Have you ever wanted to take a European Dream Vacation?! In today’s post we’re traveling down memory lane! We recently took some time off from building our home and spent 10 glorious days in France! What a dream come true!

 

 

I’ve been dreaming for years of the day when I could travel to Europe. While it’s know for it’s art, culture, food and beauty, and as much as we enjoy all those things, Aaron and I chose to visit Paris France mostly for the historic architecture! We visited so many places on our bucket list and left feeling incredibly inspired!

 

So if you’ve ever wanted to travel to Paris and curious about our trip, todays post is Part 1 (of 2 posts), all about the highlights of our our recent trip. I’ll cover what we saw, where we visited, shopped, our thoughts and our favorites!

Arriving in Paris/Meaux

We flew Delta direct from Detroit to Paris and made great time (flight was 7 hrs), YAY! Paris is 6 hrs off from Michigan and we landed around 8 am Central European Time. We stayed the first week at Marriott’s Village d’Ile de France. We chose this location for 2 reasons, we wanted to stay outside the city of Paris and this resort was interchangeable with our condo (timeshare we own in Orlando), making our stay free (other than a small transfer fee).  The resort is a wonderful option if you’re like us and prefer being in a more rural area (and are okay with taking the bus, metro and/or renting a car). It was peaceful, clean and a great location considering what we wanted to see.

 

 

We rented a car and spent the first day exploring along our route from the airport to our accommodations. The first place we stopped was a charming french town called Meaux. We  toured the Meaux Cathedral, build around 1170AD.

 

 

This Gothic structure was remarkable and we spent quite a while marveling at it all before making our way to a local Boulangerie Patisserie, where we had the most delicious croissants and pastries you could imagine! We ended up sending Aaron back multiple times thought the week for more (it was that incredible)!

 

 

We unpacked, ventured out to a large super market and stocked up on groceries for the week. We don’t speak French at all,  out of everything we did in France, finding the right groceries was by far the most difficult thing we did.

 

 

The packaging on the food is so different and we had to use google translate a lot to even find the most basic things. If you plan on cooking and eating-in a lot, make sure you give yourself time to navigate the market if you aren’t fluent inFrench:) Regardless of how challenging the grocery shop was, we didn’t come close to starving! Lol! There is NOTHING quite like a fresh french croissant or pastry! It’s a good thing we walked about 20K steps per day to make up for all the stops into the local pâtisseries and boulangeries!

Chateau de Fontainebleau

 

 

Chateau de Fontainebleau . Out of all the Chateaus we toured, this was probably our 2nd favorite (I’ll share about our very favorite Chateau in part 2). It’s outside of Paris so very few people actually visit it making it super easy to see everything you want to see at your own pace! There were less than 20 other people there while we were there. It was so nice to not have to move through in a large crowd. We could take our time and got great views of every single room! The history is fascinating and we learned a lot by purchasing the audio guides. It’s 100% worth the drive in my opinion!

 

 

Château de Fontainebleau is known for being the home of 34 kings and 2 emperors. Including Napoleon (featured in the larger than life size portrait below, and his wife Marie–Louise below that). The throne room there is the only historical throne room still preserved in France!

 

 

 

We really loved touring Fontainebleau and highly recommend adding it to your itinerary if you’re looking to get outside Paris and visit a much less crowded chateau.  If we’d had an extra day, we would have gone back a second time it was that beautiful!

 

 

 

It was wonderful having all day to study the architecture! The cobblestone, the artwork, the furniture, the floors, the ceilings, the doors and even the hinges took my breath away! We spent the entire day soaking it all up…we even walked around the courtyard in the rain for quite a while taking it all in! Needless to say, we LOVED it and had the best time touring Château de Fontainebleau.

 

Palais Garnier

We took public transport (bus & metro) into Paris and toured the Palais Garnier first thing in the morning. We opted to tour the Opera House instead of seeing an opera because they didn’t have a show we wanted to see. The Palais Garnier was beyond beautiful. Every square inch was exquisite and we were all so glad we took the guided tour (in English of course). We learned so much! If you love theater…this is a MUST see!

 

 

 

Notre-Dame Cathedral

While the Notre-Dame Cathedral is still under intensive restoration since the fire and was closed to the public, we were able to walk the surrounding area and see the exterior. We were very happy that it was mostly visible with only a small about of scaffold and construction talking place on one side of the exterior of the cathedral! We hope we have the opportunity to tour the interior once it reopens.

 

    Arc de triomphe

The Arc de triomphe  was so much larger than we anticipated! If you have the time, it’s worth venturing out to see (even in the rain). It rained on an off 9 out of the 10 days we were in France, but we didn’t let that stop us. Paris is lovely anytime of year (in my opinion) and we were thrilled that it was their slow season…especially with the Olympics coming up. The crowds were fairly small making walking around the city and exploring really wonderful.

 

 

 

We managed to navigate Paris, walk, drive, ride the metro, find wonderful restaurants (without reservations) just fine all week even with our poor french. Just about everyone we encountered spoke some english.  We traveled the last week of February and first week of March and the temps were in the mid 40s-50.If you’re looking for warmer weather I’d recommend waiting until April or May.

 

Palace of Versailles

 

Palace of Versailles was a MUST see! With over 60,000 artworks, collections of Versailles covers 5 centuries of French History! The scale and granger of it all was unreal! I think we walked around Versailles with our jaws on the floor all day! Seriously though, if you go to Paris…this is something you’ll want visit and be sure to plan an entire day (at least) for the tour!

 

 

It’s incredible and the opportunities for capturing exquisite photos is endless (inside and outside as well).The most visited room is of course the Hall of Mirrors.
This magnificent ballroom is 250 ft long! The hand painted ceiling sparkled with massive chandeliers and the entire hall is lined with stunning gilded candelabras and statues along the 17 large arched mirrors!

 

 

The hall of mirrors was by far the most popular spot in the entire palace for good reason! You’ve never see anything quite as elaborate as the Hall of Mirrors (or as many influencers taking selfies in one room either…lol!)

 

 

I am forever grateful for being able to spend 10 days in France with three of my favorite people in the world (my mom, my husband and our daughter)! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if my dad and son could have made the trip with us…we’ll have to bring them back one day!

 

 

 

Thank you so much for walking down memory lane with me! I’ll be sharing all about our shopping/antiquing, staying in a chateau, Le Louvre, walking through ancient ruins from 800AD and much more in part 2 of our European Dream Vacation so be on the lookout for that!