Trip Journal: Paris Over the Holidaysfeatured
I think there’s a piece of my heart that just permanently resides in Paris.
If I could be no other place, if money or sheer sensibility weren’t any kind of consideration, I’d be in Paris as often as I could get away. When people ask me what my favorite place in the world is, I hesitate because it feels so cliché, but there’s just something so special to me about Paris. And the most special parts of it are the most mundane moments. It’s the feeling of walking down the street towards the Metro, of catching a glimpse of a heavy framed door in the brightest shade of primary blue, of the taste of that first bite of a crusty baguette.
We’ve been taking cruises over Christmas for the past few years, our getaway from the beginnings of the harsh Chicago winter and the holiday craziness at work. Christmas might be my favorite time of year to cruise because the spirit of the holiday is amplified on the ship and in the ports and it’s just so…joyful. It fills my heart. And I don’t even celebrate Christmas. But the festiveness and spirit? It brings me so much happiness.
The problem with cruising over Christmas, though, is that it’s so pricey. It’s not a deal breaker for us — we know that going into our trip planning that cruise fare is going to be significantly higher than what we’d pay at just about any other time of year — but this time, Stephanie was randomly looking where we could go for the price of a cruise and she discovered that we could fly to Paris for less than what it would cost us to go on a cruise, and a week in a hotel would cost us less than airfare to Florida over the holidays. And suddenly, we just kind of fixated on it. The magic of the Christmas markets. The excitement over the clock ticking down towards midnight under the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées. The shopping. You guys know I love my shopping. And since we were going to Asia instead of Europe for our spring cruise, I was already itching to find an excuse to fit in a trip to Paris so I could re-stock on skincare, treat myself to a new handbag and buy a small suitcase full of groceries and soup mix (…no, I’m completely serious. Go read my other Paris journals. I love French soup mix like crazy).
So Stephanie and I booked a trip to Paris, leaving on Christmas Eve, arriving on Christmas Day and returning home on New Year’s Day. That was just about a full week. We hadn’t done a full week in a single place since we went to Orlando for two weeks my junior year of high school. In fact, I don’t think we’ve done more than, like, more than four days in any singular place since then, either. We’re so used to filling short spans of time with a ton of touring, eating and shopping that it was hard for us to figure out how to pace it over a week. But Paris is just one of those places…I don’t think it’s possible to run out of things to do there.
Getting to Paris
Though there are a number of non-stop options across multiple carriers to get us from Chicago to Paris, the lowest-priced option on our preferred carrier (American) had us laying over in London on the way there and New York City on the way back. Our London layover was overnight and after our overnight airport adventure in Heathrow two years ago left us beyond exhausted our first few days in Copenhagen, we decided to book a hotel room at one of the airport hotels so we could get some actual sleep. I always forget how terrible long-haul flying makes me feel, and having a few hours in a hotel room to shower, stretch out and sleep just makes me feel human again.
Our flight to London was on a 787 Dreamliner, which has a 3-4-3 arrangement. This was a tough one for us because Mom wasn’t coming with, so it was just me and Stephanie hoping to luck out with an empty extra seat in our row. We booked a window and an aisle to make it less appealing and it seemed to fare well until about a week before our flight, when the plane started to fill up. When it became obvious that all seats would eventually be filled, I called American to request upgrades to Business Class. Because the plane we were flying on didn’t have a Premium Economy cabin, we could upgrade directly from Economy to Business for 25,000 miles and $350 each, a pretty solid steal for a long transatlantic flight. We were waitlisted when I called, and our upgrade cleared the night before we left – our own little Christmas miracle!
Flying in international Business Class also gave us access to the Flagship Lounge, and, you guys, it was another world from our Admiral’s Club visits. The food offerings were just insane – from sushi to made to order omelets – there were SO many options. There was an open bar, a candy bar, a Bloody Mary bar, an omelet bar. Barpalooza. It was great. There were dining tables and loungers, an entertainment room and amazing runway views with the Chicago skyline peeking through in the distance. It was the perfect way to start our trip.
And then, after two hours of champagne and as many gummy bears as I could snack on before the sun was up, we boarded our flight and settled into our home for the next seven and a half hours. The plus of flying on a Dreamliner was that all of the seats in our cabin were in their own little pods, so they offered a ton of space and privacy. On the minus, though, that meant Stephanie and I couldn’t really sit together without sitting in the middle, where we’d still be fairly separated. So we sat back to back. I took 1A, she took 2A (which faced backwards and made her super dizzy at takeoff and landing – she does not recommend it but your mileage may vary!) and we popped on over to each other’s seats constantly throughout the flight.
