And yet again I went on a daytrip to Paris 🙂

Since I found out about “Slangen reizen” (the Dutch bus company who does daytrips to Paris for only 30 EUR!), I’ve been to Paris 4 times in about 15 months, each time visiting another part of this beautiful town. In total I have been to Paris about 10 times now and I just can’t get enough of the “City of Lights”…

Many more trips will follow… let me tell me you a bit more about my most recent visit! Now the reason for this visit was pure sacrifice… My daughter Elizabeth would’ve gone on a school daytrip to Paris about 2 months ago, but a couple of days before their big day, the trip was cancelled because of severe strikes in the French capital. Needless to say that my daughter was extremely disappointed… and that’s where a mother steps in… I immediately sacrificed myself and I promised to take her on a daytrip to Paris in the summer 🙂

I asked her if she wanted to go just with me or if she wanted others to join us. Of course she wanted her nieces and nephews to join us. So there we went… Elizabeth and I… and my sister and her three kids… and my other sister’s son… and my sister-in-law and her son and her god-daughter… And Elizabeth was so happy that so many people joined us on our trip that she found it as good (or even better!) than to go with her classmates…

Before our trip, I discussed with her what she wanted to do, so we came up with this itinerary : first a glimpse at the Eiffel Tower, than we would go up the Tour Montparnasse and then we would pay a visit to Montmartre…

At 5 am the bus picked us up in Antwerp. After a pleasant and smooth drive, the bus dropped us aff at the Bateaux Mouches where we could start our daytrip at about 10 am.

We first went to the Eiffel Tower. That wasn’t exactly necessary for me, but Elizabeth had decided what she wanted to see that day so off to the Eiffel Tower it was… all 10 of us… what a procession 😀

And of course the Eiffel Tower is as she is… grand, majestic and always beautiful… la Dame de Paris… I have always been enchanted by the Eiffel Tower and everytime in Paris I cannot help myself… I just take heaps of pictures of it 🙂 Here are just a few…

Now I had let my daughter decide what she wanted to do : go up on the Eiffel Tower or go up on the Tour Montparnasse. At first she wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower, but after she saw a picture of the view you’ve got from Tour Montparnasse she changed her mind… Because the view from Montparnasse shows Paris in all its beauty… including a view of the Eiffel Tower!

As we were already up at the crack of dawn, everybody was feeling hungry, so we first had an early lunch in one of the quieter streets of the Monparnasse neighbourhood. We enjoyed our salad or pasta and a lovely bottle of rosé (for the 18+ that is!) and with a filled stomach, we continued our walk to the Tour Montparnasse.

As I had booked our tickets beforehand, we only had to wait just a bit before going up Europe’s fastest elevator… The building was built in the early seventies and is actually just plain ugly… but  the panoramic view you get from the observation deck is simply stunning… It is the only point in Paris where you get a 360° view and on a clear day you can see 40 kilometres far!!

I loved how tiny Paris looked from up there… tiny little doll’s houses were spread 200 metres beneath us. And I fell in love with Paris once again…

Next week I will tell you more about our visit to Montmartre so I’ll see you soon here on ‘the good, the fab and the lovely’!

Love, Kathleen

Here you can read another post about Paris with my daughter…