Paris Day 3 - City Tour

Good Morning Day 3!

After exploring Disneyland on Day 2, it's time to explore the city.

Locking up

Love our yellow home for the week. 

Short walk to the bus stop 

Quick family photo while waiting for our Bus #34

Took bus #34 which was about a 20 minute ride to Marnee La Valee station. From there, we purchased our 3 day Paris Visite Pass for unlimited travel for Zone 1 to 5. 

54 Euros for Adults and 27 Euros for the Kids. Darn it, everything is so expensive when we multiply by 5!  :-( 

   

RER A to Charles de Gaulle étoile station

Girls were so impressed there were 3 levels of seating! 

First stop - Trocadéro station for a good view of EiffelTower.

Yay, must have family selfie with Eiffel Tower !

I like this photo. Photobombed by a bird in flight :-) 

The 2 princesses.  So lucky to see Eiffel Tower with their own eyes at such a young age!  Hubby's first time too. 

Syiok-sendiri pose :-) 

We walked towards Eiffel tower for a closer view.  It was cold day indeed! Bought some hot snacks - Ham and Cheese Baguette, Chocolate Crepe and a cup of Hot Cappuccino to warm ourselves up.

Enjoying a hot baguette with a view! 

She finished more than half of it. Elyssa's appetite skyrocketed during the trip ;-) 

Snapped by Elyssa

One of my favourite photos of the holiday

Small princess with Eiffle Tower 

Close up of Eiffel base 

We didn't buy tickets to go up. Figured out it can't be thattt different with other views from high vantage viewpoints. heh.  Plus I've already been up before, hubs is scared of heights and girls indifferent anyway. 

Walked around a bit and then decided it was time for lunch.

Many nice side walk cafes

Eating time! 

Hungry Elyssa couldn't wait. Haha. 

Ordered from their "prix fixe" lunch menu.

20 Euros for appetizer, main meal and dessert.  We chose : Set #1 - Escargots, Salmon and Creme Brulee.  Set #2 - French Onion Soup, Beef & Choc Lava Cake. 

Lunch was goooooood! Happy, happy. 

Paid 40 Euros net. No extra charges for bread (we had 2 baskets! hehe), water (uhm.. 2 bottles also) or tax. 

After a leisurely lunch, we took the metro to Avenue des Champs-Élysées

First stop - Arc de Triomphe

Strolled down Avenue des Champs-Élysées

Louis Vuitton!  No money to buy bag, so just snap photo of building ;-) 

Happy with the maple leave she found on the ground :-) 

Wanted to go to the Louvre next but had trouble with our Paris Visite tickets :-(((   When we put the tickets through the turnstiles, there was an error message that 2 out of 4 tickets was invalid! Aargh.  Realised there was a magnetic strip so I shouldn't have placed it close to my phone.  Ranting story ahead:

Station #1 - the station that we were at only had unmanned turnstiles.  So had to go to another bigger station. 

Station #2 - queued at customer service counter. Unfriendly French bloke who muttered dunno what indicated for me to go to the baggage turnstile. 2 rounds of going back and forth later, I realised his "solution" was to manually open the baggage turnstile for me. Huh?? I have a 3 day pass that needs to be fixed!  Anyway, continued our journey and decided to get the tickets fixed at another station. 

Station #3 - queued again. Again some mutterings and confusion. This time, the customer service lady issued me tickets and asked me to get the problem solved by going to the machine. I queued at the machine queue and decided to ask a friendly looking French guy behind me. He looked at the ticket and seemed confused too. Then he figured it was for the turnstile and asked me to try it. Turned out the lady just issued me a manual ticket valid for 1 trip. Hellooo.... I have a 3 day pass!  Fix the problem please!

Station #4 - there was a computerised sign that said "back in 30 minutes". So we waited. 30 minutes later, a guy came and said the counter is closed for the day.  Whattttt??????  Our manual tickets were only valid for one trip. But saw a broken turnstile that was wide open so we just went through that to go to the next stop. 

Station #5 - queue again.  Lady checked and said "There is nothing wrong with your tickets!!" Can faint already. Tried at turnstiles and confirmed still invalid (we checked at every station actually). Queued again and luckily got another customer service person. This guy checked and finally said "There is an issue with the magnetic strip.  Let me issue you new tickets"  Finally!!!!!!!!

Sigh..... wasted time with the tickets. Missed our chance to go shopping at Val D Europe again. Well, on the positive side there were no more problems with the tickets after that. And we did have some savings from Louvre the next day. (more on that in next post) 

Anyway, we're on holiday. Ain't gonna let things like that spoil our holiday mood!  Headed back to the hotel and enjoyed a simple home cooked dinner.  Girls slept almost immediately after eating.

- End of Day 3 -   

Paris Day 2 - Disneyland

Good morning Day 2!  Woke up all refreshed and ready to start our day.  

