5 beautiful things to do in paris for FREE!

 hello again!

if you’ve been following my blog, you know that a few weeks ago i went on a little excursion to europe!

i was lucky enough to have been able to visit the city of love; paris.

since just graduating from college a couple of months ago, this experience was done on a TIGHT budget. i’m basically poor. no lie.

i had a place to stay in london for free (thank you, kirsi) which helped out a lot. so naturally, i wanted to keep my budget for paris as cheap as possible.

my two friends and i decided that the cheapest way to get to paris from london would be by bus (6-7hrs). to also save money on a hotel we thought it would be best to take an overnight bus. we left london around 9/10pm and arrived in paris at 6am. now, i must say.. sleeping on a bus is not the easiest thing in the entire world, but it was very much worth it. we had a total of 15hrs to spend in paris (our next bus left at 9pm later that day) so we knew we had to plan our time wisely.

so we had a couple of obstacles. 1. sticking to a fairly cheap budget and 2. doing as much as we could in 15hrs.

the first thing we had to figure out was our mode of transportation. so we grabbed ourselves a metro map and i had a very detailed map of the streets of paris (thank you andrea pink! i don’t know if you remember buying this for me, but it saved my life in paris xo). our metro passes for the day for zones 1 & 2 was only around 7 euros. which was an amazing price, in my opinion. we used both maps to determine the best way to get to our destinations.

EVERYTHING WE DID IN PARIS WAS FREE. << whoa! i know…

now, don’t get me wrong.. i would have loved to be able to walk through some museums and take a few tours, but that was really out of our price range. someday i’ll be back in paris! and i will tackle all of those other beautiful aspects of one of the most wonderful cities in the world.

but i mean come on… it’s paris.. ANYTHING you see or do is beautiful.

so here are the top 5 free things we saw in paris:

1. eiffel tower

does this even need an explanation? i mean really…

 

 

2. notre dame

this was our first stop! ever since i was eight years old and saw the disney classic, the hunch back of notre dame, it has been a dream to see this beauty in person! it was beautiful! words cannot describe it’s size and detailed architecture. it really takes your breath away.

3. love wall

the title of this pretty much describes itself. its a huge wall with thousands of ways to say “i love you” in different languages. there was also a hand to signal it in sign language which i thought was really awesome!

 

4. the lock bridge

this was probably my favorite stop in paris. if you don’t know what it is– it’s a bridge with thousands of locks on it. couples will bring a lock to paris and place it on the bridge and throw away the key into the water to signify their love! how romantic and dreamyyyyyy. now don’t call me a cheese ball or anything.. but of course i put a lock on their for my boyfriend and i because i’m a romantic. hehe

and last but not least

5. the shakespeare and co. bookstore

oh my word! i loved this store more than words can describe! it’s filled with SO many books. and there’s a typewriter and a piano and notes from people all over the world. if you get a chance to stop by, i left a not with the link to my blog on there, hehe. but honestly, i could have spent hours upon hours in that store. so if you’re a huge fan of any type of books or poetry, you NEED to go there.

 

now, there are millions of other things to do while you’re in paris that are free! but these were my top five and favorites on my trip.

i hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for my upcoming blog posts on my tour in europe!

xo,

courtney raf