What to See in Paris in 4 Days

Happy Valentine’s Day my wonderful friends! Today I’m going to be sharing my favorite romantic city (Paris) with you!  They don’t call it the City of Love for nothing!

If you follow my blog you may have seen my blog posts about my travel up the Seine River but I forgot to add the time we spent in Paris!! If you haven’t been to Paris I highly recommend you add it to your bucket list for travel destinations. You can spend as much time as you want in Paris and I promise you will love every day spent there. I am going to share with you what we did and saw in Paris. We didn’t use a guide except for the Louvre (highly recommend you do this because you cut standing in lines and wondering around the vast museum) and walked everywhere in Paris.

Accommodation ( Find your Base Camp in Paris)

We landed in Paris in the morning and went straight to our hotel for a nap before walking around and seeing what we could see in the first afternoon in Paris.

We stayed at the Paris Marriott Opera Ambassador Hotel both before our river cruise and after our river cruise. We decided to stay at this hotel again because the hotel is within walking distance to the Louvre museum which we didn’t see before our river cruise. You cannot see everything in a day in Paris. I think 3 days will cover Paris alone. Plan for one full day for the Louvre museum and also for the Chateau de Versailles if you add it, which is what we did as part of our river cruise.

The bedroom was lovely, modern, and I loved the fretwork on the mirrored closet doors.

Let me be an interior designer for a moment: The bathrooms were all the same but it was the placement of the shower fixtures that was very perplexing as a guest and as an interior designer. These tubs are very deep and narrow (which are very difficult for elderly guests to get into) but do you notice how the showerhead is facing out into the bathroom in the first bedroom we stayed in? The half glass tub enclosure will not protect the bathroom from lots of water if someone doesn’t grab the handheld right away which was what happened when my husband turned on the shower without thinking. All bathrooms have large drains in the middle of the floor for such a reason.

The second time we stayed at the JW the showerhead was on the right wall.

I suggest to really enjoy seeing Paris you need to map out the city prior to visiting it. This helps with determining your base camp and what you can to see by walking and when you need to hire a cab. We took a cab to see many of the points of interests that were too far from our hotel.

Our hotel was in the Opera House district which is centrally located and within walking distance to the Louvre, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, and the fabulous shopping!

Full Day Tours with a Guide

Versailles is an hour outside of Paris and we saw the magnificent Chateau de Versailles and Josephine’s Château de Malmaison in one day. I highly recommend hiring a tour guide or going in a group because both places are too big and full of so much history, art, and wings that are specific to certain periods of history to really begin to understand what you are seeing.

We visited Versailles as part of our Avalon Waterways Seine river cruise from Paris to Normandy. Versailles is 12 miles southwest of Paris and you can either make it a day trip or like we did, a riverboat cruise. We had about 40 members of our cruise join us on the guided tour of the exquisite chateau. Going with a large group also gives you quicker access to Versaille, which can have long lines,(think Disneyland). Our tour didn’t include a visit to the Trianon, nor did we see all the rooms in Versailles. Versailles is really an all-day visit and perhaps hiring a private tour guide may have given us access to many things I would have liked to have seen.

“The Hall of Mirrors, the most famous room in the Palace, was built to replace a large terrace designed by the architect Louis Le Vau, which opened onto the garden. The terrace originally stood between the King’s Apartments to the north and the Queen’s to the south, but was awkward and above all exposed to bad weather, and it was not long before the decision was made to demolish it. It was also here that the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, ending the First World War.”

We also visited Chateau de Malmaison formerly the residence of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais, along with the Tuileries it was the headquarters of the French government from 1800 to 1802, and Napoleon‘s last residence in France at the end of the Hundred Days in 1815.

Louvre Museum

The Louvre is the largest and one of the best art museums in the world with over 400,000 pieces of art so make sure you’re wearing comfortable walking shoes. We paid for only 4 hours with a guide and spent 2 hours on our own. The Louvre was a palace before it was a museum. It was actually a seat of power, home to French heads of state until 1870 and is one of the major backdrops to the history of Paris and of France.

We went on a guided tour for 4 hours with an art major which helped us to cut the long lines. She was well worth the investment.

The famous glass pyramid (Pyramide du Louvre) is a large glass and metal pyramid designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, surrounded by three smaller pyramids, in the main courtyard (Cour Napoléon) of the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) in Paris. The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum. You can see the opening from the photo below.

The Louvre collections are divided into the Denon Wing, the Sully Wing, and the Richelieu Wing. Each has different collections and areas of focus. Look over what each has, and choose one to at least begin your visit.

I highly recommend you start your tour by visiting the Medieval Louvre on the lower level of the museum’s Sully Wing. A footpath leads visitors through the excavated ruins beneath the Louvre’s Sully Wing.

