This summer vacations our family decided to go on a trip to Europe and we chose France and Switzerland out of the 44 countries. The trip was ten days long and here is how it went...
12.07.18
We had an early morning flight from Dubai to Zurich through Swiss Airlines. The flight to Zurich was around 6.5 hours long which I spent sleeping and watching a movie. At Zurich Airport, we had a 6 hours stop-over and then a connecting flight to Paris afterward. On our arrival, we were quite tired and went to a lounge as we had certain cards that provided lounge access.
When we arrived in Paris a cab sent from the hotel took us to the place we were staying in, Novotel, Suresnes Longchamp. It is a 4-star hotel with decent amenities. By the time we arrived, it was already evening and not much could be done today so we only went around to explore the area our hotel was located in. We walked along the River Seine for some time and explored the lanes of Paris. We bought some essentials from a nearby Carrefour and had an early dinner at McDonald's. Interestingly Paris has a very late sunset, 10 PM during summers!
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| River Seine in background |
13.07.18
Today we got up early and had breakfast in our hotel. We were going to Disneyland and to reach there, we took an Uber to Arc de Triomphe and from the Charles de Gaulle Station (This station is right below the area around Arc de Triomphe) we took a double-decker metro going directly to Disneyland! There are two parks at Disneyland, The Main Disneyland Park, and Walt Disney Studios. As we were going to spend only one day in the park we decided to go to the main, big park.
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| The Sleeping Beauty Castle |
The park is really big and also had Sleeping Beauty Castle. It is divided into five sub-divisions- Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Discoveryland and Main Street USA. My first attraction was a show at the Videopolis Theatre, where people from throughout the world come to Disneyland to perform and showcase their talent. Next, we saw a Disney Character show in front of the castle where a lot of characters came on the stage and danced!
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| The Show |
We also did many thrilling rides and roller-coasters such as "Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast", "Star Tours", Star Wars; Hyperspace Mountain at the Discoveryland. After these rides, we went to see the best part of one's visit to Disneyland, The Parade!
It was a fascinating journey of various Disney stories and characters. Almost all of the famous characters were there in the parade.
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| The Parade |
After the parade, we went for some amazing rides such as Indiana Jones, Big Thunder Mountain, etc. In Frontierland, we also did a boat ride which was amazing as they tried to give the feel of the forest around us.
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| Boat Ride |
Spending another couple of hours, I had chicken nuggets as my dinner and we took a metro back to the hotel.
14.07.18
Today was the French Republic Day and I woke up early to check out the happening in the city on the day. After breakfast in the hotel we had an Uber Ride to Eiffel Tower, due to the Bastille Day it was closed. Many roads in Paris were blocked due to the same. We had our Big Bus Tour today, which is a Hop ON and Hop OFF Bus. Our starting point was Champs de Mars, as Eiffel Tower was closed on the occasion.
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| Eiffel Tower |
The first destination was Opéra Garnier. It is an Opera House which was inaugurated in 1875. An audio guide which I rented gave us information about the place. The palace was marvelously decorated with gold chandeliers.
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| The golden gallery |
There was a huge library consisting of many music and literature books, caged and not accessible to the public. The main part of the palace, the auditorium was grand and could occupy up to 1979 people. Till date, the auditorium is in use.
From the Opera House, the bus took us to the Louvre Museum, as we were had plans for it the next day, we just had lunch at a nearby restaurant. From there we next headed towards Notre-Dame. It is a medieval Catholic Cathedral, built on an island on River Seine and it's construction had started in 1160. To enter it there was a long but fast-moving queue.
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| Notre Dame |
It was dark inside with whispering public around. There were a lot of statues with showed even the tiniest details such as the foldings of a dress. After spending some time we continued on our journey. The next stop was Musée d'Orsay which had closed before our arrival. Therefore, we only clicked some photos from the outside.
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| Musee d'Orsay |
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| Arc de Triomphe (We stopped here for a photo) |
We now continued the bus ride back to a place near Eiffel Tower. We had dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant named, Goa. After a good Indian food after a long time, we went out near the Eiffel Tower to spectate the fireworks which were to happen within an hour or so. Slowly, it started to get really crowded with police and security everywhere. Finally, the moment arrived and we witnessed the spectacular fireworks lighting the tower.
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| The Illuminated Tower |
The event lasted for some 10 minutes with celebration and smoke throughout the air of Paris. Afterward, we went to take a city taxi back to our hotel.
15.07.18
The much-awaited FIFA World Cup Final, between France and Croatia, took place today. After breakfast, at around 12 pm (Match was at 5PM) we reached near Eiffel Tower but after looking at the crowd we canceled our thought of watching the match in near about area.
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| Closest we could go to the Eiffel Tower |
From there we went to the world's largest art and historic museum, Le Louvre. We had bought the tickets for it one day in advance. To enter the large museum we had to go through the famous Louvre pyramid.
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| Outside Louvre |
Although 80% of people visit Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, there are more than 380,000 artifacts in its galleries. There were so many things to see in a lot of sections of the museums with many excavated items all the way from Egypt, Italy, Persia, etc. There were thousands of sculptures and paintings depicting a lot of different things.
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| One of the many galleries at Louvre |
In the art section, there were thousands of paintings though Mona Lisa was the most crowded one, covered in glass and only viewable from a distance. There were a lot many bigger and more detailed artworks.
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| One of the thousands of other paintings |
After spending a couple of hours we went back to our hotel to see the FIFA Finals. France had a very good victory and we then went out to see the atmosphere in the public. People were cheering all over the place. We had our dinner early and headed for Sacre-Coeur. It is a Catholic Church which is located at a great height and entire Paris is visible from there.
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| The View |
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| Sacre Coeur |
There were a lot of people enjoying and partying right outside the church. We went around the place and bought a few mementos from neighboring shops. As it got late, we headed back towards our hotel, through the crazy public, blocking the lanes.
16.07.18
We took the train to Zurich for the second part of our Europe trip, I'll write another article on Swiss adventures.
