A Romantic Day in Paris - [The How To Guide]

A full itinerary for how to have a Romantic Day in Paris - including some sightseeing, some wonderful food, wonderful candies, wonderful drinks, wonderful sights, and, gentlemen, at least 2 perfect opportunities to secure that first kiss!

This day is a perfect thing to do for a first date, or a 50th date, or even just to spend with a few nice friends.

During the day, you will visit some big sights, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc di Triomphe, the Louvre, a fun hidden crazy bar in the middle of the city, and a wonderful place from which to watch the sun set behind the backdrop of Paris.

This is one of my favorite full-day itineraries for Paris and I have done this many, many times.

Cost-wise, for 2 people, this day will be between 40 and 150 euros, depending on how much you spend on the food and the wine. Personally, I always enjoyed the lower-priced options for this day just as much as the more expensive options.

To leave a comment or ask a question, go to https://nofairytaletravels.substack.com/ and find this post and leave a comment there.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello. Hello and welcome back to no fairytale travels this week. I'm going to tell you how to have a romantic day in Paris, a perfect beautifully romantic day in Paris, away from most of the crazy street people and directly to all of the little romantic, hidden spots. So guys, this one's really going to be for you. If you want to take a girl out for a great day and really secure the best chance for a kiss. So we're going to start at the beginning of the day and go all the way to the end. And if you don't get a kiss by the end of the day, I'm sorry, fellows. It just isn't meant to happen. And this advice, this advice is tried and tested. What do you say? Tried and tested, tried and true. Whatever the point is. I've done it before guys. I'm not just reading something offline, so let's get into it. But first https://nofairytaletravels.substack.com/. If you have any questions or comments or remarks, go there, find the post for this podcast and leave me a message. All right. So we're in Paris, a city that has so much to do, and so many things to see and hear and smell sometimes not so good and eat. And what we're going to do here is we're going to start off the beginning of the day. We're going to have a little bit of tourism thrown in there. We're going to have some food, then a little bit more tourism, then maybe some drinks, depending on what you're up for, then we're going to go for a lunch. Then we're going to have drinks with a sunset, and then we're going to have a beautiful, beautiful end to the evening. So let's start at the beginning of the day and let me pour some wine. Since right now, it's not really the beginning of the day for me. We'll get some wine in your day momentarily, though, for Paris, you're going to want to start your day with some food. You have two choices. If there was a lovely bakery nearby, make sure it's a bakery, not a grocery store, go there and get everything. Get everything that you want. Do make sure to get a croissant though. The croissants are especially delicious. I don't know what they do there. I think they just drown them in butter. Happy, happy butter. So make sure you at least get one croissant and then whatever else you want there. Now, if you can't find a bakery or actually I should say it this way, if you can find what I'm about to explain, I'd say it's a bit more interesting to get because you can get a croissant all over the city, ask the person, the proprietor of wherever you're staying, where you can go to get a breakfast crepe, not a touristy crepe, a breakfast crepe. So they have crepes for breakfast where the, I don't know, the outside pancake, the pancake of it is savory, not sweet. So it's a savory pancake. And if you're American, it's not an American pancake. It's a, you know, a crepe, I dunno, crepe cake. So it's savory. And then you can get all sorts of breakfast ingredients on it. So the last time I was there, I had the savory crepe with an egg and cheese. So like a little crepe omelet, and it was great. It was really, really, really great. And so I would recommend that you do that and then get whatever food they have there. And then if you do want a croissant as well, go for that as a dessert, because it is really so lovely. You could have it as a dessert, but don't get the croissant where you get the breakfast crepe. Make sure you get the croissant only at a proper real bakery. All right, now you have food. Now go to the arc de Triomphe. They have a Metro stop right underneath it. Let me see if I can figure out which one it is. I think it is just arc de Triomphe. Uh, but sometimes they have little tricky names and I am forgetting, okay. Apparently the Google maps has a bit of a pain these days and I haven't been there for awhile, but pretty much every line I believe the blue line and the yellow line, they all go through the arc de Triomphe. So two big lines. So go to the arc de Triomphe and start your day. There