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| Hotel du Champs de Mars in Paris | |
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| Hotel du Champs de Mars lobby |
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| Hotel du Champs de Mars Eiffel Tower just 10 minute walk |
Located at 7, rue du Champ de Mars, this hotel has a great
location at a reasonable price and included free wi-fi. Situated a stone throw from the foot of the
Eiffel Tower, and one of the most beautiful section of Paris, it is also just a
short walk to the Louve, the Invalides, the Place de la Concorde, the Rodin Museum,
the cobblestone banks of the Seine River, and Notre Dame Cathedral. The rue Cler market, the liveliest and most well known market street in Paris, is just around the
corner from the hotel as well as Champ de Mars Gardens.
Our queen room at the Hotel Champs de Mars was quite small but most rooms in Paris are small. Our nightly cost was $183.98 but we opted to
pay an additional $10.93 per person for breakfast, bringing our total to $205.84
per night.
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| Standard Queen Room |
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| Toilet and sink area of our standard queen room |
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| Shower in a Standard Queen room |
Immediately after checking in and dropped our luggage, we walked
out the front door of the hotel, turned right and walked to the corner which is rue
Cler street. We made another right and in under 2-minutes had arrived at Mariage Freres-Tower Eiffel location. This French gourmet tea company was founded in 1854
by brothers Henri and Edouard Mariage. The
company has been managed for over 130 years by the Mariage family. Today, with over 30 stores, it operates in France, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, with four stores located in Paris.
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| Entrance to Mariage Freres from rue Cler |
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| Inside the Mariage Freres tea shop. |
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| Inside Mariage Freres |
The tea menu was extensive, but in
French, so Mike and I simply followed the example of our friends and ordered
the Marco Polo Blue Tea. Listed as being “the most legendary of
blended compositions”, it was very elegantly served in individual silver
teapots and the tea color was actually blue.
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| Marco Polo blue tea at Mariage Freres tea house in Paris |
Be prepared for sticker shock as a pot
of tea here will run you $15.00 per person.
The friends that met us at the Nord Station, escorted us to our hotel and
then joined us for Marco Polo blue tea were Fred and Nancy Gramann.
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| Friends Fred and Nancy Gramann from Paris |
Fred recently celebrated his 40th year as the Music Director of the American Church in Paris. You are probably asking yourself how we
came to meet and become friends with a couple who have lived in Paris for 40
years. That is a fascinating story in
itself and perhaps one for a future blog. In any event, when I discovered that our hotel was only a 10 minute walk
to his church and that he would be holding a music rehearsal while we were
there, I asked Fred if I might be able to attend and he very graciously consented. We did find ourselves caught in a rain storm as
we began walking to the church. I had
brought along my umbrella but Nancy, and my husband Mike, quickly improvised
with cardboard and a plastic trash bag.
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| Improvising during rain shower in Paris |
Breakfast at the hotel is served downstairs and there are no options to choose from
like you would see on a typical American menu.
Once you are seated you were brought the prepared breakfast which consisted
of orange juice, croissant and breakfast breads, butter, cheese sticks, plain
yogurt, fruit cup and coffee or tea.
It’s the same each day.
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| Breakfast area downstairs |
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| Breakfast is served |
We left the hotel at
10:00am and enjoying a leisurely stroll on the cobblestone walkway running adjacent to the Seine River. My GPS
indicated the walk to Notre Dame Cathedral would take us 15 minutes but it actually took us just short of an hour as we
found ourselves making numerous stops to admire the views, especially of the
Eiffel Tower and the Seine River.
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| Selfie on our walk to Notre Dame Cathedral |
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| Fun photo of the Eiffel Tower |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
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| Sights along the Seine River |
We finally arrived at
Notre Dame Cathedral just before 11:00am and jumped into the back of the
line for entrance. There is no fee to enter the Cathedral, however, you will pay a fee of €10 to go into
the tower to check out the gargoyles and bells.
The lines can be very lengthy at the Cathedral but our wait was no more
than 10 minutes. You will go through a
quick security check before entering. I wrote about the Cathedral on an earlier blog.
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| Notre Dame Cathedral | | | |
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| Entrance into Notre Dame Cathedral |
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| Selfie in front of Notre Dame Cathedral while listing to the noon bells ringing |
After leaving Notre
Dame we made our way to the Foxity bus stop for the 2-hour hop on hop
off Paris city tour. We purchased our
tickets and boarded at Stop #7. A bus
comes by every 20 minutes. The
double-decker buses are orange and white and the cost was €20 per person for a
24-hour pass. The roof is retractable
in the event of rain and the bus is heated during the colder weather. The tour
makes 10 stops including the Eiffel Tower, Avenue de Champs-Elysees, Arc de Triumph,
Palais Garnier (Opera), Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral.
Individual headsets are provided and commentaries are in 9 languages. I especially liked that they stopped at the
major sites and gave ample time for photos.