Plush bedding, an amenity kit (I’m obsessed with collecting these!) and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones were waiting on our seats, as well as menus for the two meal services that would be offered. We clinked with pre-departure champagne and took off right on time. And then we spent Christmas Eve the same way we would if we weren’t in the air: we ate, we drank and we watched movies for seven hours straight. By the time we landed in London, we were well-rested and well-fed. You really can’t ask for anything more.
Our flight left Chicago at 9:15 AM and landed in London around 10:30 PM. Heathrow was a ghost town and we flew through customs and immigration, collected our bags (which would not go straight through to Paris because of the long overnight layover) and made our way down to the Heathrow Express in the hopes we could make the last transfer of the night. While we landed in Terminal 3, our hotel was in Terminal 4 and Heathrow is so big that you can’t just walk between terminals – you need to take a train or a bus. And as our luck would have it, we missed the last train of the night. We’d never taken the bus between terminals before, but it was easy to find by following the signs and a quick ten-minute ride had us arriving at Terminal 4, where we followed the signs to the Hilton Heathrow Terminal 4 hotel.
We quickly checked in with a cheerful agent who wished us a Merry Christmas, went over the details of our room (we booked a room with lounge access, which was a nice to have but unnecessary given that my Hilton status also got us free breakfast in the hotel restaurant) and quickly got us on our way. I thought the Hilton in the airport was surprisingly upscale. It certainly wasn’t a luxury property, but it was clean and well-appointed, our room large and comfortable.
Even though it was in the late-afternoon hours at home, landing at night all but eliminated any jet lag I was going to face. After a quick shower, I fell right asleep and when I woke up the next morning, my body was already adjusted to Europe time. And even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, we woke up on Christmas Day to discover that Santa had found us in London and left us some treats outside our door overnight!
Our flight to Paris wasn’t until 1:00 PM the next afternoon. At first, I thought it would give us time to go into London if we got up early enough, but neither of us had the energy or inclination by the time we got there. We let ourselves sleep in a bit before heading down to breakfast. Hotel breakfasts can run a wide gamut and I was surprised by the expansive offerings the Hilton Heathrow offered. There were a number of stations with both traditional English and American offerings and everything was surprisingly good.
Even though our flight was in the afternoon, we checked out early to give ourselves enough time to walk back to Terminal 4, catch the train over to Terminal 5, check in our luggage and get through security. I was surprised at how peaceful and un-busy the airport was. I expected more people to be traveling on Christmas Day and the airport was the quietest I’ve ever seen Heathrow. Terminal 5 offers a ton of shopping and dining. We lost ourselves in Harry and Meghan memorabilia and English candy and easily could have spent hours doing so. I love airports in general, but all of the ones I’ve been to in Europe are just next level. They’re so big and offer so many different things — I just love spending time in them!
We didn’t know how much would be open in Paris when we landed given that it was Christmas Day and at home, just about everything is closed, so we wanted to get in a quick lunch before we boarded our flight. Instead of one of the many restaurants within the terminal, we headed to the Aspire Lounge, which was covered by my Priority Pass membership. The offerings weren’t nearly as numerous as the Flagship Lounge in Chicago, but there were plenty of salads, soups, cold cuts, pastas and desserts to make a meal out of, and fantastic views of the runway.
I have mixed feelings about British Airways intra-Europe planes. The seats are comfortable, wider than most US carriers, but the planes don’t offer in-flight entertainment and they don’t have air nozzles, which always leaves me feeling a little toasty. Thankfully, our flight was barely an hour long and just as soon as we leveled off at altitude, we were starting our descent over Roissy.
Everything had gone beyond well for us so far and that never happens. We should have known better. Our flights were on time (a feat in and of itself), our upgrades cleared, the hotel was fantastic, our luggage showed up where we expected it to. It was almost too easy. We landed in Paris and grabbed some Euros out of the first ATM we saw and then set out to find a taxi. If I had done my research, I would have known that you need to go outside the airport to find a taxi, and that fares to Paris were a flat rate. But I didn’t, and when a man asked us if we needed a taxi, we followed, thinking he would lead us out to the taxi stand. He led us out to a private taxi. I asked how much the fare would be and he said it was metered. He was nice enough on the drive, polite. And when he pulled up to our hotel, he told us our fare was €225. We got scammed. We called him out. He showed us his “meter” on his iPhone and offered to send us a receipt, telling us because it was a holiday, we were charged extra fees. It was standard, he said. We were traveling in a foreign country and didn’t want trouble – we told him he was a scammer, we collected our luggage, we paid and we left. And I felt terribly about it – we should have known better. How many places have we gone to? It was a sour note on a wonderful start. But now we know. And now you know, too.
