How we made the most of our trip to London, Paris, Mont Saint-Michel and Versailles on a budget! Check out my Instagram travel highlight stories to see pics and videos of our trip!
I followed Flights From Home to find an AMAZING deal on plane tickets to Paris in November of 2019 for Jared's thirtieth birthday. Flights from Home has accounts that track amazing deals from Salt Lake airport, Law Vegas and Phoenix. We only paid $350 per person round trip! We spent 8 days traveling but only about 5 1/2 vacationing because of the long flights. That is something to keep in mind when booking foreign vacations, flights to other countries usually take about two days out of your entire trip.
When we travel abroad we try to make the absolute MOST of our time. So for this trip although we were flying into Paris, we also spent time in Versailles, Mont Saint-Michel and London. Since we cram in as much as possible in our trips, it requires a lot of organization, planning and reading to make sure we are getting the most out of our time and money. I would HIGHLY recommend renting travel books from your local library when planning a trip. Some great book guides include Fodor's, Rick Steve's and Lonely Planet. I rented probably 8 books to get recommendations on restaurants, hotels, museums etc. I also looked up a ton online and chatted with great friends who had recommendations. If it weren't for our sweet friends, I wouldn't have made Mont Saint-Michel a priority and that was a HUGE highlight of our trip and somewhere I now highly recommend.
Here's the list of hotels, Airbnb's and restaurants we visited on our trip:
Make sure your hotels are near metro and tube stations and not too far out of the way from main attractions, google map how long it will take to get to places from your hotels to make sure you want to stay there.
Paris Hotels: Hotel Francois 1ER, fancy/boutique/small older hotel. Comfortable and clean. Best Western Ducs De Bourgogne (One of Best Western's Premiere Hotels, Jared has lot of point here from traveling around Idaho to random towns with Best Westerns, so we stayed one night for free! Fancy but small hotel. Very comfortable.)
Mont Saint-Michel Airbnb: La Tête Noire Mont Saint Michel The ONLY Airbnb ON the island. The highlight of our trip. Such sweet hosts, read more below. Book ahead of time!
London Hotels: W14 Hotel Kensington, very simple small hotel but great for crashing in London on a budget.
Here is what our original itinerary looked liked for this trip, but as you will read below we actually visited more places then mentioned on this.
Our first day in Paris started off a little shaky because when we arrived to the airport we planned to take a bus to get to a famous restaurant for lunch but waited over an hour for the right one just to find out it was never coming because there was a riot going on that stopped the bus' route.... So we took the metro which we should have done in the first place! We got to the hotel, changed, dropped off luggage and immediately took off to see Paris! Since the bus issue delayed us by quite a bit, we ultimately decided to skip our Sunday Loire Valley plans and replace it with more time in Paris.
While in Paris we went to the Louvre museum, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Trumphe, walked down Champs de Elysse, underground catacombs, Concergie, St. Chapelle, Sacre Cure, ate at a lot of famous places, and walked along the Seine.
Because we went to Paris during the "off-season" we were blessed to avoid long lines and huge crowds. You can book tickets to the Louvre ahead of time to come during an allotted time and go through a shorter line. However, it worked out for us to just stand in the normal line and wait. The Louvre is so large that you could spend a couple days looking around. We are not HUGE museum people but I did want to see some of the most fascinating things so we had decided what things we wanted to see and did an express tour of the Louvre in a few hours. I had already been to the Louvre in college and Jared didn't care too much about seeing the Mona Lisa so we did not stand in line to see it up close, but you can still see it pretty fully from the side of the line!
The underground catacombs are something that Jared found and although it was creepy, it was also fascinating. Read about it here.
I would recommend doing a tour of Conergie (the hisotiral prison where Marie Antionette was imprisoned before her beheading) and St. Chapelle. Their architecture and French history make them important landmarks. Sacre Cure is gorgeous and another historical must see. There are famous markets near Sacre Cure and we went to the famous after our visit because it is near by.
For a beautiful view of Paris, I would recommend climbing up the many many stairs of Arc de Trumphe. It has a beautiful view of Champs de Elysse and the entire city. This is the iconic arc that you see cars driving around in circles in movies. There is a crosswalk underground to get to the arc. I am ashamed to admit that in college we did not see this and Jared and I did not see it either until an American couple saw us risk our lives to cross the traffic and told us about it.... so learn from us! haha. You can also go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and even dine in an expensive restaurant inside the tower. Those were both things we didn't want to spend money on.
My main tips for viewing the Eiffel Tower is to see it at night and first thing in the morning with the sunrise.
At sunrise you will beat a lot of the crowds, we took an Uber to Trocadero across the Siene from the #EiffelTower (view of tower in picture above). This is a great #photo spot. You can also get great photos and views of the tower by walking along side the Seine. At night, the tower is lit up with a glittering light show for 5 minutes on the hour every hour from sunset to 1AM (the lights have sensors to detect nightfall). So make sure you are early to see it light up or you will have to wait another hour! You can eat at a restaurant in the Eiffel Tower or pay to take an elevator to the top, we opted out of these options to save money and time this trip.
One of the BEST surprises of this trip was that Paris has redone the area around the Eiffel Tower! It is now more of an enclosed park (the "fence" is like Plexi glass so you can still see through it), you have to go through security to enter. I had been to Paris before in college and visiting the Eiffel Tower was not nearly as romantic as I imagined because there were so people trying to sell you things and you had to be on guard the entire time to avoid getting pick-pocketed (This is a big issue in France, you always need to be on guard, don't have your phone out unnecessarily, etc). Now, security does a great job of weeding those people out and we seriously felt like we were one of 10 people walking around the tower at night. It was so romantic and peaceful!
