Paris For Less Than €40 A Day (per person)

One of the reasons we wanted to move to Scotland was its proximity to the European continent.  We believed that if we lived in Europe we would be able to see more of Europe and in less time than had we stayed in the U.S. where vacation time and funds are limited.  However, the reality is that Desi is earning much less than what she had been earning in Seattle and during our planning we had not taken that possibility into account.  Diminished funds coupled with more vacation time required some creativity but we resolved early on that travel was a priority so we have adjusted all other aspects of our life to make sure we don't waste this opportunity of proximity.

We were able to do everything we wanted to do on our first big holiday as European residents which we find especially satisfying because we did it all under such tight financial constraints.  Our final budget came to €38.24 for expenses per day and €36.67 per night for accommodations creating an overall budget of €37.45 per person for the 25 day holiday.  We're quite pleased with ourselves.

Our final budget breakdown is outlined below.  Upon review we could've spent a bit less on food but Desi does enjoy the eating and the drinking.  We'll try to manage that part of the budget a bit better in the future.

€880 spent on accommodations. We rented a 19 sq meter studio in the 17e for 24 nights for €880.  We were conveniently located on a corner next to a Metro stop so we were able to maneuver throughout Paris quite easily.  However, if we were to do it again we would look for something in the 1e-6e arrondissements because we found ourselves there most often and we could've saved some money on the Metro, not to mention our poor feet, had we been located in that area.

view from our flat

€678 spent on dining out and groceries.  We spent €439 on dining out, a lot of which can be traced back to our many €3 vins chauds enjoyed at the Christmas markets.  We started spending €1-2 on bottles of wine and making the vins chauds at home, which helped the budget a bit after the first week.  We spent €239 on groceries (including wine).  Our dining out expenses also include the many trips to the boulangeries and patisseries.  Our most expensive meal was €50 at Brasserie Lipp where we enjoyed the choucroute.  For the most part though we stuck to cafes and salons de thé.

proper vins chauds at Le Petit Pont

€131 spent on entertainment.  Museum admission costs for both of us were as follows: €16 at Musee d'Orsay, €24 at Centre Pompidou, and €20 at the Louvre. Versailles was only €18 because Mike was free due to his status as an art school student.  We went to three free museums: Palais de Tokyo, Petit Palais, and Victor Hugo's House.  The Menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes cost €17, the catacombs cost €16 and the Bateaux Mouches was €20.

€114 spent on transportation.  We spent €30 on our cab ride into Paris from Charles de Gaulle airport.  We had budgeted €18 for the train but because we arrived too late due to weather we wound up missing the last train into Paris.  Luckily, we shared our cab with another couple saving €30 off the €60 fare.  We purchased 6 carnets of 10 Metro tickets, costing €12 per carnet or €1.20 per ticket.  It cost €12 for two return tickets to Versailles.  We also managed to get a free train ride back to the airport at the end of our journey, so we saved €18 there.

€33 spent on miscellaneous items. We spent €5 on mittens from a street vendor when Desi's gloves developed a hole, €12 on postcards and postage, and €16 at the laundromat because the clothes washer in our flat was broken which was an unexpected expense.

Our next holiday is in April and we hope to spend it on a beach.  Our budget will be even further diminished but we will make it work.  We always make it work and have a great time doing it.

Paris: Nous ne regrette rien

With two days left in this lovely city we're thoroughly sad to be leaving but looking forward to getting back to reality and to the continued pursuit of our long term goals.  But, before we leave we want to be sure to list our favourite things about our time here and the things we'll miss most.

We already miss the many marchés de Noël.  They were fun and festive and provided us with a unique and memorable introduction to Paris culture.

Mike loved the free and frequent public toilets.  These things were fantastic!  Clean and convenient they were used often during our long days wandering the city streets.

We loved turning any corner and discovering something completely amazing be it architecture, a fountain, a park, a statue, a cute street, or a beautiful church.  This city is full of surprises with one literally around every corner.

We loved the café culture and outdoor seating options.  While living in Seattle Desi would always comment on the lack of rainy day culture.  She thought it bewildering that Seattle would basically shut down for the six months of winter.  No one seemed to agree with her on this point but now, after witnessing the possibilities, she knows a culture can thrive in poor winter weather with little change to summer weather routine.  Paris does outdoor seating during these cold days so well that we rarely sat indoors during our meals and thoroughly enjoyed our occasional café crème and espresso in the heated pavement seating areas, even on the coldest days.

The vente a emporter options and street vendors were convenient, cheap, and very good.