Accommodations
Our home for the week was Hotel 34B, which is one of the Astotel properties. If you aren’t familiar, Astotel is a small hotel chain in Paris, with 17 boutique hotels around the city. Each of their properties is uniquely themed, and one of the benefits in staying at an Astotel is that you can pop into the other properties for a drink or a snack (both of which are complimentary at all locations).
This was our fourth trip to Paris and our third time staying at an Astotel property. We really can’t recommend them enough. The hotels we’ve stayed at have been immaculately clean, conveniently located and the staff all speak impeccable English and are always friendly and helpful. While I really loved the refined elegance of the Hotel Bradford Élysées (the first Astotel property we stayed at a few years back), I think Hotel 34B is probably my favorite Paris hotel we’ve stayed in so far. The theming is a little loud (themed after the French flag), but we thought it was fun, particularly in the smaller touches hidden throughout the hotel.
The best part of the hotel, though, was the location: right in the heart of the 9th arrondissement, surrounded by dozens of cafes, bars and shops. There were, like, three Monoprix stores within a stones throw (Monoprix is like a quasi French love child of Target and H&M and pretty much both my favorite store on Earth and the reason why I keep needing to buy another suitcase to bring stuff home in every time I go to Paris) and the Grands Boulevards metro stop was just a short walk up the street. And with it’s convenient proximity to the Opera district, we weren’t far from the shopping at Galeries Lafayette (my second fave store on Earth), the rooftop at Printemps (the best free view of the city) and numerous lines of the L’Open Tour Hop On Hop Off Bus. The location could not have been more perfect for us.
Because it was just Stephanie and I this time, we booked a standard double room. The space was a little on the smaller side, but perfectly adequate for the two of us, all of our luggage and all of the shopping bags we’d accumulate throughout the week. The theming of the hotel carried over into small touches in our room, like the toy cars in the acrylic-cased desk and the décor above the bed. Our room also had a view of the courtyard, which was super charming and gave us a fun view over the lobby.
One of my favorite features of the Astotel hotels is the mini fridge, which comes filled with Evian, soda and juice and is completely complimentary. Housekeeping would replenish whatever we used daily, and it was just really nice to have some bevvies on hand when we’d get thirsty overnight or to grab and take with us when we left for our day.
Our rate also included breakfast, which was offered daily in a small dining area off the lobby. Like in the other Astotels we’ve stayed in, the offerings during breakfast were always plentiful – fresh baguettes, croissants and all kinds of carb-y goods, eggs, sausages, cereals, yogurts, fruits – the standards for any European continental breakfast. But the hotel would also put out these amazing charcuterie and cheese spreads and I would wake up every morning looking forward to seeing what cheeses they’d have out for breakfast.
Throughout the day, an array of complimentary beverages were available in the dining area, as well as one of those fancy coffee machines that makes all kinds of caffeinated drinks. In the afternoons and evenings, they’d also put out snacks, usually some variety of chips, candies and baked goods.
All things considered, we felt right at home at Hotel 34B and with such a prime location in an active, vibrant arrondissement, we’re sure to be back the next time we visit Paris.
Things to Do and Snap
Having a week in one single place felt incredibly foreign to me and I didn’t really know how to pace everything out. Stephanie and I both knew, though, that if we didn’t plan out the things we wanted to see and do (especially the ones we never had time for on any of our past visits), we’d fall into old habits and the only thing we’d end up doing is what we do every time we go to Paris: ride the L’Open Tour bus, take pictures of the Eiffel Tower from the Champs de Mars, buy handbags at Louis Vuitton and all of our skincare at CityPharma, eat cream puffs at Odette and wander around Monoprix. Lather, rinse, repeat.
