Europe Trip – Hotel, Paris Metro/Bus ride & Seine River Cruise

Day 2

After going through all the trouble at Paris Nord and Paris Metro station near to Pairs Nord we finally reached our hotel all thanks to Uber. (If you have not read my previous blog do read it here)

For our 3 night 4 days stay in Paris we have booked MERCURE PARIS BOULOGNE APARTHOTEL. It’s an apartment hotel where you get a small kitchenette with refrigerator, microwave, ceramic hotplate, dishwasher. Safe, television, telephone, Wi-Fi. Bathroom with bathtub and hair dryer.

We choose apartment hotel due to 2 reasons one and major one was our daughter, as she was only 1.6-year-old, so we need to make food for her second in a medium long trip of 10 days we don’t want to eat outside junk food both the time. Eventually save some money ?

We really didn’t cook full meals but cooking B/F as it was not included in the booking and dinner which was mostly a ready to eat Indian meal like pre-cooked rice, dal, pulao, chole etc.

Mercure is a mid scale brand of hotels b/w 3 & 4-star properties run by its parent company AccorHotels, a French multinational corporation.

Our’s was an around 32m sq. room with a double bed and 1 sofa bed. Bed was comfortable with lights on both the side of the bed, a small shelve on the full wall behind the bed to keep the things like phone, wallet etc.

There’s a small dinning table places beside the wall in the kitchenette, space after you enter the room where we can keep the stroller and other stuff, one wardrobe to store all the luggage and one small stool.

There is a storage cabinet above the sofa cum bed and beside it was a small TV. This storage was very useful during our stay as we kept all our raw/ready to eat food item there.

These was a big window on one of the walls, our room was a front room, so we could see the front road. This hotel is in the quitter residential area, sometimes it was nice to open the window and let the fresh air in.

So, after reaching and settling down, relaxing a bit after a tiring Metro run we went out as today evening we had our Seine river cruise.

Deliberately we have opted for evening time as that time we can see the beautiful monuments in the day light and witness the beauty of Paris in the artificial lights.

To travel locally in Paris, you have metro & bus. Regular ticket cost 1.90 or say 2 Euro if you purchase per ride but there is a little cheaper option i.e. ‘Carnet’ which is a book of 10 tickets cost 16 Euro.

At Nord Station the machines through which we can buy Carnet was not accepting international credit card, but at other station it worked.

You can take help from local people there, they are helpful.

With the help of Google Maps, we found that we can take direct bus from a stop near to our hotel directly to the center where all the attractions are. So, there is no changing metro, no climbing stairs, we were very happy ??

For the next 4 days we only used Bus, well most of the time say 95% as once you reach the centre then you must walk…walk…walk & walk… Saying it again stroller and baby carrier is a must if you have small kid(s).

If one doesn’t want to walk then there is an option of Hop on Hop off bus, in these buses you can ride full day on a single ticket. You can Hop off at any attraction on their specific route visit the place and then Hop on again in the next bus to go to another attraction.

We have done our booking from Vedettes du Pont Neuf after going through review of different service providers at different platforms. Normal ticket w/o any add on would cost maximum 14 Euros pp.

The boats are quite big and have 2 type of sitting options one is in open on the top and second is close below it.

The tour is of 1 hour with live commentary informing about the monuments and places that are covered during the tour. If you choose the evening tour which might end up in late evening or night, then you can witness the beautiful monuments and bridges in night light.

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It’s all Altogether a different experience in artificial lights. It’s amazing experience sailing in the Seine river.

This concludes our first day in Paris.

Stay tuned for more updates and details of the coming days in Pairs.

Note - All the pictures are from our trip taken by us.