it is a wonderfully spectacular site. It's much bigger than you think. And it's so cool. And if you can, if it's there allowing you to, at this point, go up to the top of the arc de Triomphe and look down the[inaudible] and look at every corner of Paris. It is really, really, really cool because it's an old city and the new big buildings are far away. So you get to look down at what people have been seeing for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's really, really cool. And take your time, no rush. But this is where you have to start to be careful of streets people, okay. Don't ever fall for any of the scams. Basically anyone who's trying to help you or give you something or ask you for something it's a scam. Don't take a gold ring. Don't give money to a gypsy on the street. Who's begging. They don't even get to keep some money. Their handlers do. There's. There's so many scams that go on there. When I was staying in Paris and waiting for my half Spanish half French lady, um, to meet up with me, you know, she's always late. That's why I made a point of saying half Spanish, half French. Cause she's very late. I would just watch the scam artist as they go around. So gentlemen, just keep your woman safe and put some blinders on her. And it's not going to be too much of an issue, but I'm going to let you know now so that it doesn't ruin your day. You're going to have to deal with it just a little bit. Okay. But the arc de Triomphe is truly spectacular. So get a nice view and then hold on. Very lovely wine. I forgot to tell you what wine it is. I'll tell you that later, anyway, then start to slowly walk your way down the[inaudible]. Now it doesn't have actually the best stores in Paris. There are some that are quite nice. And I'll tell you about one in a moment to get some, a tasty treat. I believe the shopping mall print tall, which is spelled Printemps has a lot more interesting shops. If you want your, if you want to go for shopping straight up shopping, but the Shama Liza, you're going to spend a lot of time just wandering around and looking at everything that's there and going in and checking it out. But I don't want you to waste any of your money on the stupid food places there, except for one. So you're going to spend maybe an hour going down the[inaudible] maybe two hours. It really depends on you. They have a lot of interesting car. I don't know exhibitions. So Citron has a cool one. Mercedes, they have a lot of cool things you can see and do there. When you get hungry. After two hours of walking down there and looking at everything, go to a place called loud array, lot array, loud array. It is when you're walking down the[inaudible] on the right side and it is, has a green facade. And that's where they sell a maca wrongs, macaroons, macaroons, am I saying this correctly? A Macron's anyway, they're these cute little sugary. They look like, they look like burgers from the Simpsons like cartoon burgers, and you can get ones from every sweet flavor and they are beautifully amazing. So you do want to make sure that you make a pit stop there and get a wide selection of them. They're really, really fun. If you have time and it's not too crowded, you can also go inside of loud array and it's a very beautiful inside. So that's the one place where you want to make sure that you do stop for a snack and everything else. Just use your eyes walking down, have a nice little stroll. And then you're going to end up at the gardens in front of the loop. And these gardens are really, really great. So you walk past an obelisk, a nice little gift from Egypt. I'm certain that it was given not taken, but to be fair, everything in Egypt is safer outside of Egypt than inside. So you're going to walk past an OB less, and then you get to these grand big gardens where the noise of the street dissipates into the distance and where they have all of these metal green chairs placed strategically around little relaxation spots like the fountains. And then if you look to the left and the right, when you get into the garden from the[inaudible], you're going to see these elevated areas. Those are so nice. So nice. Although please don't, don't use up those seats because I love them so much. And there's almost no one there usually. So you can go up there and sit down. And the green chairs, I believe half of them maybe are permanently reclined and you can really have a nice, lovely, relaxing break there. And if you're with your significant other, you can make that a very nice little cute romantic relaxing break. If this is your first date, there's probably, you don't want to sit down and some green chairs with someone that you don't already have a romantic connection with, unless you want a cigarette or something, but it's a great place to relax and get away from the noise of the city. And you can spend a long time to sort of touring these gardens. There's not too too much interesting to see, but it's nice and relaxing and it will take you all the way to the loop. Now the loop is a monster of a museum. So I do not recommend you go there. If you're