A weekend trip to Paris isn’t so expensive these days, with budget air lines like Wow Air and Transavia flyin for around €100 each way when you’re lucky. A weekday trip is even cheaper, with a one way flight as low as €80, so me and my sister, who has never been to Paris or France, decided to hop over for a couple of nights, Monday to Wednesday.

Me and Kristjana at the Sacre Coeur

We were lucky enough to miss the biggest day of rain in years, just by a few hours, so happily the metros and gutters had just stopped flooding when we landed. It also seemed the sky had been rained out, so for the next couple of days, which had been forecasted for rain, we were lucky enough to have only cloudy skies, with small bits of sun poking thru. It was perfect – never too hot or too wet or cold, and we didn’t get burnt or heat exhaustion. Which we were kind of expecting after spending more than 8 or 10 hours of each day outside walking.

The Louvre

We walked everywhere. And only walked. The only train or metro we took were to get in or out of Paris/Charles de Gaulle airport . In 2 days we walked nearly 55km, and my sister is still slightly limping from a cramped hamstring. But it was all well worth it!

Getting our obligatory Nutella crepes

We saw nearly all of touristic Paris, even thru the battling crowds of other tourists and half evacuated Paris businesses (Parisians start to empty in July for their summer holidays). The Sacre Coeur, the Moulin Rouge, the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Champs Élysées, the shopping at St. Michel, Galeries Lafayette, and Chatelet, and the neighbourhoods of Montmarte, St. Germaine and St. Denis. Just walking thru the Louvre took half a day and a few kilometers, and I randomly ran into a solo Indian/American-dwelling female traveler I met a year and a half ago in Somalia. It’s a small world, even in crowded Paris.