The two comments I have heard the most from people since coming back from our trip are did you have fun and I would love to be able to travel. The responses I give are of course we had fun and you can travel!
Travelling is my most favorite thing. I would rather spend money going on a vacation than buying a new couch. Now in a perfect world I would enjoy my vacation and a new couch but sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Going places and seeing things is something I love and so I'm willing to make sacrifices to do it. My husband hadn't ever done much travelling, so when we got married and I started talking about all of the places I wanted to go he panicked a little bit. Travel can be stressful, time consuming and money consuming. Throw kids in to the mix and the whole thing seems nearly impossible. But if it's something that is important to you there are ways to make it work.
Stace and I are really lucky in that we have parents who are willing to watch our kids. Our parents live close to me (like 3 miles away close) and were great about taking my kids for the full week we were gone. Stace's in-laws drove for 12 hours to stay at her house with her two kids and we both bow down to the awesome willingness of the Grandma's.
Last year Stace and I went to Italy with our husbands. Our trip was booked through Gate 1 Travel company. They offer travel packages that often include air and hotel at various destinations. Our trip to Tuscany was so lovely and we had such a good experience that we were thrilled to give them another go with London and Paris. Our dad is the master vacation booker. I should capitalize that. Master Vacation Booker. He and our mom travel quite extensively. In the last few years they've been to Russia, France, Italy, Nepal (to hike to Everest Base Camp, they totally made it), Tanzania to hike Kilimanjaro ( I know I don't understand it either) plus numerous cruises. I come by my wanderlust naturally. Dad found the trip to London and Paris for us. It included airfare from Newark to Heathrow and then to Charles de Gaul in Paris and back home. We just had to get ourselves to Newark. Hotels in both London and Paris with breakfast included. The original deal was $799 per person. We chose to upgrade our hotel from a 3 star to a 4 star just to ensure we were in a good part of town and as we weren't renting a car we wanted to be within walking distance of most tourist sites. So our price went up a bit. It was totally worth it.
The flight to London lasts about 6 hours so it's really not too bad. We did not rent a car. I would not ever rent a car in London if I didn't have to. Not only do they drive on the opposite side of the road but they seem to have no lanes! I can't tell you how many times I was looking out the window and saw a car come barreling down the street and my stomach jumped up in to my throat. We used our Uber app to request an Uber cab to take us from the airport to The Grosvenor Hotel. Uber worked just fine and was much much cheaper than a cab. The trickiest part was getting them to pick us up in the right spot. They would lose us or we would lose them. It happened in both London and Paris that we were standing in the designated pick up area and our driver couldn't find us. But it was cheap and effective so I would recommend it as useful transportation.
The Grosvenor was a wonderful hotel. It's located in London just down the footpath (British for sidewalk) from Victoria Station. This was a very useful spot to center ourselves. Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park and Westminster Abbey were within a 15 minute walk. I would highly recommend The Grosvenor to anyone staying in London. It was a clean lovely hotel with a wonderful breakfast. The rooms were very small but they suited our purposes as we really spent very little time in our rooms.
We only had 3 days so we got started with the tourist stuff right away. There are a million ways to see London. Bus tours, walking tours, guided tours we just decided to head out and see what we saw. Also almost everything there costs money to enter. Take entrance fees in to account when you are budgeting out your trip. We made a list of the things that were most important to us so that we were sure not to miss anything. Stace and I loved roaming around Hyde Park but my husbands most favorite thing was the Tower of London. He's a big medieval buff.
We did do a bus tour on our second day. We wanted to get out of the city so we booked a tour of Windsor, Stonehenge, Bath and Lacock through Premium Tours. It was lovely. For 82 pounds a piece we were taken to all of those places with a guide, the entrance fees were all included as was lunch in a pub in Lacock. It was a fantastic deal and it turned out to be my favorite part of the trip. The biggest down side of a bus tour is that you're on kind of a time crunch. My husband would have loved more time at Windsor Castle and I needed more time in Bath. But we wouldn't have been able to see both of those places if we hadn't scheduled the tour especially as our trip was a quick one. If you want to stop for a Sally Lunn bun in Bath make sure it's your first stop. The line gets really long. Also if you'd like to have tea in The Pump Room make sure you book in advance. The Jane Austen Bookshop was sooooo lovely and I bought everything they had.
The flight from London to Paris is only about an hour, you're really just jumping over the Channel and into Paris. We also used Uber in Paris, most of our drivers spoke English but some of them did not. It really was ok because the app took care of destination so we were just along for the ride. We stayed at the Novotel les Halles in Paris. It was in a really crummy part of town despite our upgrade in hotel package. The lobby and breakfast were great but the room was kind of drab and the beds were very uncomfortable. We came to understand pretty quickly that Paris is just a dirty city. We honestly felt kind of disillusioned. I loved the Eiffel Tower, my husband loved seeing the Mona Lisa, my sister loved the Catacombs and my brother in law loved Pokemon Go. Seriously my husband and brother in law played Pokemon Go through the whole trip. They used the Pokestops and the GPS to get us around and read us interesting tidbits about some of the lesser known sites. I know, It's ridiculous and oddly genius. Getting out to Versailles was really easy, the staff at our hotel were super helpful in pointing us in the right direction of the appropriate train. The line to get through security is ridiculous. Versailles was the most crowded place we visited by far. Also if you're a book lover head over to the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop by Notre Dame and buy a tote bag or a book with the Shakespeare and Co stamp! It was such a great shop!
Here's the deal with food. London had some of the best curry we've ever eaten and we learned that if you want to eat something besides crepes and kabobs in Paris you need to be willing to spend upwards of 30 euros per plate. Paul's Bakery over by the Catacombs was by far our favorite patisserie and we had some delicious creme brulee in Montmartre up by the Sacre Coeur. We ate a lot of crepes and croque monsieur sandwiches. We used an article from the Huffington Post called 12 Not Terrible Places to Eat by the Eiffel Tower which gave us a list of restaurants to try. We walked over to Cafe Constant and loved the duck and carrot puree.
This is a very breezy nonspecific account of our trip. Mostly I just wanted to provide you with a few tips. I am always willing to talk about vacationing so if you want to know more please don't hesitate to ask! We loved our trip and felt so fortunate to be able to have such a lovely experience. Really we wouldn't have changed a thing.
