This Easter weekend, we hopped on the Eurostar for (what should have been) 24 hours in Paris. However, a Eurostar cancellation elongated our trip to two days! Although we had an extra 24 hours in Paris, here’s how to see the very best of Paris in 1 day!
Travel day
Ready to make the most of 24 hours in Paris we had a train from London St Pancras at 5:40am.
Tip: If you’re driving to London for the Eurostar, St Pancras charged £36 for 12 – 24 hours parking. However, a 15 minute walk away is an NCP on Woburn Place. This charged £19.40 for 24 hours parking! A secure car park and well worth the savings.
Getting through security and passport control at St Pancras was a breeze and our train left right on time. We made good progress until we reached Lille. A fatality had sadly happened on the track meaning we had to come off the high-speed rail and take the normal line, which delayed us just over an hour.
From Gare du Nord our first stop was Notre Dame. We bought a Ticket Mobilis metro ticket for €6,80 each, covering us for zones 1 – 2 (central Paris) all day. We bought them from the self-serve machines which was so easy to use and we caught the RER B line to Notre Dame.
Morning exploring
The general admission queue was huge and we had hoped to join the queue round the side of the cathedral to go up the towers. However, the queue for that was also substantial, so we gave it a miss, but enjoyed a wander and an explore around the area.
We walked to the Louvre, which is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen! Wee didn’t go inside, but the sight of the building itself was enough for us. We caught the metro from the Louvre to half way up the Champs-Elysees, grabbing some ice cream from a cafe and headed towards the Arc de Triomphe.
We queued for about 5 minutes or so and made our way to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. This had one of the most incredible and interesting views I’ve ever seen, from Sacre-Coeur to the Eiffel Tower. The views of each of the avenues and the Champs-Elysees is also amazing!
From here, we caught the M6 line down to Passy and took a walk towards the Eiffel Tower. Getting off the station, we accidentally came across the bridge from Inception. From here there is also the most amazing view of the tower across the river.
Afternoon exploring
It was about 2pm by the time we got to the foot of the tower and we joined the queue to ascend the steps as the line for the lift didn’t even seem to be moving. We queued for about 30 mins, bought our tickets (which were only €5 each) and started the agonising climb to the top – but it was well worth it!
The steps allowed us viewing points from the first two stages, but unfortunately not the top. You can catch the lift from the second floor up to the top, but the line for that was about 1 hour and we decided it probably wasn’t worth it. When we visited New York we stopped at each of the viewing decks at the Empire State building, but actually found the views on the lower levels better than right at the top.
After this we made our way down and sat in the sun over by the Trocadero.
It’s a lovely atmosphere, with everyone sat out in the sun, chatting and taking in the views. My only comment is to be extra aware of scammers at the foot of the tower. There were groups of guys actively stopping people and grabbing their wrists to tie a “braid” round their wrist then charge them for it.
Our next stop was to catch the metro over to Montmartre, where we headed up the hill towards the Sacre-Coeur and took in the amazing views over the city.
Evening in Paris
We came across a small restaurant, down a side street, which specialised in homemade pizza’s. Our waitress was lovely and very attentive. She didn’t speak any English and we know minimal French, but between us we figured it all out and we had an amazing dinner!
The sun was still shining, so we sat outside and shared a bottle of wine. Oli ordered a spicy sausage pizza and I ordered a four-cheese pizza; both were absolutely delicious! For dessert we both ordered Lemon Meringue, which was amazing! Feeling full and very sad to be leaving Paris (we thought), we headed to Gare du Nord ready for our 9pm train home.
However, we soon learnt there had been some serious delays during the day and Eurostar couldn’t recover the amount of time lost, cancelling all trains to London. Whilst waiting for an update, I bumped into two other ladies who had been waiting for 5 hours!
Freebie day in Paris
We received a letter from a Eurostar member of staff apologising for the cancellations and detailing the additional costs Eurostar would cover. This included a hotel up to £150 for the night! We had no luck finding hotels near the station and headed to the Latin Quarter for somewhere to stay. We eventually came across Hôtel Europe Saint Séverin who had two rooms left!
The hotel was lovely. We had a double on the top floor, right in the corner of the roof and a beautiful big bath for us to soak our aching feet in after a day of walking around.
We woke up the next morning refreshed and called Eurostar at 9am (London time), where we got our tickets exchanged. The next available train was 4:20pm, meaning we had a bonus of another free day in the city!
We headed straight for Notre Dame to try our luck at queueing for the towers again. We joined the queue and for the first 15 minutes was moving well. That’s where it stopped. We decided we had one last day in the city and we wanted to enjoy it, not spend it queueing, so we walked from Notre Dame back to the Eiffel Tower.
On our first day we had planned to catch a boat ride down the River Seine, however, due to our hour delay it meant we had to give this up. We bought two Bateaux Parisiens tickets for the 1:30pm cruise.
The cruise was lovely and was a great way to see the city from the comfort of a seat and rest our feet which were screaming at us from all the walking. We arrived back at 2:30pm and then caught the RER lines back to Gare du Nord ready for our train home at 4:20pm!
24 hours in Paris
Overall Paris is a beautiful city and I enjoyed it far more than I ever thought I would. Our trip was a perfect opportunity to see the city for a cheap getaway, but I was very thankful for the extra day time in the city. Eurostar were also very good at handling the situation, paying for our hotel stay and offering expenses for the extra food, plus the additional car parking at NCP in London.
24 hours in Paris can be done – but I would say two days was definitely just about right. I absolutely love this city and would recommend to anyone to go.
If you have any questions at all, please feel free to let me know in the comments section below. Thanks very much!
1 comment
Thankyou for bothering to put this record of your day up! We arrived in Paris yesterday and as this is our third time we have seen many of the things you mentioned but I did like the hint about the day pass on the train and also the boat trip. We were wondering which group to go with!!
Thanks