Susanne Ashby Photography

Last July I had the most amazing opportunity to visit France to shoot a wedding for a dear friend.  You may remember Marie & Leo’s Paris engagement session HERE and their French countryside wedding HERE.  Well, I’m FINALLY getting around to sharing some personal pictures from the trip.  I travelled around Paris with my sister, and spent a full week in France.  It was definitely one of THE most amazing trips I’ve ever been on and I’m completely smitten with the beauty of France.  I can’t wait to go back someday with my husband, so he can see why I love it so much!  I thought it would be fun to share my TOP 10 TIPS for visiting Paris!

1. DO VISIT THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES AND FIND THE QUEEN’S HAMLET …  Versailles is a quick 30 minute ride on the metro from Paris.  I stayed with my friend, Marie, at her apartment in Versailles and I really came to love the town of Versailles and also the palace grounds!  I arrived on a Thursday evening, so I didn’t get to do any sightseeing that day.  The next day, my little sister arrived from the East Coast, so we had just enough time to walk over to the palace and look around the grounds (which are HUGE and go on for miles!).  We went back on Sunday for a tour of the inside of the palace and also toured Marie Antoinette’s Grand Trianon and Petite Trianon.  After looking around inside the Petite Trianon, we wandered back through the garden and happened upon the Queen’s Hamlet… a little village that Marie Antoinette had built so she and her ladies in waiting could pretend to be peasants!  The Queen’s Hamlet was easily my favorite place to visit on our trip!  I felt like I was walking through the opening scene from Disney’s Beauty & The Beast.  🙂
{Picture of one of the houses from the Queen’s Hamlet, taken with my cell phone since I SADLY didn’t bring my big camera that day! Doesn’t it look like it could be Belle’s house from Beauty & The Beast?!}{View from our apartment in Versailles.  The French sure do know how to do architecture right!}2. DO GET UP EARLY TO SEE THE SIGHTS…  We were up by 5am on Saturday morning and arrived at the Trocadero by 6:30 to start the engagement session.  This is hands down the BEST way to see the more popular sights!  There are hardly any people out this early in the morning and we were able to take pictures, check out the Eiffel Tower (from the ground) and even make it over to Sacre-Coeur and the Montmartre district without seeing many people.  It was awesome!  {I loved Montmartre… the art district!  It was empty when we first visited that Saturday morning, but we went back another day so I could buy a painting!}3. DO GO OFF THE BEATEN PATH…  When we were out on Saturday taking engagement pictures, Marie asked us if we’d like to have brunch with them at the restaurant where Leo proposed to Marie!  After eating at Twinkies (which was so yummy!) we wondered around the area for a bit and came across some great little spots including the most beautiful covered alleyway with darling little shops.  What a treasure to find!  After some research when I got back home, the covered alley is called Passage Du Grand Cerf.  Definitely worth checking out!  4. DO VISIT SAINTE CHAPELLE…  Sainte Chappelle is located in the heart of Paris, just a couple of blocks away from Notre Dame and it is simply breathtaking!  Each window depicts scenes from a book of the bible.  The details are so intricate and I honestly wanted to spend hours studying the windows.  I would say, make it a priority to visit.  You won’t be disappointed!{Notre Dame… we didn’t go inside since the line was THREE HOURS LONG!  If I go back to Paris, this will be on my list!}5. DO USE THE METRO BUT ALSO SPEND A DAY WALKING THE CITY… On Monday, we decided to skip the metro and plan out a walking tour.  We ran into some cool spots that I had seen during my research before leaving on our trip, but had completely forgotten about once we got there.  We walked around 10+ miles that day, but it was worth it!  We started off at the Trocadero (bright and early… around 7 am!) to get another look at the Eiffel Tower up close.  Then we headed off to the Arc de Triomphe, walked down the Avenue de Champs Elysses, then to Jardin des Tuileries, checked out the Louvre from the outside, then over to the Palais Garnier opera house (favorite!) and ended the day attending the ballet at the Opera Bastille.  6. DO BUY A MAP! … I know you’re gonna laugh when you read this, but we did NOT buy a map and oh how I wish we had!!  I had looked up the directions to each place on my map app while I was connected to wifi the night before and took screen shots, but that did not help us very much (in hindsight, I do not know what I was thinking!!)!  I couldn’t see all the little side streets on my street map and we got a bit lost several times.  It all worked out after a bit of wandering (which helped us discover some more fun places to see!) and a bit of asking for directions (which got interesting when we tried to ask a police officer where the Tuilleries were… apparently we weren’t pronouncing it correctly!  HAHA!).

7. DO VISIT LADUREE FOR SOME MACARONS…  I don’t know about you, but I am a huge fan of French macarons!  They are so ridiculously good!  So of course, I had to do my homework before traveling to France to find out where to buy the BEST macarons in town and heard about Laduree over and over.  We actually hit them up twice on the trip… once at the Palace of Versailles (the gift shop has a mini Laduree store!) and then we had to visit their main store on Champs Elysses.  It’s a darling shop and I highly recommend checking it out!{A little snack from Laduree!}
{Had to do a mirror selfie, OF COURSE!  The doors and gates in Paris are simply spectacular!}{My absolute favorite bridge in the history of ever… Pont Alexandre iii.}{Jardin  des Tuileries… so pretty and you can see the Louvre museum at the end!}8. DO VISIT THE LOUVRE, PREFERABLY ON WEDNESDAY WHEN THEY CLOSE LATE… Suprisingly, we were considering not going to the Louvre.  I know… GASP, right?!  We wanted to see so much of the city, so we weren’t sure if we would have a chance to make it to the Louvre (and the line at the entrance… oh the line!!!).  It turns out that we were lucky and had time to visit on a Wednesday afternoon.  Wednesday, they close the museum a few hours later than usual.  So we arrived around 4pm and stayed until closing.  It was brilliant!  Still busy, but certainly not packed by any means!  We only waited at the entrance for about ten minutes and even the Mona Lisa wasn’t surrounded by too many crowds!  {The Palais Garnier opera house was also a must see!!!  So beautiful!}
9. DO VISIT MONTMARTRE AND SEE THE PAINTERS… Montmartre is the art district where many notable painters lived and worked, including Salvador Dali, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso!  This little square filled with painters was one of my favorite parts of the city.  I couldn’t resist buying a painting of my own!{Sacre-Coeur on a different day, when it was quite a bit more busy!}10.  DO EAT BREAKFAST AT A PATISSERIE… I suppose it wouldn’t be a good idea to eat this way on a regular basis, but we figured since we were walking several miles a day (and plus, we were in France!!!), we decided to splurge on our calories and save some money at the same time by eating breakfast from a Patisserie.  If you visit France, you must try the Croissant Aux Ammandes… it was my absolute favorite!  YUM!If you’ve made it all the way to the end, congratulations!  Haha!  This was such a fun trip and I hope to add more travels to my blog in the future… I’ve definitely caught the travel bug!  😉