So we made a pact and resolved to see, do or eat some place new every single day. And if we wanted to do the same things we always do? That was totally okay – some of the things we always do are some of the very reasons we both hold Paris so dear – but we had to let ourselves experience new things. Not to be too self-congratulatory, but I think we crushed it. We still rode the Hop On Hop Off bus. We still had cream puffs and spent an exorbitant amount of time at Monoprix. But every day, we found new things that became some of our new favorites. Some of these are seasonal but others are year-round and if you find yourself in Paris doing any of these, I hope you love them as much as I do.
Ride the Hop On Hop Off Bus
If I could do only one thing in Paris, I’d probably go shopping. But if I could do one more thing on top of the shopping, I’d ride the Hop On Hop Off bus. I know they’re polarizing (especially in Paris, where traffic is already pretty horrific), but they really are the best way to see the city if you’re just looking to acquaint yourself with it or just be in it. The Metro (Paris’ public transit system) will always be a better option if you’re just looking to get from Point A to Point B – it’s clean, efficient and reliable – but if you just want to be in Paris, watch those beautiful facades glide by you and listen to a track of vaguely interesting historical facts mixed with traditional French songs, I think there’s a little bit of magic to those buses. And even though we were visiting in the winter time, it was mild enough that we were able to ride up top in the open air for most of the week.
Tour the Palais Garnier
Every time we visit Paris, we pass by the Palais Garnier and Stephanie would always want to go in, but on shorter visits, we just never found the time. So on our first full day in Paris, we made a visit a priority. The Palais Garnier is an opera house built in the 1800s and is, perhaps, most famously known as the setting for The Phantom of the Opera. We went first thing in the morning to avoid the crowds and opted to tour on our own instead of taking one of the guided tours. Tickets were €12 each and we spent a couple of hours wandering around. I loved the opulence of it all, from the frescoed ceilings to the gilded accents.
Catch a Birds-Eye View of the City
Most people seem to flock to the Eiffel Tower for a view of the city, but I find two problems with it: one, you can’t see the Eiffel Tower from the Eiffel Tower (and what’s a Paris pic without the Eiffel Tower leaning elegantly over the city below?) and two, it costs both money and time in line. You can go up to Sacré-Cœur, which both has a view of the Eiffel Tower and is free (if you don’t mind taking the stairs), but it takes forever to get to Sacré-Cœur. My favorite place to see the city? It’s from the rooftop of it’s two biggest department stores, Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. Each of them have a rooftop that’s open to the public, where you can see the city, snap pictures to your hearts content and enjoy the view of one of the most beautiful cities of the world below you in relative peace because everyone else is at the Eiffel Tower or Sacré-Cœur.
Meander Through the Museums
Paris has SO many amazing museums and galleries, and you could easily visit a new one every day over the course of a week and still have more left to tick off your list. We generally don’t visit museums when we travel, not because we don’t enjoy them (quite the contrary!), but visiting a museum is such a time investment and time is usually the thing we’re always running short of just about anywhere we go. We planned on visiting both the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, but ended up just visiting the Musée d’Orsay because we couldn’t get evening tickets to the Louvre (the crowds always look so crazy during the day!). The museum was built inside of an old train station, and many marks of its former life live throughout the space (including those huge clocks that remind me so much of Wicked!). More than that, it features thousands of works from some of France’s most famous artists. The pieces I used to paint in art class when I was younger – Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone and Monet’s Blue Water Lilies – seeing works like those in person was just so special. Much like our visit to the Palais Garnier, we went first thing in the morning because we hadn’t pre-purchased our tickets (saving our visit for a particularly cold morning that wasn’t conducive to outdoor touring) and though we waited in line for a half hour or so, it was manageable. By the time we left the museum, the line to enter was down the street and around the block.
Experience the Nightly Light Show at the Eiffel Tower
Every evening after dark, the Eiffel Tower lights up for five minutes once an hour. Thousands of lights illuminate and twinkle and it’s probably the most touristy thing ever, but the closest we’ve ever come before was from the window in our hotel room in Pigalle and I really wanted to see it up close. We grabbed a warm cup of tartiflette from a nearby Christmas market and some seats on a bench above the Seine and waited to be dazzled. It was crowded, and it was so touristy, but it was every bit as magical as I’d hoped it would be.
See the City from the Water
I don’t think there’s any bad way to see Paris. The city is beautiful. We’ve spent hours across our visits seeing the city by open air bus and on foot, but we never got to see it by water. Travel on the water is one of the more efficient and unique ways to see Paris and the Batobus offers nine stops across the city and water-level views of the Eiffel Tower, the Place de la Concorde, Notre Dame and more. A one-day pass will cost you around €11 and allows you to hop on and off all day to your hearts content.
