Paris – The City That Steals Your Heart 🗼🥐

Paris! The city of lights, love, and an overwhelming urge to just… wander. ✨ After landing via Etihad with a layover in Abu Dhabi, we touched down at Charles de Gaulle with three days ahead of us to soak in as much Parisian magic as humanly possible. Spoiler — three days is never enough, but we tried our absolute best!❤️

Day 1 — Arc de Triomphe & Champs-Élysées 🛍️🏛️

Straight off the plane and into the Parisian buzz — our first stop was the Arc de Triomphe, standing tall at the top of the Champs-Élysées like the city’s grand welcome gate. 🙌 From there, we strolled down the avenue itself, past the iconic Louis Vuitton showroom, window shopping our way through one of the most glamorous streets in the world. Champs-Élysées has this effortless mix of luxury and energy — cafés, flagship stores, and Parisians just going about their day like they don’t live in a postcard. 😍🛍️

Pont des Arts — Love, Minus the Locks 🌉💔

The next morning took us to the famous Pont des Arts, once covered in thousands of “love lock” padlocks left by couples. Here’s something important to know before you go — putting new locks on the Pont des Arts (or any of the main bridges) is now prohibited. 🚫🔒 The weight of the locks actually caused structural damage over the years, so the city removed them and cracked down on new ones. The romance of the bridge is still very much alive though — you don’t need a padlock to feel it. Just standing there with the Seine flowing beneath you is enough. 🥹

Louvre Museum — Face to Face with the Mona Lisa 🖼️🎨

No trip to Paris is complete without the Louvre, and honestly, nothing quite prepares you for how massive it is. We wandered through gallery after gallery until we finally reached her — the Mona Lisa. Getting that photo op with her (through the crowd, of course 😅) felt like a small win. The scale of art history packed into this one museum is genuinely humbling. 🙏🖼️

Paris by Open Bus & Under the Eiffel Tower 🚌🗼

We hopped on an open-top bus tour, one of the best ways to get a quick overview of the whole city without exhausting your legs. It took us right below the Eiffel Tower — even though we had our proper visit booked for the next day, standing directly beneath it and looking straight up is an experience of its own. The sheer scale of it hits differently up close! 😲

Napoleon Museum & Evening Seine Cruise 🚢🌆

The afternoon was reserved for the Napoleon Museum, a deep dive into the life and legacy of one of history’s most talked-about figures. As evening rolled in, we boarded a cruise on the Seine — watching the city’s landmarks glide by, lit up gold against the darkening sky, is pure magic. 🌉✨

To close out the day, we climbed the Arc de Triomphe — yes, again, but this time to the top! It was tiring (those stairs don’t play around 😅), but the 360-degree view of Paris from up there made every step absolutely worth it. 🏙️❤️

Day 2 — Eiffel Tower Photospots, Birthday Magic & More 🎂🗼✨

This was the day we’d been looking forward to! We started with the classic Eiffel Tower photospots — Trocadéro and the surrounding gardens give you those postcard-perfect shots everyone dreams of. 📸

And then — the moment we’d planned for — heading up the Eiffel Tower itself to celebrate my birthday. 🎉🥂 There is genuinely nothing quite like ringing in another year with all of Paris spread out beneath you. The wind, the view, the sheer disbelief that you’re actually up there — it’s a memory that’s going to stay with me forever. Best birthday backdrop, hands down. 🎂🗼💛

We then made our way to Notre-Dame, hoping to explore the museum — only to find it closed for the day. A small disappointment, but a good reminder to always double-check opening hours in advance! 📅

The next evening, we returned to the Eiffel Tower once it was lit up — and this time, we didn’t just visit, we brought a picnic and set up right in the gardens facing it. Watching the tower sparkle at night with good food and better company is one of those simple joys that just hits different. 🧺✨🌃

Day 3 — Chocolate, Montmartre & the Soul of the City 🍫🎨

Our final day started sweet — quite literally — at the Musée du Chocolat, a fun and indulgent stop for anyone with a sweet tooth. 🍫😋

From there we headed up to Montmartre, wandering its cobblestone lanes, artists sketching on the streets, and that unmistakable bohemian charm the neighborhood is famous for. 🎨🖌️

We spent the rest of the day just letting Paris happen to us — a bit of shopping through random lanes, a stop at the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore (a must for any book lover 📚❤️), and crossing over random bridges and buildings with no fixed plan. Sometimes the best way to know a city is to just walk through it without an agenda. 🚶‍♀️🌆

Final Thoughts 🌟

Paris isn’t just a city you visit — it’s a city you feel. The bridges, the museums, the golden hour light on the Seine, a birthday celebrated a few hundred feet in the air — it all blends into something that stays with you long after you’ve left. Three days barely scratches the surface, but what a surface to scratch. 🥹🗼❤️

(Our Switzerland leg of the trip deserves its own post entirely — coming soon! 🏔️)

Travel Tips ✈️🥐

Travel Mode 🧳

✈️ Flight We flew Etihad Airways, with a layover in Abu Dhabi before landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). A comfortable route with a short stopover to stretch your legs before the final leg into Paris.

Accommodation 🏨

We booked a hotel with direct bus access to Champ de Mars — the Eiffel Tower’s neighborhood. This turned out to be a great call, since it made hopping back and forth to the tower (for the daytime visit, the photospots, and the evening lit-up picnic) incredibly convenient. If Eiffel Tower access is a priority for you, staying around Champ de Mars is highly recommended! 🗼🚌 but it is very costly.

Food Stops 🍽️

Paris is a food lover’s playground and we ate our way through it quite happily! 🥐🍕🍨 Flaky, buttery croissants grabbed on the go, scoops of proper Italian-style gelato to cool off between sightseeing, and honestly some really good pizza too — Paris has a surprisingly great pizza scene tucked into random corners. We couldn’t tell you the exact shop names (we were too busy enjoying the food to note them down 😅), but that’s the beauty of Paris — just follow the queues and the smell, and you’ll rarely go wrong. And of course, the Musée du Chocolat counts as a food stop dressed up as a museum — worth it either way! 🍫

Shopping Zone 🛍️

Champs-Élysées is your go-to for luxury shopping and flagship stores (hello, Louis Vuitton 👜) along with plenty of smaller boutiques tucked along the side lanes worth browsing through. Near Sainte-Chapelle, we stumbled upon a few lovely little shops and street stalls selling local artist paintings — original, colourful, and a genuinely beautiful souvenir if you want to bring home a piece of Paris that isn’t mass-produced. 🎨🖼️ We didn’t catch the shop names here either, but the area around Sainte-Chapelle is worth a slow wander just for this. Budget accordingly, because Paris does not do “cheap,” but it does do “worth it.” 😄💳

A Word of Caution — Beware of Scams ⚠️🙏

As beautiful as Paris is, it’s also a city where tourist scams are unfortunately common, so keep your guard up! 😬 One of the most well-known ones is the “gold ring” scam — someone “finds” a ring on the ground near you and tries to give it to you or sell it, only to pressure you for money afterward. There are several variations of this — petition signing scams, friendship bracelet scams, and people posing as survey takers — all designed to distract you while pickpocketing or pressuring you into handing over cash. 💍💸 The best defence is simple — politely decline, keep walking, don’t engage, and keep a close eye on your belongings, especially around major landmarks and metro stations. A little awareness goes a long way in keeping the magic of the trip intact! 🙏✨

Bonjour Paris, à bientôt! 🗼🥂❤️