on a date, you're just going to get so beaten down. It's so big. It's really cool, but save it for another day. Okay. And if you do go, go in the lion's gate entrance, if it's open, it'll save you tons of time. So what you should do though, as you are either now going to head over for lunch, or, and I'll tell you where, or you're going to go to Chateau LA, which is just sort of beyond the loop. So you walk past the loop and you have to kind of get out of it and you'll be on the busy street. And then you'll walk past the building and you'll see the old facade there at the end. It's really cool. And you'll be at a place called Chateau lanes. The craziest Metro stop in all of Paris, never meet someone at Chateau LA, unless you are very specific about the street corner, upon which you are going to meet. Otherwise you will never find them, but near chalet, they have a bar called Elfin Dumont. It's the end of the world bar. And it's really great to go out. I think I've talked about it before. It's really great to go there if it's nighttime, because they have so many subterranean levels and it's really cool. And it definitely, definitely feels like it's not going to pass fire code, which always means it's going to be really fun. But during the day, you'll sit up at top up at the top level in the bar ish area bar cafe ish area, and you can play board games and drink. So have some drinks relax from the hours of walking from the arc de Triomphe all the way down there. It is more taxing than it seems like if you look at it on a map and, you know, get your, get the juices, flowing, have some fun with your, with your girl and, uh, exchange some laughs you're you're really gonna enjoy the end of the world bar. I promise you, I, I think the last time I went in there, it was only supposed to be for 30 minutes or so. And uh, we spent three hours in there. It was so much fun. And uh, so anyway, that's a great pit stop, but now what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to let me look at the map. So I make sure I have everything correct. Okay. Shatila is the perfect spot to do this. You're going to want to then cross over to the island, the island of the city, which was what Paris originally was. And that's where Notre Dom is now. But you don't want to go to Notredame right now. What you want to do is cross over the island and go south of it, just across the river, just across the sin. And you want to go to a place called Saint Michelle and you want to start at place St. Michelle. You're going to find on any map, any Google maps or anything you search for. And we're right there, right? When you cross over the river, take a left, you're going to be going on a kind of a pedestrian zone. And you're going to enter an area full of restaurants and cafes and chocolate shops and so many cool places. And is it touristy? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, kind of, but it was also one of my favorite places to go. And one of my local lady friends, favorite places to go when we would go on dates in Paris. So it's not just tourists. It's a really fun atmosphere, a really fun environment. Spend some time looking at things, but don't eat just yet. You want to walk a little bit down in the direction of Notredame. So a little bit away from arc de Triomphe on the streets and find some of the side streets that go to the left into the right. And you're going to find restaurant after restaurant, after restaurant, little small kind of restaurants that are right next to each other and have small little tables and they all have set menus. This is where you're going to have lunch guys. And the menus range between 10 or 15 euros to 30 euros or something like that. And they are all at least three courses, an appetizer, a main meal and a dessert. And they will often include a glass of wine for each person who's there. So there's two of you. So you get two glasses of wine. Now what's fun is you can sort of have the restaurants. When you go on the little side streets, you can have them play off of one another. So you'll look at one menu and they'll tell you to come in, they'll give you free glass of wine and you'll say, oh, maybe, maybe, and then you walk to the next one. And then the one you just walked away from, we'll say, Hey, we'll give you a whole bottle of wine, not just a glass. And it's really fun. A lot of the restaurants are going to serve traditional French food, which is all canard confit, right? Duck, confit, I believe. And French onion soup all with some sort of lovely chocolate dessert at the end and red wine. Oh my gosh. It has so, so happy. It warms the cockles of your heart and that of your lady friend. So a lady friend. And so the, the, so, so this is date oriented, but you could go here with just a friend, but it's much better if it's, if it's either a date or it's ambiguous, you know, you don't have to pull the trigger. Uh, you don't have to make a move, but it's a it's conducive to having a nice date and being able to make a move, but not yet gentlemen. So this is where you're gonna want to eat now. Not all the restaurants