Revel in the Spirit of the Parisian Christmas Markets
I’ve seen videos, I’ve heard stories, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the frenetic festiveness of the Parisian Christmas Markets. If you’re not from Chicago, this comparison will be totally lost on you but the best way I can describe it is if you took the scope of the Taste of Chicago (our largest food festival that draws millions of visitors every summer) with the spirit of the Christkindlmarket (our outdoor German Christmas market) and the decorations from Frosty’s and Santa Baby (themed pop up bars that look like they were decorated by Santa’s elves on, like, speed), you’d get the Parisian Christmas Markets.
They’re huge. They’re mega crowded (even after Christmas – they often run through New Years, but each one varies). They’re full of shops and food stalls and amusement park rides. They are SO much fun. We visited two – one of the bigger markets near Vendome at the Tuileries Garden and another at the Eiffel Tower – and we were absolutely obsessed. We rode the biggest ferris wheel I’ve ever seen. We had cocktails and mulled wine. We feasted on raclette melted over potatoes and meats and discovered the carb-loaded delicacy that is tartiflette (a melty hot concoction of diced potatoes, bacon, onions and reblochon cheese). We browsed shop after shop of handmade gifts and treats. These markets? They are the greatest.
Snap Everything
The Eiffel Tower. The Arc de Triomphe. The Rue Crimeaux. Notre Dame. The Moulin Rouge. I have hundreds – literally hundreds – of pictures of these sites and each time I visit, I come back for more. They might be a little cliché, but as one of my friends likes to tell me, clichés are classics. And every time I visit and pass by these places, I find something new to appreciate about them.
BONUS: Daytrip to Disneyland
Our visit coincided with the Yellow Vest protests that were happening around the city on Saturdays. Living in Chicago, I’m no stranger to political protests, but these were intense – they were lighting things on fire, police were teargasing crowds – we just didn’t want to be anywhere near it. We contemplated daytripping to nearby Brussels or going to see Versailles, but there was one thing we wanted to do more: Disneyland. There’s a Disneyland park in the suburbs of Paris, and I was really curious to see how it would match up against our American Disney parks.
Getting there was super easy – we took the RER train. It was simple to find the train despite any language barriers – all trains going to Disneyland Paris have a Mickey icon. The ride took around 45 minutes and cost just over €7, leaving us off just steps away from the park.
Being in Disneyland Paris felt exactly like being at Magic Kingdom. You enter through Main Street USA, there’s a big, beautiful (albeit slightly different) castle at the end of it, with different lands surrounding it. The rides? They were mostly the same. The food? That was a little different, but the shops? Mostly the same. It was smaller and so much colder (winter in Paris is definitely not comparable to winter in Florida!), but having that kind of familiarity in a place so far away…I loved it.
We bought park hopper passes so we could visit the second park on property, Walt Disney Studios. It was more Disney Hollywood Studios than it was California Adventure. Most of the movie-themed rides were there, some of them the same as the ones we have here like Aladdin’s Magic Carpets and the Studio Backlot Tour. Others were different (like the Ratatouille ride, which I think now exists in the US? Fun story – the line was quoted at an hour and a half and typically I’d skip such a long line, but I also didn’t believe the line was actually that long. It was. And pretty miserable in the late hours of a long, very cold day, but it was a good ride so that made it, at least, partially worth it!). Oh! And they had their own little mini Christmas Market in the park, too.
A day in Disneyland Paris took a little more effort to get to, and was just as exhausting as a day in one of our Disney parks here at home, but it was definitely worth the trip.
The Eats
There is no shortage of good eats in Paris. Parisian cuisine is rich and decadent and I could have gone an entire week eating French onion soup, steak frites and chocolate mousse and gotten tired of none of it. Stephanie and I were really excited to try some new restaurants and we wanted to try as many different cuisines as we could. These are a few of our favorites…
Bouillon Chartier – Two words: steak frites. Bouillon Chartier is an old school Parisian steakhouse. The interior was textbook French classical, and the lines to get in stretched around the block, hundreds of people deep, every night. We visited the first night we got in and there was just a short line (probably because it was Christmas Day) and the food was every bit as good as advertised. One thing to note, though: if you don’t have enough people in your party to fill a table, you’ll be eating with strangers (we were seated at a four-top with a couple visiting from Spain). Dining so closely with strangers is an odd experience, but it is what you make of it.
