Welcome to the third day of my solo Europe backpacking adventure. For this, I chose Paris as my third and last city to explore in Europe, just because I wanted to see how Eiffel Tower looked like in person. I know, some of you might be judging me like why a single guy would visit the romantic city like Paris, but, it was a city I really wanted to see and I am glad that I did.
The day started off with me trying to figure out how to get from Brussels to Paris. Like my journey from Amsterdam to Brussels, I hadn’t made plans to get me from Brussels to Paris, so, I tried something else for this, which I thought was the best thing I did during my stay in Europe. I had previous experience of hitchhiking, but, given that it was Europe, it was too rich for my blood, and, that’s why I tried searching the ride sharing apps in Brussels. After facing rejection for more than 20 minutes, I finally hit the jackpot – I discovered an app called “BlaBlaCar“. It was game changing for me. I solved my transportation problem with this app and it was so cheap to get from one city to another. Having said that, it came with its own challenges like paying the drivers in cash, communication difficulties due to different languages, and most importantly traveling with unknown person in their car. I was a single guy with not a lot of money with me, so I could take that chance, and it paid off well to say the least.
Ok, coming back to my day now. I downloaded the app and searched for someone traveling from Brussels to Paris. I got a lot of hits and chose to go with someone who was charging the least. The guy could speak only French and my French was as great as my luck to get laid in Europe – both poor, so, thanks to my network provider Sprint, I could use Google Translate to converse with the guy. After a couple of misunderstood texts, we finally met each other at a spot and I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw a couple more guys in the car. It was an interesting experience to say the least.
The drive from Brussels to Paris was more than 3 hours long, so, I decided to make some conversations with the fellow passengers. They turned out to be an interested bunch of people. One of the passengers was a student from Nigeria, the other one was working for an MNC in Brussels and was visiting his girlfriend in Paris. They were surprised to know that I was traveling all by myself with a single backpack and I had no friends in Europe. When they said it out like that, I felt a little strange, but, I am no one to introspect myself at what others are saying, so, I just kept the discussion alive by diverting to other topics and didn’t think too much about what they were saying. Our drive was completed with a stop at a rest area. I was surprised to see how nice and commercialized the rest areas were in Europe. For the first time, I saw someone charging to use the restroom in a rest area.
Our drive came to an end when the driver dropped me off at a nearby metro station from where I was going to take a metro to my Airbnb. I found the cheapest Airbnb far away from all the attractions, and luckily it worked in my favor. Having travelled for more than 3 hours in a car without a single bite of food, I was starving. So, the first thing I did was to take a shower and head out to eat something. I was glad to find a Subway stall just outside my Airbnb and devoured their sandwich in a couple minutes. It was time to head out and explore the beautiful city of Paris.
The first thing that you notice when you visit Paris is all the beautiful girls. While roaming on the streets of Paris, all I could notice was the beauty around me. During this time, I remember one of things that my friend said in the past – “if you look at your left to check out one cute girl, there are at least 5 more cute girls on your right that you risk missing“, this was so true about Paris. I instantly fell in love with the city and dropped a message to my sisters and cousins that they must visit Paris because its so so beautiful.
The first place on my list was Notre-Dame de Paris. I kept this as the first place on my list because it was a walking distance from the nearest metro station. I could see it the moment I got out of the metro station and I was just taking in the beauty of this place. It was grand in nature and the only way to appreciate the beauty of this church is to see it up close and especially from the inside. I wasn’t lucky enough to get inside though, so, I had to settle for checking it out from the outside. I must say, it didn’t disappoint. The small and intricate details, the way entire architecture came together and presented itself as one magnificent beast was simply mesmerizing and I will not forget it for the rest of my life.
The River Seine provides a pristine look to this wonderful area. I was impressed by the Notre-Dame cathedral but the River Seine and the riverwalk blew me away. I saw so many people enjoying their walks or jogs on the riverwalk and plenty of families and tourists just having fun at this spot. It felt like a bustling place with so many things to do, but, I need to keep going and the next spot on my list was Musée du Louvre.
I know everyone visits the Louvre for only one reason – the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vincy – the Monalisa, but as I was traveling on a budget and alone, I decided not to enter inside the museum, but just explore the outside area and see what others don’t show in their picture when they talk about either Leonardo Da Vincy or the Monalisa or the Louvre museum. It turned out that, the museum looks so simple from the outside. If I hadn’t seen the pictures and didn’t know that the Monalisa was kept at this museum, I wouldn’t have known that the building that I was seeing was in fact the famous Louvre mesuem. I guess, I am not artistic enough to appreciate the beauty of this place or I need to get in one day just to see how it feels to be inside. Maybe some other day with my wife, we will carry on till then.
This brings us to the end of the Part 1 of my visit to Paris, France. Let’s continue in Part 2.
Next stop: Paris, France (Part 2).
stochasticity 