Please share: Travel Tips for Europe, Paris

In My Humble Opinion
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Me and Mrs. Z went to Paris last November. We stayed at two different hotels there as we spent the middle of the vacation in the country.

The first hotel was called the Champ du Mars. It was near the tower and was very reasonable. It had a shower and a friendly staff. I highly recomend it. It suprised me as I’m used to staying in big hotels here in the states. In Paris they didn’t imprint my credit card first thing and we gave our key to the front desk clerk every time we went out and picked it up when we came back. Also the light in the hallways are turned off. You can turn them on and they’ll shut off automatically a few minutes later.

I know some people will think it a shame but to save money we really didn’t go for any huge dining expierences. We just looked around and ate at small diner type places. The kind of place that is filled with locals. This saved us a ton of money. I felt bad because I hate wine. If you don’t like wine then beverage choices can be limited. Wine is cheap there but if you don’t like it than you may be in for a lot of water drinking.

Another money saving tip is to be adventursome. I speak no French but I really wanted a coke. At the corner place I could buy one for about US 1.50. OUTRAGEOUS! So I went to the grocery store. I bought a 4 pack for about US 2 dollars. The clerk said something to me in French so I just nodded. I think she was asking if I wanted a bag.
Mrs. Z and I had a great time driving in western France. We basically went castle gawking. We did walk in the same room as Joan of Arc at Chinon. We also visited Samur, Azay le Rideau, Chononceau (that is soooo misspelled) and others. It is so amazing to walk through these little mediveal towns. The French drive pretty fast. About 20 KPH over the posted speed limit is the norm. Try not to drive on the big toll roads. The little windy country roads will take much longer but are really worth it. Navagation was easy. Each and every road junction was clearly marked with directions to the next town and the next big town. So if you know you are headed to say Angers just keep following the signs.

We shot a roll of film a day. This was not enough. Take more.

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Something that Mrs. Z and I did in our planning stages.

We bought a map of Paris. Then we hung it on the wall and we each marked with little flags different places we wanted to go and Prioritized them. We also got museum passes here before we went. You can’t get them there I’m told. These are three day passes to (mostly) all the museams. It saved a ton of money and time. (Pass holders use a seperate entrance at the Lourve with a much shorter line) Also I think the fact that having a pass card instead of paying each time made it more ‘OK’ for us to say ‘eh’ and move on to the next place. We also checked online for the museam times and some are closed on certain weekdays. Then we had a rough schedual for what we were going to see. We only had one washout of a place that was closed for renovations.

Finally one of the best investments we made before hand was a good map of Paris. You’ll need good maps of a lot of places. The one of Paris we had was Plastic Coated. The fact that it was Plastic Coated was a real life saver.

So get some good maps! Today!