Nina’s – On our second day in Paris, we came across Nina’s as we were looking for a place to warm our hands a bit and this Victorian-style tea shop more than fit the bill. Nina’s is part tea shop, part tea house. It’s grandiose and comfortable at the same time. The tea selection is vast (and delicious – we each brought home tins) and their signature cake makes the perfect accompaniment. The owner of the shop deserves a special mention, too, as she was so delightful and took so much pride in her shop and her teas – she even sent us both home with a handful of samples of new flavors!
Les Fils à Maman – Another café featuring typical French fare (it’s entirely possible I had steak frites once a day while we were there and I have zero regrets), Les Fils à Maman takes you back to your mother’s kitchen. The space is super comfortable, very laid back and feels like home (even when you’re 4000+ miles away!) and the food is hearty and rich. Oh, and the check comes with a jar of candy to help yourself to and if that isn’t the perfect way to end a meal, I don’t know what is.
Odette – Anytime we’re near the Left Bank, we have to stop at Odette’s for a few crème puffs. They’re light and creamy and the perfect Parisian treat. And Odette’s storefront is one of the most Instaworthy picture spots in Paris!
Medi Terra Nea – You know those sushi places where the rolls come out on a conveyor belt and you just pull off whatever looks good? Replace that with Mediterranean tapas and set it off Grands Boulevard and you have Medi Terra Nea. You just pull whatever looks good off the belt and start noshing! The tapas were great (especially the hummus!), but to this day, Stephanie still raves about the chicken with avocado sauce and there’s this dessert trio they serve — it’s just sublime. Oh, and they have live music in the evenings (another + in our books!)
Angelina – If you look at any list of places to eat in Paris, most of them will probably tell you to have hot chocolate at Angelina. And it’s true – Angelina’s hot chocolate is the kind of drink that warms you up from the inside out on a cold day. It’s rich and thick and…it’s perfection. It is. Which is probably why it’s nearly impossible to get into the Vendome location anymore. Thankfully, though, there’s another location, hidden away inside Galeries Lafayette, where the hot chocolate is every bit as good but the lines are non-existent.
Pink Mamma – Oh my god, I don’t even know where to start. First of all, Pink Mamma (one in a group of restaurants under the Big Mamma group that has cafes all over Paris and London) is gorgeous. It’s like being inside of a greenhouse. It’s so beautiful that I’m fairly confident I must have found it on a list of the most instagrammable cafes in Paris. Usually places that are this beautiful have food that’s just okay, but the food at Pink Mamma? It might have been the best pasta I’ve ever had. And the cocktails? Every bit as delicious as they are beautiful. We didn’t have a reservation so we were seated at a bar looking over the kitchen, which turned out to be the best seats in the entire two-story space. The only negative is that it’s located in Pigalle, which is a little gritty (true story – I almost got mugged on our way back). Still worth the visit.
Creperie Chez Suzette – Of all the crepe places we visited from street stalls to full on crepe cafes, Chez Suzette, an unassuming café with a walk up window, was probably my favorite. We split a Grand Marnier crepe and ate it outside, watching the evening traffic pick up on Grands Boulevard.
The Shopping
Just about every time we go to Paris, we come home with a new suitcase. Not because we find a great deal on luggage or because we wanted to – we come home with new luggage because we shop too much.
I don’t know if I’m proud or ashamed to admit that, but we’re all friends here and it’s no secret that that shopping is my lifelong number one hobby.
Paris is probably my favorite place to shop. Between the lavish department stores, the fun boutiques (I found one that sold clothes by the kilo!) and the vintage treasure troves, there’s always something that catches my eye. We plan our shopping trips meticulously – where the best deals are, where the best selection is, what time is the best to avoid crowds, where they’ll serve you champagne and process your VAT papers. All of it. We make lists, jotting down all the details before we leave the US so we know what we’d pay for anything here and what we can expect to pay on anything that’s not at a fixed price. It’s a very big deal.
((You can blame my mother. And my grandmother, too, I suppose – the joy I take in shopping comes from them. Mom even noted my first shopping trip in my baby book so…this is all her fault))
Generally, everything I buy in Paris (excluding the typical souvvies) falls into three major buckets: skincare, food, handbags. Here’s what I picked up on this trip:
Skincare and Pharmaceuticals
A visit to CityPharma in the 6th arrondissement is always at the top of our lists when we visit Paris. It was long this best-kept-secret that isn’t a secret anymore because everyone knows they have the best prices in town on French skincare.