have French food, some of the restaurants, um, well they have food from different places, but let's go for the French ones. That's going to be good. And if it's warm, sit outside the vibe, the atmosphere, it's really great and nice. And if you want to, you can talk to people next to you. They're usually pretty nice about that. If you don't that's okay. Stay in your whole little world right there. The waiters are almost always really fun. Actually. They're really, I've had really good experiences here and this end, um, what was I gonna say? Oh, I was gonna say that I also even, so not just the date. I did take my parents here to have lunch one day, although we didn't go to the little tiny restaurants, we went to a slightly bigger one, uh, because we, you know, we wanted a little bit more peace and we sat indoors instead of outdoors. But if you're with a girl, sit outdoors on the little tables, it's real fun. It's nice. And now, gentlemen, I don't think you should make your move yet. Although if things are going really, really well, then go for it. But I'd say hold off just a little bit longer, because what we're going to do next is quite nice. So let me make sure I have covered everything. Okay. Of course I covered everything I wanted to say. I don't even know why I took notes. This is one of my favorite things to do. Okay. So finish your meal then what you want to do, pay the bill, obviously. And you're going to want to go back to the island that has no true Dom on it. Okay. But before you go there and when you are still in St. Michelle, there are two things you can do. You can walk around a little bit and get some lovely chocolatey desserts. If you weren't satisfied with what you got at the restaurant, or you just want a little bit more, but then eventually I want you to head back to the island with Notre Dom. But before you get there and still in the St Michel area find a liquor shop, and then I want you to get at least two bottles of wine. There are liquor shops there. Trust me. There are even some that are on the river, but you don't want to wait until you get to the island with Notredame. So get your two bottles of wine and you want to get to, because it's never fun. It's never fun to have one and run out and wish you had had a second, but it's not so bad to have a second one and not have to use it. So get two bottles of wine there and then head over to the island has Notredame on it. Take a look at Notredame. It might not be that much to see right now due to the fire, but it's a cool site. So go there and look at it. And then what I want you to do is to walk to the opposite end of the island. So back up towards the arc de Triomphe and on your way there, you're going to cross a couple of streets. And eventually you're going to see these little walkways. If you're on the outside of the island, you'll see these little steps that go down to walkways, closer to the water. And I want you to take those and then go down there and walk towards the tip of the island. And you're going to sit down there next to some locals or some other tourists, but there usually are quite a lot of, you know, locals in their twenties and thirties, or even forties and fifties, actually having a good time down there. And you're going to sit there and you're going to watch the sunset as you drink your wine. It's at this point that I realized you should probably just get a glass or two or a cup or two at the place where you bought the wine. That might be nice. I think the last time I was there, we forgot, but it didn't matter. At this point we were, we were already on cloud nine and you're going to sit next to the water, surrounded by these locals. Maybe you'll hear a little bit of music and you're going to see the tourist boats going by. It's really fun to wave at them. I highly recommend that. I like to play this game to see how many people I could get to wave back to me. So will more wave to me if I do it or the girl that I'm with will more wave to her. And, uh, it's fun when you get a boat of a couple hundred people waving at you. Uh, so you can do that. And you're going to watch the sun set over the beautiful backdrop of Paris while you're drinking. And if you don't have wine bottles that are twist off, either you gentlemen bring a wine opener with you or ask someone else down there into variably, someone's going to have a wine opener. It's pretty much illegal for them not to. So enjoy the sunset, enjoy your wine rebel in the beautiful things you saw on that day and the great food that you got to eat and the gardens of the lube and the arc de Triomphe and the beautiful vistas over the city and the sunset in the vibe and the atmosphere and make your move. Gentlemen, this is your first best opportunity for a kiss somewhere here while the sun is setting and you are drinking your wine with a beautiful girl and a beautiful setting. After having a beautiful day, that's where you make your move. Now it's not the only place you can make a move. So don't worry. I'm going to give you option number two. So if you don't, if you don't make it here, you'll