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| Foxity hop on hop off double-decker bus |
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| Foxcity route map |
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| Arch de Triumph from Foxcity tour bus |
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| Eiffel Tower from Foxcity tour bus |
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| The Louve from Foxcity tour bus |
We walked out of the
hotel at 5:30pm and headed straight to the Eiffel Tower as I had made 6:30pm dinner
reservations at 58 Tour Eiffel Restaurant to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. The walk over took us less than 10 minutes. Why is it called 58 Tour Eiffel? “Count 57 meters up from the ground, add a
meter for the height of the kitchen range and there you have it . . . .”
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| 58 Tour Eiffel Restaurant in the Eiffel Tower |
Our confirmation instructed us to check in at the foot of the Eiffel Tower 30 minutes early. To
access the Eiffel Tower esplanade you will first need to go to the checkpoint
located on Avenue Gustave Eiffel, between the South and East pillars, and
present your confirmation email. Without
that document, you will not be allowed access. Mine was on my iPhone and we encountered no problems
getting inside.
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| Avenue Gustave Eiffel check-in point to enter Eiffel Tower esplanade |
Once inside the esplanade area you then
need to find the red 58 Tour Eiffel welcome desk located between the North and
East pillars. Here you collect your lift
ticket as it is included with your dinner package. Once you have your lift ticket proceed to the VIP lift that provides access to the first floor of the Eiffel
Tower. It is located between the South
and West pillars. There is a special
entrance for guests holding dinner reservations so you skip to the front of the
line.
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| 58 Tour Eiffel check-in area at base of Eiffel Tower |
I booked the 58
Tour Eiffel online and purchased the 6:30pm “Emotion Offer” that included
lift ticket, glass of champagne, starter, main course, dessert, wine, mineral
water and coffee. I selected this package because it offered a guaranteed
window view. Dinner lasted 2 hours and our
total cost was $249.31 but I felt it was worth it and would certainly do it
again. NOTE: If you plan to have dinner in the 58 Tour Eiffel
Restaurant you will want to book as far in advance as possible as I have
friends who have tried to book three months in advance and they were already
sold out.
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| First glass of champagne after arriving at 58 Tour Eiffel Restaurant |
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| Mike and I enjoying our window seats in the 58 Tour Eiffel Restaurant |
Our second morning in Paris was uneventful. Downstairs for
breakfast about 7:30am, then back to the room to pack. Today we are
heading to Conflans-Saint-Honorine.
It is in this small community, situated on the banks of the Seine River,
where we were to board the MS River Venture, our home for the next 7
days.
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| MS River Venture docked at Conflans-Saint-Honorine |
The docking area in Conflans-Saint-Honorine for Vantage Travel is about 30 miles northwest of the city center. The question then
presents itself as “How am I going to get from my hotel to the dock?” and “How
am I going to get from the dock to the airport?”. I did a quick google
search of “Ground Transportation Paris” and was provided with pages of
standard options such as Viator, however, they all list from city center to the
airport. I needed a company, other than hiring an expensive taxi, that was flexible
enough to take us to this relatively unknown location.
My next google search was “Paris Ground Transfers”.
It was here, as I scrolled through the list, that I ran across a company called
Shuttle-Paris-Airports. Searching my way through their website, I was unable to
find information on transportation to Conflans-Saint-Honorine. Transfers via taxi or
through Vantage Travel were extremely expensive so I felt it beneficial to fire off
an email to Shuttle-Paris-Airports and inquire if they provided such a service and at
what cost. My initial email was answered promptly and professionally by
Serge, the owner of the company. From this point on we exchanged a number
of emails and I began to feel very comfortable with my choice.
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| Meeting Serge from Shuttle-Paris-Airports |
I pre-arranged a transfer from our hotel to the docks of Conflans-Saint-Honorine and also a transfer from the docks to Charles DeGaulle Airport. The service
was easily paid for online and a receipt issued the same day. On the
morning of our scheduled transfer to Conflans-Saint-Honorine,
Serge personally met us at our hotel and introduced us to Ben, our designated
driver. Ben confessed that he had not been to the docks
before but made the trip very enjoyable with his engaging conversation and
bubbly personality. The trip will take between 45 minutes to an hour,
depending on traffic. Once we arrived into the community of
Conflans-Saint-Honorine it took us a few extra minutes for Ben to locate the
docks where the MS River Venture awaited. Total travel time was just
over one hour at a cost of $85.81 for both of us.
Seven days later we returned to Conflans-Saint-Honorine and once
again Serge personally met us dockside, allowing enough time for a short interview before we
headed to the airport. Serge was born in Columbia but came to France as a
very young boy. Shuttle-Paris-Airports is a smaller company and fairly new, started just five
years earlier. It represents just one of many businesses owned and
managed by Serge, who also builds and manages his own websites. Serge
assigns his drivers from a current pool of ten. Bookings are comprised
of 50% American, Canadian and Australian and 50% from the rest of the
world.
If you are looking to support a local, quality run business
operating in the Paris area, consider Serge and Shuttle-Paris-Airport first. Have a unique request? Just send an email to Serge at shuttleparisairports007@gmail.com You won’t be disappointed.
