Day 1: Travel Day, Paris Centre Pompidou and Seine River Cruise

Anytime I fly out of NY it’s an adventure and today was no different. Last year when my mom and I were on vacation in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico I remember the very moment we were lounging on the beach and I checked my phone and saw an error fare email to Paris from New York for $230 roundtrip (on American) for early 2024. I think I screamed and my mom asked me what was wrong and I told her, “I’m about to book a ticket to Paris for next year.” She asked me how much it was and said, “I want to go too” so right then I booked us 2 tickets (and I messaged a few people that I thought might find it appealing). And just like that it was game, set, match.

Today was the day of our trip and due to budgeting and the fact that I no longer work for an airline (and the fact that my ticket was confirmed) I opted to take Amtrak to get to New York but arranged and found a very cheap flight for my mom (around Black Friday) to go from North Carolina to New York. I left from New Carrollton station and had no issues, the train car was empty and everyone that boarded got a row to themselves. Shortly after we leave Delaware we all get a message that communication systems are down between Philadelphia and New York and train service has been suspended from that point until further notice. Of course I’m thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me of all the days for this to happen, why today?” Well thankfully by the time we arrived to Philadelphia they just fixed the issue but because they had held some trains up and even suspended some we waited (about an hour). Not only did we wait but they let people on whose trains were suspended so no more free row to myself. Nevertheless the circumstances and delay, I made it to Penn station at 1:40pm vs 12:40pm. Luckily my mom had no issues everything for her flight went as planned.

We met at our departing gate (again thank goodness for TSA Pre-Check because the line was much shorter than the regular line) and had about an hour to wait before boarding began. Our flight was completely full and we were seated in the 2nd to last row from the back in the middle. Flight time was about 7 hours and they gave us dinner (the dinner was mid) and a light breakfast snack. I slept for a good 3 hrs of the flight and my mom said she slept for 1. Once we arrived we hit the ground running as we landed around 6:33am. Getting through customs was easy pezzy and we got a transportation ticket (bus, tram and train) for 5 days (although we’ll be here 7 days, 5 days is the longest they have).

We made our way to the train station at the airport and headed to our Airbnb. Y’all, it was 8am and still dark as midnight outside (it didn’t get light out until 8:15am and that was weird to me). We were to meet Luisa (not our host but the person letting us in the Airbnb at 10am and we arrived right at 10am though it took her a minute to meet us). Luisa gave us a tour of the space and left us the key. We took a moment to sit, eat and relax before going out and embarking upon our activities for the day.

Back to the train station we went to go to our 1st site the Paris Centre Pompidou (an art museum in the heart of Paris). There we saw some interesting works of art and took photos of those that stood out to us (along with a few selfies). We spent a good hour and a half at the museum and hopped on the bus to embark upon our Seine River Cruise. Getting around town was proving to be fairly easy and we took in all the sights. The meeting point for the cruise is right near the Eiffel Tower (which is 1 of our activities tomorrow-so now we know how to get there) so we took a few snapshots (and got some really good ones). Here are a few facts I learned on the Seine River Cruise:

•The Eiffel Tower has about 7 million visitors each year making it the most visited paid monument in the world

•Pont Neuf is the oldest bridge in Paris and was almost called “The Bridge of Tears”

•Notre Dame began building in 1163 and took 182 years to build •1793 is when the Louvre Museum became a universal museum-35,000 works on display it is the largest museum in the world

•A lot of now famous sites/museums/monuments were built for world fairs here in Paris

After the cruise we looked for a nearby place to eat at as at this point we were both hungry and tired. We went to a pizza place and for 33 euros total it was very mid and disappointing but hey. We figured out our route back to the place via train and hopped on as the evening now was upon us. We had one quick trip we wanted to make to the grocery store up the street before heading in. We spent quite a few minutes rummaging around in the store for things (mostly drinks, water and snacks) and were satisfied enough with what we got. We headed back to our Airbnb as the day has been super long and we are worn out. It’s 8:32pm here now and we are in our pajamas already. We have 2 activities tomorrow and thankfully we get to sleep in.

Sidenote: This is my traveling site called Traveler’s Montage where I’ll share how I get all these great deals (and how you can too) and where future posts like this will be featured from now on. Welcome and let’s travel the world.