Day 2 – Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet
Europe Day 3 – Brockhole, Lake District National Park
Europe Day 4 – Lancaster
Europe Day 5 – City of Bath
Europe Day 6 – Stonehenge!
Europe Day 7 – Paris
Europe Day 8 – Disneyland Park, Paris!!
Europe Day 9 – Walt Disney Studios Park, Paris
Europe Day 10 – London baybeh!