I picked up what I estimated would be a year’s worth of products from La Roche Posay, Caudalie, Nuxe, Vichy and Avene. I don’t think any what I picked up is exclusive to France – you can certainly find most (if not all) of these products in the US. The difference is the price I pay in Paris is often more than 50% less than what I’d pay in the US.
While we were there, I also picked up some Strepsils (which are clutch when my seasonal sinus infections turn my throat into sandpaper) and Advil 400s (…just because).
One thing to note about CityPharma is that because it’s not any kind of secret anymore, it’s crazy busy just about any time you visit. I’m not talking Target on a Saturday busy – I’m talking it’s 6:01 PM on Black Friday and Best Buy’s putting out a big screen for $100. The aisles are narrow, 90% of the people inside don’t know what they’re looking for and it’s honestly chaos. But it’s fun chaos. And you get to leave with a bag full of half-priced goodies so it can’t be all that bad. But if those kinds of situations stress you out, buyer beware.
Food
Everyone always thinks I’m joking when I say I come back from Paris with at least ten boxes of soup mix, but the joke is on anyone who doesn’t know what they’re missing. Every time we’re in Paris, Stephanie and I make no less than three Monoprix runs to stock up on soup mix (which you can’t get individually packaged in the US in this variety of flavors – trust me, I’ve looked), seasonings, fleur de sel (French sea salt makes a GREAT gift for foodie friends!), chocolates, and really, anything that looks good. Food is cheaper in Paris than in the US, but we buy more for what we can’t get here (or can’t get in the same quality) because bringing food back is such a hassle with Customs.
We also stocked up on some fun foodie gift boxes that were marked down at Monoprix in the post-Christmas sale from Maxim’s and Angelina and it was such a fun way of bringing home a little taste of our trip to enjoy later on when the memories started to fade a little.
Handbags
I have such a weakness for purses. I don’t even wear most of the nice ones I buy which is kind of terrible. I just get so much joy out of taking them out of the shelf of the closet I stow them away on, pulling them out of the bag and out of the box, carefully peeling back the tissue paper and just admiring them. I like to think that one day, I’ll have this Carrie Bradshaw-esque closet where I can display my bags as if they’re art (because to me, they are treasured pieces of art!) and just stare at them all the time. My sister likes to remind me that I wear sweats to work most days when I tell her this. She’s not wrong.
In any case, I’ve gone a little too heavy on the Louis Vuitton on my trips to Paris and on our last trip, I leaned into Gucci, but this time, I really had my heart torn between a vintage Chanel bag and a Givenchy Antigona bag. I’d lean one way, then I’d lean the other. By the end of the trip, I bought both. The savings on designer handbags in Paris are significant even before you factor in the VAT refund, and I didn’t want to leave with any regrets.
I bought my Givenchy bag at Galeries Lafayette. They have just about every designer under the sun there and their VAT refund stations make the paperwork quick and painless. My Antigona mini bag retails for $1790 plus tax in the US (10%+ here in Chicago!), but in Paris, the same bag cost me $1480, with an additional $190 coming back in the VAT tax refund, bringing the total for my bag down under $1300, saving me almost 30%.
Buying my Chanel bag was a little more complicated because I was buying vintage and while Paris has perhaps the largest market for vintage Chanel bags, I wanted to be sure I was buying from a reputable boutique. We visited a few before someone tipped us off to a small shop on the Left Bank in the 6th arrondissement that had large selection of vintage Chanel’s. I tried on at least half a dozen bags before I found the one I had to have – a sheepskin flap bag with gold hardware. Even vintage, Chanel never comes cheap (I think all in, this one set me back around $2200), but it just makes me so happy. And I actually use this bag! It has accompanied me to every cocktail party and wedding I’ve gone to this year and it goes with everything.
The Celebration
We did a lot of research into how locals spend New Years because I feel like in every country and really in every culture, it’s a little different. I live in downtown Chicago, so there’s always hotel soirees or bar packages or, my favorite, just a really good dinner at a nice steakhouse. On cruises? It’s easy – there’s a party up on deck. In Paris, most people just go out to dinner and then spend time with their friends and families. And that was right up our alley – just a nice, good dinner. So that’s what we did. We found a restaurant down the block from our hotel that we hadn’t tried yet and we had an epic French feast.