I enjoyed the Department of Egyptian Antiquities in the Sully Wing full of paintings, sculptures, mummies, and more to tell the stories of ancient Egypt.

Louvre’s antiquities are found in the Denon wing were another favorite of mine as I love sculpture and form.

The Venus de Milo is at the intersection of the Sully and Denon wings.

You might think you’ve seen a lot of works like this before, but trust me, it has quite a twist. What looks, at first glimpse, to be a naked woman reclining on a very soft cushion, is actually…a man…er, well, something in between. In fact, it’s a depiction (a Roman copy of a Hellenistic bronze, if you’re a stickler for details) of the god Hermaphroditus who sported both male and female sexual organs. If we had shot both sides you would see what I mean.

The most famous piece of art in the Louvre is Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is in the Denon wing. I didn’t realize it was so small and the crowd so large!! We never got any closer to her than this shot. You end up seeing people taking selfies and pictures of the painting.

Many wings are quite empty of tourists which is why you can spend 6 hours at the Louvre and never see it all.  The Richelieu wing seems to be the least crowded of the three wings of the Louvre, perhaps because it doesn’t include any of the “big name” works of art that are found in the Denon or Sully wings. Nonetheless, it has many treasures to explore.

What to see in under 4 hours ( or see what we saw in a day)

Basilique du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre

Located at the top of the hill of Montmartre, this majestic church offers one of the most amazing views over Paris.  History fun fact: Before its construction, this place was already a place of worship. Indeed, paganism used to be practiced, and Gallo-Roman temples were once built there in dedication to Mercure and Mars. Being the highest point of the city, this place has always been chosen by the believers, due to the feeling of being closer to the sky, which holds the idea of being closer to God, to heaven and forgiveness in Catholicism. For those of you who love architecture, this church was designed by the architect Paul Abadie. The architectural style is romano-byzantine .

 Montmartre

Below the village is the iconic Moulin Rouge cabaret which we highly recommend you to see. It’s a dinner show and yes, the dancers are topless but the costumes and show was spectacular! We saw some families in attendance, perhaps the parents didn’t do their homework or are very comfortable with their children seeing female topless entertainers. ( Or as my husband commented, the dancer’s breast were small and not such a distraction. Duh! They are professionally trained dancers not strip club dancers!)

Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris

This famous Gothic cathedral which construction began in the 12th century stands on the Île de la Cité and is the symbolic heart of the city. Go early to avoid the crowds. We spent 3 hours in the church and the surrounding area.

Eiffel Tower

This iconic Parisian structure was so beautiful to see in person during the day and at night when it is all lit up.

Things to see in under 2 hours

Paris Opera House

Pantheon Paris

Luxembourg Gardens

Nothing says Paris like the Luxembourg Gardens. Bordered by Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter, these lovely gardens are beloved by Parisians longing to bask on a lawn chair in the sunshine or enjoy a  walk along the many paths in the garden.

Stroll the Avenue des Champs-Élysées

Arc de Triomphe 

Situated at the end of the Champs-Élysées, the towering Arc de Triomphe which was commissioned by Napoléon to honor the Grande Armee during the Napoleonic Wars. The arch, which is the largest of its kind in the world, is adorned with several impressive, intricately carved sculptures. We didn’t do inside the Arc but enjoyed seeing it.

Shop Til You Drop in Paris

Paris is a wonderful city to shop and almost every street near the Champs-Elysées Avenue had luxury brands selling to the tourists to the people driving Ferraris and Maserati’s.

Avenue Montaigne, a side street of the world famous Champs-Elysées Avenue, is another very luxurious shopping street in Paris. Many of the most famous luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel & Givenchy have a store there. As for the Champs-Elysées, there are still a lot of luxurious brands (Cartier, Louis Vuitton flagship store, Hugo Boss…), but you can also find more affordable products too.

Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann

Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann was a couple blocks from the hotel and I felt really safe walking by myself to shop there.

This is a megastore in Paris carries every luxury designer imaginable under one ornate roof! It was so much fun walking around and seeing all the luxury brands under one roof. Giddy is a better word for how I felt.

Veni, Vidi, Vici

The story behind the photo in my bio and the beginning of this blog post.

I packed a lot of Chico’s outfits for my Pais tip because they don’t wrinkle and I wear a lot of bright colors. Parisians are very similar to New Yorkers, they tend to wear a lot of black.

I wore this fun cold shoulder retro print top out on our very last night in Paris. We dined at a lovely little restaurant Le Clown Bar which had outstanding food and wine. Sitting next to us was Natalie Portman and her husband

Have you ever been to Paris?

What was your favorite place to visit?

I hope you add Paris to your Bucket List!

Hugs,