Paris in 48 hours - Day 2

When I had the opportunity to go to Paris with my colleagues I (obviously) jumped at the opportunity. Who wouldn't want a weekend away in one of the most legendary cities in the world, and one which I still had never actually been to yet? When I found out that the travel costs were also going to be covered by the team the trip reached whole new levels of perfect. That's how one weekend in September I found myself waking up ridiculously early to spend 48 hours in Paris.
I've already written about the first 24 hours here, and I recommend starting there if you want the full picture (find it here), but the general gist is that we managed to see it all. It may not have been the most in depth visit, but it was the perfect introduction to Paris and everything it has to offer. In my last post I covered day one, or the red lines on the map at the bottom of both posts, and. Is it's time to turn to that purple line. It may be a lot shorter than the red line but we still managed to hit some major spots on day two – even if it was a slightly more relaxed day of it.

Day 2

The day started off lazily, no early starts – we'd had enough of that the day before with our 6am train. We decided to skip breakfast and after checking out of our hotel we headed over to Saite-Michel-Notre-Dame metro station in search of a supermarket. After gathering the makings of a picnic we headed over to the little island in the middle of the Seine that is home to the Notre Dame Cathedral. What could be better than a sunny day and a baguette under the shadow of the Notre Dame? By picnicking in the small park round the back of Notre Dame we managed to avoid the crowds and have a rather peaceful lunch before entering the queue to get into the Cathedral. The Cathedral itself was beautiful inside with some amazing little chapels and impressive stained glass, but my favourite detail was the arch around the huge main doors depicting hell in all its mediaeval glory. For a masses that couldn't read what better way to strike the fear of God into the hearts of men than to carve fire and brimstone directly into the facade of God's house?

Notre-Dame is one of the few things that I feel I did properly in Paris, but even that couldn't keep us there for too long. Time was ticking and we needed to carry on if we were ever going to get in all the sites. One of my favourite things about Paris was how easy it was to walk around, and wandering down the banks of the river looking at all the little stalls reconfirmed for me that by foot is by far my favourite way to explore a new city. What we were really searching for along the river though was the Pont du Artes, most famously known for all the lovers who leave their locks attached to the bridge and throw away the key to symbolise their ever lasting love. When we were there is didn't look like the love was all that eternal and it seemed like the bridge had been cleared of it's lovers locks recently before we came. It was a little bit confusing trying to work out if we were in fact on the correct bridge but still the Pont du Artes is worth the visit, even without the locks, simply because it gets you directly to Paris' centre of art, the Louvre.
As I'm sure everyone is aware, the Louvre is huge. Like really really big - it holds 70,000 works of art and it would take days to even begin to see everything properly. With limited time, and being an absolute art fanatic, I thought it wouldn't be doing the Louvre justice to rush around it in a few hours and settled on relaxing in front of the famous glass pyramids and fountains which sit outside the buildings. From the Louvre we wandered through to the Tuileries Garden almost by accident. It was never on the itinerary but I'm glad that we stumbled upon Tuileries Garden because it is lovely to walk through with its strange sculptures and perfectly trimmed hedges.

Our plans from the Louvre was to wander down the Seine and browse the cute little market huts that line the banks while winding back down to the Eiffel Tower. The wandering down the Seine went to plan, I loved looking through the old photographs and letters for sale mixed in amongst the regular tourist tat, but when we tried to wind down then back streets towards the Eiffel Tower we came across an obstacle in the form of a military blockade. We had no idea what was going on (it turned out that it was a bomb alert) so we decided to take a break from all the walking and have a coffee and pastry break. The sit down was a good chance to regroup our thoughts and make a strategic plan for the last few hours in Paris. In the end we settled on continuing towards the Eiffel Tower, via a mass of quaint back streets to avoid the bomb scare, for some more cliché photos. After the mini photo shoot and some people watching (there was a family walking their cat, which had climbed up a tree and really didn't want to get down) we went back into the Montmartre area to get some last minute souvenirs - after all, you can't come back from Paris without macaroons!

By this point it was getting close to the time to bid au revoir to Paris and go back to London and work the next day. I left my very first trip to Paris with very sore feet but the feeling that I had managed to get a good overview of one of the most iconic cities in the world. In 2 days we had managed to hit those top spots which make Paris so recognisable. Even though the trip didn't have a lot of depth, for me it was the perfect introduction to Paris and with the Eurostar making it so easy to go over it just gives me an excuse to go back again some other time!