have another option. Now, once you have finished your wine or just watch the sunset go down, I'm going to say, watch the sunset go down. It is time to make your way to the Eiffel tower. Actually, you don't even have to wait until the sun goes down, but as the sun is going lower, what you can do is go back onto the side of the river, where you just ate in St. Michelle, and then walk towards the arc de Triomphe. And that will take you to the Eiffel tower. The river is going to eventually turn left and it'll take you there. There's a lot of lovely walkways and paths, and it's really kind of green and not next to the traffic. And you can have a nice time walking very slowly for an hour or so, and enjoy it. Maybe even make some more stops to drink some wine. You can have a good time doing that or take a Metro. Sometimes the metros do smell a lot like homeless and urine. So that's not always romantic a warning, but you could also take a taxi. There's there's a point, a little bit removed from the Eiffel tower. If you look at a map, you'll see it. And it's kind of a little bit nicer to see the Eiffel tower from the gardens behind it. I want you to get there and I want you to wait and I want you to keep drinking your wine. You have two bottles. You should have enough get three. If it's not enough. And at some point in the evening, I don't know if it's every third. I think it's every 30 minutes. The Eiffel tower will sparkle. And gentlemen, let me tell you what that is a magical moment. It's magical for me. Hell I love it. Every time I see it, even though I've seen it a million times and the girl you're with is going to love it even more than that, this is your second opportunity for a kiss. Now you don't go for the kiss, right? When the sparkles happen, right? When it lights up, what you want to do is let her revel in the beauty and the magical nature of what's happening. And she will, at some point, not too long after a sparkles, look at you. And that's when you look at her and make eye contact. And that is your second and actually your best chance to make a move. After a day of having a wonderful experience with a wonderful food and wine and sunsets, a magical ending at the Eiffel tower, as it sparkles, if you don't get a kiss here, it ain't to be, ah, it is truly beautiful and romantic. And apparently since I am newly single, just some recent news for me, I'm going to have to use this itinerary that I just mentioned to you. Now, I'm going to give you one warning at the Eiffel tower, you are going to see tons and tons of people harassing you, gentlemen. It is your duty to keep your lady safe here. You don't have to worry too much about actual safety, but you're going to get annoyed and harassed a lot. You're going to get offered flowers. You're going to get offered little life of towers. You're going to get offered cigarettes. You're going to get offered beer. Those ones are actually acceptable. I'll I'll allow it. You're going to get a lot of that at the Eiffel tower. Mentally prepare yourself before you go. So you can shield the girl you're with from it. And you just need to know what's going to happen because the only really bad thing is when you're surprised by it. Well, not the only really bad thing, but when you're surprised by it, it's a lot worse. If you expect it and you don't get it as bad, then you get more of a positive experience, but it's going to happen a lot there. And after all of this, if the Metro is still open, you can go ahead and take the Metro home, but let's face it. The Metro smelly and disgusting gents, save a little bit of money, 15, 20 euros, and take the taxi home. Well that doesn't save money. I meant save some money from dinner in the day, like an extra 20 euros just to take the taxi home or 30 euros. And, um, my gosh, when you get home, do I really need to tell you what to do then enjoy and joy because you have just had an amazingly beautiful, fun romantic sites seeing a lovely day in Paris. And you either got the girl or you learned that you're just friends, but do, do make the move. Do make the move never in your life. Do you want to be able to say, what if no, you want to be able to say, yeah, I tried. It didn't work or it worked. You need an answer. I don't want to hear any what ifs, what ifs, what ifs I gave you two spots to make that move sunset and Eiffel tower. And the kicker is if he can get it at lunch, did I forget dinner? Hmm, I guess the, I guess I just never really went to dinner. Well, lunch there is going to happen at two, three o'clock anyway. And depending the time of year you go with Sunset and everything, you might just be skipping dinner or dinner is going to be a little bit more graphic than a I'm going to describe here, but, oh, this is, oh, this is putting a smile on my face to remember, honestly, uh, for all the countries I've lived in and Europe and all the cities and all the dates and everything. I think this is one of my truly favorite things to do well. That's how you spend either a romantic day in Paris or just a great fun little day in Paris, cheers to that and to enjoy.