Food and drink, especially on our almost non-existent budget, were amazing.  We savoured everything we ate from the street vendor hot dogs and gaufres to the restaurant escargots, choucroute, and moules frites.  The €1.07 bottles of wine and equally as cheap fromages from the supermarchés were as good as we've had anywhere for much more.  The fresh €.85 baguettes will be craved daily.

Vin chaud is our new favourite winter drink and will be enjoyed often.

We'll miss the Parisiens; amazingly kind and friendly people.

We'll miss the convenience of the Metro system.  We traversed the entire city for only €1.20.  Great system.  We'll especially miss the faces pressed against the Metro doors during rush hour.  They pile you into those train cars like sardines and it's quite an experience.  We've never seen a population utilise their mass transit like the Parisiens do.  It's inspiring.

The plethora of world class museums is astounding.  To have any one of them at your doorstep would be amazing but this city is filled with them.

Paris: Further Observations

We have witnessed more acts of human kindness over this past week in Paris than we can remember ever seeing in any city before.  Desi spent a day in New York City in May 2008 where she was the recipient of several acts of kindness but otherwise nothing comes close to what we've witnessed over this past week.  Parisians are kind people.

Outdoor seating options are plentiful and so well designed that they are full even during freezing temperatures.

Pay phones are every where and used often.

Fur is still considered an option and appears to be quite popular.

We have been confused for Spaniards a couple times and perhaps English once but no one has identified us as Americans yet.

Everyone has been very forgiving with our attempts at speaking French.

Although there appear to be successful supermarkets throughout Paris, we have at least four within a few blocks from our flat, there are also many separate and independent boulangeries, pâtisseries, boucheries, and fromageries which leads us to believe that, barring legal obstacles, either the people reject the supermarket as being everything to everyone and/or the supermarkets refuse to crush the little shops by offering competing items for less.

Most people we've encountered are at least bilingual.  Even the rough sleeper at the Gare du Nord was able to switch to perfect English when we couldn't understand him in French.  We are now more convinced than ever that we need to become fluent in another language.  It's embarrassing at this point.

Paris: First Impressions

Paris reminds us a lot of Kaohsiung because of the store fronts, left turning vehicles, and scooters.  It reminds us some of Vancouver, Washington DC, and New York City, too.

People here seem polite.  Even on a very crowded Metro ride, when we were pressed up against the door, there was no pushing, shoving, or yelling to get out.  Just a simple ‘pardon’ every once in a while which would cause everyone near the door to get off, allow others off, and then get back on.  It was very orderly and civilized.

There is dog shit everywhere and apparently no guilt about not picking your dog’s shit up.  It’s disgusting.

The food and coffee is amazing.  Simple street fare is delicious.  The coffee, even instant, is delicious and Desi, who usually requires her coffee to taste like ice cream, is able to drink it without sugar and may even drop the crème.  Oh, and mulled wine (vin chaud) is amazing and should be available and popular everywhere civilized people gather.

There are no fat people here.

There is a sense of classiness to the Parisiens. 

The city exudes art.  Not only are there more museums than one can name but everything has seemingly been done with an eye towards art.  The street signs, the architecture, the intersections; everything feels like the whole was considered when addressing a piece. 

Paris is very diverse, perhaps another reason it reminds us of Washington DC, Vancouver, and New York City.

Walking through the city’s streets easily ate up our entire day and we’re looking forward to weeks of doing only that.  There is so much to see and walking is the only way to do it.  We wouldn’t drive or be driven, even if we had the option.  The Metro is fun, too, but only when one’s feet are tired.

Bonjour Paris, Take Deux

We started this morning still a bit grumpy from our previous day’s shenanigans.  Adding to our poor mood was the state of our accommodations.  The morning allowed us a better look at our home for the next 24 days and left us thoroughly unimpressed.  It felt dirty and there were items we expected which were not available.  There was no Wi-Fi, the clothes washer was broken (with clothes still in it), the three bathroom towels were all dirty (one was soaking wet), and the blankets on the bed smelled of stale cigarette smoke.  We were not happy.

We decided to get out of the flat, which we hoped would help to improve our mood, and experience Paris.  Hopefully upon our return we would no longer have the biases formed from our rocky introduction and be able to start again with the place.

We started at the boulangerie down the street, grabbing a pain aux raisins and a croissant for our breakfast.  Then we stopped at a café for a café crème and a café noir for our walk to the Seine.  We arrived at Place de la Concorde and saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time, which was actually quite underwhelming.  But, walking along the Champs-Elysees we experienced our first Christmas market and vins chauds which thoroughly improved our moods.  We reached the Arc de Triomphe and headed left towards the Eiffel Tower.  Reaching the Trocadéro first, we were greeted by the best view available of the Eiffel Tower and one which really caused us to pause.  Suddenly, we were very impressed by the tower.  The Trocadéro also had a Christmas market where we grabbed another couple of vins chauds before heading over to introduce ourselves to the tower.