From Paris, you can take a tour bus day or multi-day trip to Versailles, Mont Saint-Michel and Normandy Beach, but since we wanted to stay the night at an amazing Airbnb in Mont Saint-Michel, we rented a car to go to Versailles and Mont Saint-Michel
We rented our car from Enterprise at their office near Arc de Trumph at the very beginning (or end) of Champs de Elysse, you have to walk to a parking garage down the street to get your vehicle. Keep in mind that French cars are mostly stick-shift so if you want an automatic you will have to pay more. Luckily, my husband is a great stick-shift driver and the French do drive on the same side of the road as Americans so you don't have to worry about that. To get out of that area we had to drive in the crazy Arc de Triumph circular traffic... it was slightly terrifying but again, my husband is a great driver so it was fine. The drive to Versailles is mostly just on their freeway and through a charming town. There is a large dirt parking lot in front of Versailles. This parking lot was not crowded at all for us and there was literally no line to go through security. During the busy season, it can take HOURS to get through the security so we were SO happy we saved hours of line time by going in early November. However, because we went at this time of the year, many of the fountains in the famous Versailles gardens were already shut off and the greenery is not as beautiful as you would find in summer but as you can see in the pictures, it was still beautiful and we were able to quickly see everything we wanted in just a few hours because it wasn't busy! I would recommend paying the money for their golf carts because the grounds are huge and my feet ached because of all the walking, luckily we hitchhiked onto other people's carts hahaha. No shame when you're in pain! Some must-sees at Versailles are:
From Versailles we drove to Mont. Saint-Michel, a tiny but magical tidal island. We stayed at the ONLY Airbnb on the island that dates back to the 14th century!!! We highly recommend visiting Mont. Saint-Michel and staying at the Airbnb if it's available (it's listed in the hotel list above). Check out my Instagram travel highlight stories to see some pics and videos of our stay!
Mont Saint-Michel feels and looks like Hogwarts. It is seriously magical. Staying at the Airbnb made it feel even more magical. The owners live on the third floor and make you an amazing breakfast with local eggs, bread, jams etc. The sweetest people. The island itself has a religious history and a gorgeous cathedral which makes up most of the island. We wanted to experience the island at night and day and we were so glad we did! There's restaurants on the island but they do close early and get busy during the day when tour buses arrive. The tide goes down at night and comes up in the day. The view outside of our Airbnb window was stunning. Something I will always treasure. But this Airbnb is OLD so don't expect modern accommodations but we were still comfy and everything was clean.
We left from Mont Saint-Michel back to Paris and visited the LDS Paris Temple on our way back into the city. The next day we toured around Paris more and visited the sites mentioned above.
On Monday morning, we took the Chunnel from Paris to London. Literally a train that goes through the Channel Tunnel (thus the nickname) to get to Paris. An underwater train, how cool is that! You can fly to London, but when we compared the options, it made sense financially to take the Chunnel especially since you don't save much time by taking a flight.
Taking the Chunnel is similar to an airport, you book your train, go through security, and wait at a gate. Getting on the train feels like Hogwarts, and getting off feels like it even more since you arrive in London! In fact, once you arrive to London, walk across the street to Kings Cross station and you will find platform 9 3/4 where you can take pictures "flying" through the wall with your cart and owl! Money-saving tip: Just have someone in line or the photographer themselves take a picture on your phone so you don't have to pay for the professional photos they take.
While in London, we went to Buckingham Palace, West Minister Abbey (where the royal are married and crowned), the Tower of London (Must see! Crown jewels and SO much history, do the audio or guided tour), Covent Gardens, Piccadilly Circus (Times Square-like shopping area, ran into a Christmas market while walking around!) walked along the Thames River (views of London Bridge and most of the famous buildings in London, you can take a boat tour down the Thames), took a ride on the London Eye, walked to Big Ben and the Parliament building (it was unfortunately under construction), did a VERY quick look inside the Natural History Museum which also has a beautiful outdoor ice skating rink during winter, walked through Hyde Park and saw Kensington Palace (official home of Will and Kate), check out St. Paul's Cathedral (you can climb stairs to the top for a great view!), walked across Millennium Bridge, and more!
You might be wondering how on earth we did so much in London in less than two days time. I lived in London for a semester in college and was an intern for CBS London with a commute every day so I am very comfortable in London. AND we went during off-season so we again didn't have to wait in lines, the crown jewel line at the Tower of London can take hours and we went straight through, no line!!!.
One of my BIGGEST tips for London is to USE THE TUBE TO GET AROUND THE CITY! It's a great system and you can buy a multi-day Oyster card (you can get these at tube stations from ATM-like machines) with unlimited trips to save ALOT of money on transportation around the city. Just use Google Maps and put in where you want to go and select the public transport icon and it will tell you what tube station you need to go to and what lines to take. Just make sure you are looking at tube stations and not buses. The tube will go to all major landmarks in London or close to them. You can always ask tube workers what line to take if you get confused, if you do this just make sure to be polite and say hello first, ESPECIALLY in France... they hate Americans so suck up. Now that I think of it, we never used an Uber when we were staying in London. We did in France because we got off at the wrong metro stop once... Public transportation is called the Metro in France and the Tube in London, I highly suggest taking public transportation as much as possible in both countries to save lots of money.
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