PARIS - Transportation, Prices, Food and Accommodation
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| Entrance of a metro station |
Transportation/ Paris (comparing to some other capitals such as London and
Amsterdam) is cheap in terms of transportation. Metro is the easiest way to
travel in the central city, so buses were mostly empty when I was there.
Therefore, I'd recommend you to travel via metro as long as you can. One way
ticket was only 1 Euro, each person needed 1 ticket to go on the same direction
no matter how far it takes. So this was quite cheap indeed. Another choice here
is that, you can buy a Paris Travelcard which will be much cheaper, if you
will use the transportation a lot instead of walking. Besides that, there is
another selection named Pariss
Pass that includes easier
entrance to more than 60 attractions, a free Metro Travelcard, free bus tours
and a very detailed guidebook. You can purchase a card with the choices adult,
teen and child and pay accordingly. The days the card will be activated also
depends on your choice. For more information on Paris Pass: http://www.parispass.com/how-it-works/index.html
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| Metro tickets for one use |
I was unaware of such
opportunity when I was in Paris but as we mostly walked by foot, I did not need
anything like this. If you trust your strenght, then you should definitely walk
to get to places you chose as this will help you see loads of new places that
you had no idea before. But yet, the Paris Pass looks quite attractive as it
includes free entrance to several touristic places.What else? You can see the Metro signs that indicates there is a metro station under,
so whenever you look for a station to change your destination, you can easily
benefit from those signs. This is how I found the nearest stations when I was
there.
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| A part of Paris metro map and where the Porte de Versailles station is |
I recommended you to travel via underground and one of the reasons was that, Paris metro is very easy to use; there are a couple of lines with specific colours and all you have to do is change the lines to get where you want to. No matter how many lines you change, if you are travelling on one direction, it will cost the same price, so it is quite cheap, even if you are travelling from one side to the other side of the city. Quite the opposite, if you decide to change your direction, you will have to go upstairs, leave the station, find the entrance and use one more ticket. We mostly preferred to get to the centre via metro and then walk to the places we wanted to see, as this would give us a chance to explore the city better. I'm glad we did so, and I'd recommend you to do the same. This way, you will find out very good places which are worth seeing and not on your list.
Food/ Well, I was with my family and daddy had good amount of money with him, so I didn't need to count every penny, so we preferred eating in restaurants to enjoy the Parisian Food. I think nothing special but the best thing I had eaten was Turkish Food, kebab - and this has no relation with my nationality! We tried steaks, chips, sandwiches, and many others, but one night we did not have proper time to dine and dad bought us kebab in bread. We ate them all in our hotel room to save time and rest a bit, and I swear you, I still remember the delicious taste of it! The kebab was done with chicken meat and was extremely oily, which was a nightmare for my mum who loves healthy stuff only, but yet we liked it a lot! I don't remember the name of the place but its location was very close to the metro station named 'Porte de Versailles'; an area where our hotel was. The place was quite a small one, and the owners looked like Arabics as they had a few common words with our language, which helped them to understand what we wanted. I am sure you will be able to find it if you ask people around.
Apart from that, I cannot say that I ate very good-quality food, maybe because we chose where to eat while we were walking on the street that we never knew. However, a very clear memory reminds me that after leaving the Museum Louvre, we saw a good-looking restaurant named as 'Restaurant Louvre' or something like that, and entered. We ordered ifferent kinds of meat for each person, and the food was nothing special. I remember eating unbelievably delicious steaks in London when I was a student there, and they are not even comparable, because food in Paris did not taste as good as it tasted in London. Perhaps this have something to do with our choices of restaurants, but at the end of our 6-7 days of stay, we had never come across with good food at all. Of course I need to mark that I visited the city in 2007, and within those 4 years, food might have been improved in a way.
The best thing you can do is find a place preparing sandwiches and buy some to get rid of your hunger, because this will help you save time. We spent too much time on eating which caused us to see less attractions.
I can only recommend you to eat or drink in the famous Café de Flore, as I liked the taste of their hot chocolate, but to be honest, I have no idea of how they cook at all. Despite everything, it still worths visiting this beautifully decorated historical café. I will write more about it later on, but now let's go on with the accommodation.
But... when it comes to the breakfast, I cannot say anything negative! We had our breakfast at the hotel everyday, and I swear you, I still miss that taste! French cheeses! Nutella! Croissants with butter! Salami - especially with pork, which is hard to find in Turkey! They were all so delicious that the best time of the day was the breakfast time for sure! I'd recommend you to eat croissant everyday, because they definitely know how to cook it. French cheese? Don't forget to stock some more in your baggage! I love French cheese!
And drinks... Wine in France... As most of you will know, French wine is the best! I bet you will never taste any better than theirs. Rosé has always been my favourite, and I enjoyed the French wine with every meal I ordered. Especially the hot wine was my family's favourite but I didn't prefer to drink that one as I love it cold - and hate hot alcohol! Hot wine? Grr. But I'm sure many of you will like the taste of it ;)
About the prices, see below:
Accommodation/ We chose a hotel with our timeshare
company as a part of accommodation-change programme, and paid very little money
for it (Not to mention that we had paid a lot of money to the company yeeears
years ago for nothing!), and as this was cheaper than a hotel that we would
choose by ourselves, we preferred staying in that one. It was in the Porte de
Versailles area, which is not too close to the centre and yet not too far from
it, but thanks to the easy-to-use transportation system, we had no difficulty
with this matter. But if the location is a priority to you and staying in
the centre would mean you a lot, than
you should definitely choose a hotel from the centre, though it will cost you
more.
Our hotels name was 'Aparthotel Paris XV" which was not a
very comfortable hotel at all when we stayed in there, but now I am surprised
to see its renewed interior design when I google it! It was a bit oldish (as a
result of its old furniture and windows mostly), but the staff was very helpful
and very good at English, so I had no difficulty to communicate with them. -
This is a very very important fact in Paris, because most of Parisians cannot
speak good English and unable to help you during your journey.
Now let me show you the hotel we stayed (with its new interior design!): http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-6786-adagio-paris-xv/index.shtml
Good part with the hotel was: There were businessmen most since two fair buildings in the area was too close to the hotel. Therefore, there will be no teenagers who could disturb you while sleeping or so. (Not to mention that businessmen look handsome, and you can exchange glances while having breakfast at the hotel - No kidding.)
Now let me show you the hotel we stayed (with its new interior design!): http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-6786-adagio-paris-xv/index.shtml
Good part with the hotel was: There were businessmen most since two fair buildings in the area was too close to the hotel. Therefore, there will be no teenagers who could disturb you while sleeping or so. (Not to mention that businessmen look handsome, and you can exchange glances while having breakfast at the hotel - No kidding.)
I may recommend you the most successful
online booking site http://www.booking.com
I used it for my Amsterdam journey and
was grateful!
For further details on Paris, keep following!
For further details on Paris, keep following!
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