Before our trip, we had planned on going to the Arc de Triomphe to ring in 2019. It seems like in every European country, people flock to the biggest monument (well, tourists do, at least – which sounds like a put down when describing something in another country but it’s not – we are tourists. We do touristy things!) and at midnight, the Arc de Triomphe would be the place to be. Getting there would be easy enough – riding any of the local trains in Paris is free in the evening on New Years eve. They literally just open up the gates and you walk in freely.
As our week progressed, though, there were louder and louder chatter about a big protest at the Arc de Triomphe and honestly, we just aren’t the type to risk it. It was our last evening in town, we had an early morning flight out and we just wanted a peaceful evening. So instead, we split a crepe at another café, we bought champagne at Carrefour and we wandered through the arrondisement, making our own little street celebration.
And then we went back to the hotel and were in bed before midnight because we had a car coming to pick us up and take us to the airport at 5:00 AM for our flight home. They say how you ring in the new year sets the tone for the rest of your year and ringing in 2019 in my favorite city in the world was the perfect start to a year full of adventures.
((Oh, and when we woke up to leave for the airport? It still wasn’t midnight in the USA yet, so technically, we rung in the new year twice))
Getting Home
While our flight in connected in London, our flight home connected at JFK, which meant the first part was the longest part. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:50 AM, but that meant we boarded at 8:50 AM and we still had to process our VAT refunds, check in, check our bags, clear security and immigration and walk to a gate that could be 20+ minutes away.
It’s really easy to process your VAT refunds at the airport – you validate your form and drop it in a box. That’s it. My refunds were on my credit card less than three weeks later. And because our flight was early, there weren’t too many long lines and it wasn’t long until we were set free in the duty free shops.
My Priority Pass membership gave us access to the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, even though we weren’t flying Air Canada. They had a solid breakfast spread and chargers at every seat, and honestly, having access to lounges has kind of been a revelation for me. I like airports enough as it is, but having a space to decompress and snacks and drinks free and on hand makes it just so much more…easy. Comfortable. And as an anxious flier, it makes so much of a difference.
Our flight to New York departed right on time and even though we were flying in coach, we were able to snag the bulkhead seats, which gave us some really solid leg room and best of all, no one reclining into our laps! The drawback, though, was that it was one of American’s older 767 planes, so while it was in a preferred (for us) 2-4-2 seat configuration, there was no in-flight entertainment and no chargers. I slept for most of the flight and Stephanie always has a power bank on hand when we fly, so it didn’t really affect us, but still something to keep in mind – sites like Seat Guru can tell you if your flight won’t have certain amenities so you can fly prepared.
The flight was a hair under eight and a half hours, completely turbulence free (thank you, sky Gods!). Stephanie may or may not have downed no less than five Diet Cokes (in Paris, you can usually only find Coke Lite, which Stephanie tells me is not the same thing) and American, if nothing else, kept us well fed – we had a full meal with bread, a salad, a main course, cheese and crackers and a dessert, mid-flight ice cream and a snack of cheeseburger sliders before we landed.
We quickly cleared customs in New York City, where I had a fun conversation with the customs officer on the food I was carrying back (soup mix, it seems, is not a common answer they get when they ask you what you’re bringing back with you). We re-checked our bags, passed back through security and had exactly four and a half hours until our next flight boarded.
After all that good flight luck, our flight home was delayed (because if how you spend the new year sets the tone for the rest of the year, it was only natural that at least one of my flights was delayed!). But I cleared an upgrade at the gate. Stephanie didn’t, but she was also too tired to care where she sat at that point. I downed a vodka soda, picked at some mystery meat they called dinner and watched the lights below me. Flights between Chicago and New York are probably my favorite for window watching – two big cities with big skylines and lots of twinkling lights.
Two and a half hours later, nearly 19 hours after we left our hotel room in Paris, we were finally home with an extra suitcase, two new handbags, at least a year and a half’s worth of skincare and so many pictures and stories to tell Mom. And all of you.
So that was Paris for Christmas. We’re off to Italy for Christmas this year (Bologna, Florence, Milan and Venice). If you have any tips or reccos, leave them for me below. And as my New Years resolution this year, I’m going to hope to not take 11 months to write that trip report! Hope this one was at least a little worth some of that wait.
