So a few weeks ago, I headed off to Paris once again! You may remember that I took a trip with my family back in May, but this time the trip was a Girl’s Weekend, partly to attend a convention and partly to visit Paris itself! I was absolutely dreading leaving Chris and the girls for 5 days and 4 nights, but I also had a lot to look forward to. My best friend Nat and I, were traveling from my house, while Amy was coming from hers. Though we were traveling separately, we were spending the whole weekend together – or at least that had been the plan until Amy was unable to make it.
On Day One of the trip, Nat and I took the girls to school and then drove to Retford to catch the train. From Retford we traveled to London (though ended up delayed), where we would then catch the Eurostar. Neither Nat nor I had traveled on the Eurostar so it was quite exciting, but also a little nerve-racking when we found our seats had been changed. Luckily we were upgraded to Business Class and this made the change quite exciting!
From setting off in the morning at 9am, to arriving in Paris at 4pm (French time), the journey was fairly uneventful (despite a slight delay on the original train). When we arrived in Paris, we already had our journey to Versailles figured out and so we went about buying a ticket and catching the RER to where we needed to be. It was pretty busy on the first RER B to St Michel, but after that the RER C was fairly quiet and the journey took us around 20-25 minutes.
When we stepped off the train at Versailles, we used my phone to figure out where we were going for the hotel. It was only a 10 minute walk and the weather was pretty nice, despite having rained most of the afternoon while traveling there. On the way to the hotel, we actually spotted the Palais Des Congres, which was where our convention was being held the next day. Registration was taking place so we decided to queue up and get our pass, before heading to the hotel.
Getting our passes took about an hour but we knew it would save us time in the morning. However the hotel was literally a minute or two from there so we crossed over in front of the Versailles Palace and checked into our room. At first glance, the room was pretty spectacular. There was a double bed and a single bed, a lovely bathroom and a separate toilet. However while at a glance it looked nice, on closer inspection it could have done with a little TLC. One of the lights on the wall wasn’t working, a drawer handle was missing and the tablecloth was dirty. However it didn’t really matter to us and overall it felt like a nice hotel.
We settled ourselves in the room, unpacked somewhat and I also FaceTimed with the girls. At first we had planned to head out and see some sights in Paris and meet Amy from her plane, but when ended up not being able to come, we decided to just stay local to the hotel. On checking in we were given a 15% voucher for the hotel’s restaurant but since we weren’t sure what we wanted to eat, we decided to go for a walk and see what was nearby. We went past the Palace, this time walking around it to see how beautiful it was, then down back towards the station, all around the restaurant area and finally back to the hotel restaurant.
In the restaurant we were luckily given an English menu as Nat and I are both poor at French. She ordered a burger and chips while I ordered an artisan tart (which turned out to be more like pizza). I thoroughly enjoyed mine, though Nat’s burger came far too rare for her. Despite sending it back and it being cooked more, there were still parts that were rare and she really struggled to eat it. Check out for Roanoke weekend activities and you sure won’t be disappointed.
