My visit to The City of Love was the first stop on my mom’s surprise birthday trip to Rome. I absolutely loved Paris! It’s such a beautiful city – everything looks like the perfect photograph.

I did a ton of research before I left to plan out all of the must see places. I had heard that Paris is a very walkable city, so I thought it would be a good idea to join a walking tour. However, none of the tours I found covered all the places I wanted to see. So I discovered an app called GPSmycity where you can create your own custom walking tour including all the sites you’d like to visit, and it creates the most efficient walking route for you, then you can download it.

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and while I had obviously heard about the protests in Paris, I completely forgot about them and didn’t know they were still going on. Unfortunately for us, Saturdays are the one day that the protests take place around the Champs Elyses area – which is exactly where we had planned to go. So we had to change our plans a bit.

Our first stop was The Moulin Rouge. We didn’t see a show there, I honestly just went for the photo op. From there we got crepes, walked around and headed to the Sacre Couer. This beautiful basilica was obviously a tourist hot spot, because there were hundreds of people on the stairs in front of it – impossible to get a solo shot. There are also the love locks on the gate right outside and people selling them if you’d like to leave your own. The hill in front offers the most beautiful view over the city.

On Sunday, we headed to the Palace of Versailles. The artistry here was amazing – from the extravagant gold gate at the entrance, to the apartments inside and the gardens out back.

Tip: Purchase your tickets online ahead of time so you don’t have to wait in line. Just scan your QR code and enter.

Our tour of Versailles didn’t take as long as we thought, so we still had the rest of the day to explore Paris. We visited the most famous place in the city – the Eiffel Tower. I was amazed to say the least, but I mean who wouldn’t be? It’s the Eiffel Tower! Up close, you can really see the beauty and attention to detail in its construction. It is absolutely massive! You have to go across the street to even be able to fit it in a photo. The best place to get great photos is directly across at Trocadero – you can climb the stairs there and get the most perfect backdrop of the Tower. There are men everywhere selling Eiffel Tower keychains 5 for one euro – a cute little souvenir and a great deal, I’d recommend buying some.

Our Monday was spent at Disneyland Paris. There are two parks here – Disneyland and Hollywood Studios. We opted for the actual Disneyland because it seemed to have more to do. The great thing about this is there are FastPasses here that allow you to scan your park entry ticket and get a pass with a specific time to come back and skip the line for the ride. It ended up timing out just right so we didn’t have to wait in line for pretty much anything. There’s also an app that shows the wait times for all the rides. The food here isn’t that special, I’d recommend bringing your own snacks and water. The HyperSpace Mountain ride is amazing and Mickey’s Philharmagic Show (similar to Orlando’s) is absolutely adorable. No need to worry about language barriers, because just about everything is presented in English as well as French.

Tip: Purchase your park tickets (and pretty much all activity tickets) via Klook, which saves money with cheaper pricing than the actual venues sell.

On our last day in Paris, we made up for the time lost on Saturday and discovered how walkable this area really is because everything was in such close proximity of each other. Our first stop was the Louvre. I was mindblown simply by the fact that this is where THE Mona Lisa is. The architecture of the Pyramids and the surrounding area is pure art – just beautiful. I pretty much had a whole photoshoot here and was the real nice stranger who took amazing pictures for people who were there alone. 🙂

Then we walked straight ahead through the Tuileries Garden to the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, which is larger than the famous Arc de Triomphe in the Champs Elyses.

From there, we crossed the street to Le Palais Royal which features an outdoor installment called Les Deux Plateau which is a really dope visual of a bunch of striped platforms of different heights.

Then we headed to Angelina’s where I had read about their famous hot chocolate and had to stop in to see what the hype was about. It was delicious!

After Angelina, we walked to Le Village Royal where the Umbrella Sky Project is on display.

All in all, I loved Paris and our trip was amazing! I always feel super successful when I manage to check off everything that was on my list to see and do.