We wandered underneath the Eiffel Tower for a bit, opting against venturing upwards, and then walked along the Seine to the Pont d’Orsay where we broke left, back towards our flat.  We grabbed some delicious lunch at a neighbourhood boulangerie, stopped at a grocery store for some very good €1.95 red wine, and headed back home to rest.

We’ve decided that we like our flat.  It’s in a great neighbourhood and internet is available, though not Wi-Fi.  We have to clean it a bit and wash the towels before we feel too comfortable but we’ll tackle that tomorrow.  On the whole our flat in the 17e is fine and will definitely work for us over these next few weeks. 

After taking a break for a bit we headed back out for dinner.  We wanted to visit the Christmas market in Montmartre and then check out the Sacre Coeur Basilica.  The Montmartre Christmas market was smaller than we expected but we did grab some vins chauds, a jambon fromage crepe, and churros before heading up the bluff to Sacre Coeur which was stunning.  We’ll definitely make that trek again in the daylight for the full stained glass effect and when there is better visibility so we can see the amazing view of Paris.

We had several successful transactions today and our French has already improved.  We’re happier than we were when we awoke this morning and no longer convinced that Paris hates us.  And, although we are bewildered as to why Paris is considered so romantic, we’re feeling the romance and happy to be here.  Bonjour Paris!

Bonjour Paris

The day we leave for Paris is the same day Britain experiences record freezing temperatures and all London airports close causing delays throughout the system.  Luckily, the train from Dundee to Edinburgh was still running and Edinburgh airport was still open.  Our flight wasn’t until 5:30PM but we decided to head to the airport early just in case the trains decided to stop running.  We started our journey at 11:45AM. 

We caught the 12:35PM train to Edinburgh and arrived at the airport at 2:30PM.  Our plane still claimed to be on time but all other planes were either showing a delay or were cancelled altogether.  At approximately 5:30PM our plane switches to a 6PM departure time, delaying departure by 30 minutes.  We wind up leaving at 7:30PM, two hours later than planned.  

As an aside, Easyjet had horrible communication throughout this process.  When we got on the plane the pilot apologized for the delay (the only apology received all day, which he did often) and said it was due to delays earlier in the day throwing off the whole day's schedule.  Apparently, Easyjet knew our plane was delayed much earlier than initially communicated and for longer than originally stated but didn’t tell anyone; terrible communication.

We landed at Charles de Gaulle at 10PM but didn’t have a gate assigned.  We were finally able to deplane an hour later, reaching the terminal at 11PM.  By the time we reached the train to Paris, RER B, and purchased our tickets we had just missed the last train due to inclement weather closures.  In our hunt for other options, we missed the last Roissy Bus into Paris.  We were told by the Information desk that the night bus would be coming along in about 15 minutes, at 12:15AM.  We waited until 12:45AM before asking another couple to share a taxi into Paris, splitting the €60 fare.  We finally arrived at our flat around 1:30AM.

This whole adventure would’ve been stressful by itself but we had the added stress of knowing there was a guy waiting at the flat, since approximately 8:30PM, to give us the key and collect the final half of our rent.  He had threatened to leave at least twice, taking our night’s accommodation with him, but Mike had talked him into staying.  Needless to say, he was not happy when we finally met him at almost 2AM.  The check-in process was tense and when he left we were not in the best of spirits.  We tucked in for the night almost immediately and hoped the morning would convince us that Paris didn’t hate us.

One More Week

One week from today we leave for Paris.  The flight is just under two hours long but we have an hour and 15 minute train ride from Dundee to Edinburgh beforehand.  Regardless, total travel time is still minimal.  We can't believe we live so close to Paris.

Christmas In Paris

Yesterday we bought our winter break tickets to Paris on easyjet for £122.61.  We'll be travelling from Edinburgh and staying in Paris for Christmas and then travelling around France and into Spain.  Our trip is just over 3 weeks in duration, so we should have plenty of time for sightseeing.  We're thinking 6 nights in Paris and 6 nights in Barcelona then maybe along the French Riviera returning to Paris through Provence?

We hope to have a few mini breaks before our winter break, including a Halloween adventure to Edinburgh where we've booked a Halloween themed walking tour.  Apparently, Edinburgh has the reputation for most haunted city in the world.  We'll definitely report back about our experience.

We're on a pretty tight budget for our trips but we'd rather travel on a super tight budget than not at all.  For instance, Edinburgh will be our first hostel experience.  We'll be staying right outside the castle, though, so location will be ideal.  Plus, the hostel is highly recommended on tripadvisor and only costs £28 per night.