This is the final part of my reflections of Paris, and I’m also nearly at the end of my posts about my interrailing trip. It’s been so fun writing about interrailing that it’s making me definitely want to do it all over again – I’ve been eyeing up European travel guides in work, but sadly most of my travel plans for the summer have already been sorted. In this post, I’m going to talk about the remainder of the touristy things that we did in Paris. And, as ever, please let me know if you have any recommendations for places I can visit when I’m next there in June!
For today’s book post, I have decided to combine two of my main loves: books and travel. I’m going to New York in ten days (!!!) and I have decided to take a new approach for my reading on this trip. I am going to try to read at least one book set in New York – it’s a very long flight, so I feel confident that I will be able to read at least two books during the entire trip! Anyway, this decision made me think about the settings of books, not something that I normally consider when deciding if I want to read a book or not. But there’s no denying that reading has greatly heightened my desire to visit certain places in the world. (Also I realise this list is very European-centric, but seeing as I basically only read historical fiction and European history is the kind that fascinates me the most, this is fairly understandable. I do, however, want to travel all over the world!)
When we were visiting Paris, we spent a minimal amount of time in the city itself. Instead, we went on two day trips: to Disneyland Paris and Versailles, also known as two of the most touristy places on the planet. I am really not into Disney at all, but going to a theme park was one of the things that we wanted to do on our interrailing trip. Versailles, on the other hand, was somewhere that I had long wanted to visit – and I was absolutely buzzing to spend the whole day wandering around the beautiful palace with the iconic Marie Antoinette soundtrack playing in my head.
Both Disneyland Paris and Versailles are really easy to get to – although it’s necessarily a bit more pricey than a usual subway ticket. Disneyland Paris has a dedicated train station and the Chateau de Versailles is a ten minute walk away from the main train station – I spent the whole of the latter journey hopping about in excitement.
To me, this is the blog equivalent of a total comfort read. When I’m not sure about what to post, I’ll probably post about female writers. This really makes a lot of logical sense: I’m a female, and I’m a writer, and I love to think that one day I’ll be like my favourite literary heroines and write books that other people will fall in love with. Plus, two months of just reading female writers has made reading books by men seem a bit illicit. So today I thought I’d write about five of my favourite female authors, and talk about my favourite book of theirs!
It’s fairly difficult to be an authority on as massive, as familiar and as popular a city as Paris, unless you live there. Paris is surely one of the most culturally referenced cities in the world. Everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Gene Kelly, Edith Piaf to Emile Zola has represented the famous ‘City of Lights’ in their art – which certainly places a lot of expectations on one city. My boyfriend and I ended our interrailing trip last year with a visit to Paris – it was technically my second time going there, but seeing as the first time had been a school trip, I was so excited at the prospect of properly seeing the Paris that I had grown to love over time.
I’m actually going back to Paris in June with my friend, mostly because EU residents can get in free to Parisian museums if they’re under 25, and we want to take advantage of that opportunity before we turn 25 next year and also – although I’m pretending this won’t happen – before our stupid country leaves the EU.
So, for this first blog post on Paris, I’m going to focus on the whirlwind sightseeing tour that we did on the first day, because I feel like that’s a pretty good representation of some of the touristy destinations in Paris (although it’s not in any way a comprehensive list – there were so many beautiful buildings and cultural attractions that I would have loved to walk past.) It was also a sad fact that, as we were only in this massive city for three days, we had to limit a lot of our sightseeing activities to walking past buildings, instead of going inside. Which is exactly why I’m going back…
Apparently, I am enjoying answering tags lately – I have seen this tag around, and seeing as classics are one of my favourite genres, I thought I would give it a go. Anyone who would like to join in can consider themselves tagged!
I know that Edinburgh is at the top of many people’s Scottish bucket lists and whilst I firmly believe that Glasgow is the superior city – much less bagpipes and tourist shops – I do contend that Edinburgh is a pretty beautiful city. It’s also only an hour away from Glasgow, so I visit fairly regularly. Most of the time I visit Edinburgh specifically for the purpose of the Fringe – more of that later! – so I’m really not as versed with its tourist haunts as I should be, but read on to find out my recommendations for visiting Edinburgh…