Well, Erin actually woke up at 2+ am and asked for breakfast. Poor jet lagged baby! Luckily she went back to sleep after eating. 

No problems waking them up around seven when we whispered the magic word.... "Disneyland!" 

At resort grounds 

Super love the scenery

Waiting for the shuttle bus to Disneyland.

So glad they can keep themselves occupied.  

Yay... we arrived! 
We actually purchased the Annual Pass which works out cheaper for us. 139 Euros 

Photos from Disneyland-

Caught the Christmas Parade  

 Mickey and Donald Float

Not too crowded.  We easily got front row view

Toy Story 

Erin's favourite ride - "It's a small world" 

@ the Small World ride

 Sleeping Beauty Castle 

View from Sleeping Beauty Castle 

Carousel Ride 

Watched a Christmas Show 

Dumbo Ride 

Mat Hatter Garden - another one of their favourites 

Mickey Show while eating our lunch 

Darth Vader 

Didn't take a photo at all the rides we went for. We even went on the Space Mountain Roller Coaster. OMG..... I typically am NOT a fan of roller coasters. During the ride, I was absolutely terrified and I couldn't help thinking "Sh*t,  Will my girls be ok?, Will my girls be ok? What if they pass out or something."  Phew, luckily they were fine. Shaken but they said it was exciting.  And I was the only one who felt nauseous after that.  Hah.

Headed home around 6pm even before the fireworks show. Still jet lagged (past midnight Malaysian time)


- End of Day 2 -

Paris Day 0 and 1

We're back from Paris!
An amazing 7 nights in Paris. When I told my friends that we were going to spend a week in Paris, the standard responses were : " What, just Paris?" , "but Paris is not such a nice city" . "Pickpocket alert!", "Not taking train to London or other places since you're already there?"

But yup, we were going to do 8 days, 7 nights JUST in Paris. Ok, main reason was we were using our Marriott Vacation Club Points so we get 7 nights accommodation at the fab Marriott's Village d'Ile-de-France. But also, we like to take things easy.  Girls (and hubby's!) first trip to Europe and we didn't want to rush through it. Did our initial research and found plenty of things to do for a week. Toyed with the idea of extending to 1.5 weeks but then decided to just keep things simple. So a week in Paris it was!  Booked our flight tickets and got suuuuuuper excited!

About 2 months after booking, the BIG day finally arrived.  Yay !!!

@ KLIA to catch the flight! We were happily counting down to this day. 

All smiles!  We took Emirates - can't complain at all. Good selection of movies to keep them entertained. 

Cheers! With hubby. 

4 hour transit at Dubai.  Tried to get some sleep but couldn't. 

Gave up trying to sleep. Took them to a playground instead

It was a pretty long journey :-(   7 hours 20 mins from KL to Dubai. Transit time of 4 hours 50 mins in Dubai.  And then another 7 hours 40 mins from Dubai to Paris. Only Erin managed to get some decent sleep during the flights.

So relieved when we finally arrived in Paris around 8 in the morning.  Got on our pre-arranged shuttle and headed straight to the hotel.

As usual, we were not disappointed with Marriott accommodation!

Living Room 

Fully Equipped Kitchen 

He he.... this lil customer like ordering stuff from the bar counter! 

Staircase to Upper Level 

Master Room 

2nd Room 

Ok, enough of photo taking! Hungry and tired so decided to have a quick meal.

Yumz.  Maggi Curry tasted good! 

We all took a nap after our early lunch. Nice to finally get some decent sleep! I think we knocked out easily 2-3 hours.

Walked over to Carrefour to get some groceries.  It was C-O-L-D. 

But a nice walk nevertheless. 

Quick photo at entrance.  Complete with eggs and bread. Hehe. 

Original plan was Disneyland but we didn't quite feel up to it.  Took a bus (2 Euro each) to Val d Europe shopping center instead. 

McD for Dinner.  We were all pretty tired.  

See la.. Elyssa can hardly open her eyes! 

Shopped around a bit.  Discovered really nice and cheap winter stuff at Primark! Got a nice jacket for Erin. Wanted to shop more but both girls said cannot walk anymore.....

Ok loh.  Took the bus back and called it an early night. Slow Day 1 since we were sleep deprived and still adjusting to the time zone & cold weather.

-- End of Day 1 --

Photos from Kidzania

For Erin's 6th birthday, her "Ku Jie" asked her what she wanted as a birthday present..... and she chose a trip to Kidzania.  Ku Jie said yes to her little niece and a date was set. The girls were super excited!

Hubby and I were excited too! hehe. Enjoyed some "us time" minus the kids. I went for my Zumba class in the morning, then we went for leisurely lunch and watched Thor at the cinema.  :-)

All photos below sent by their Ku Jie :

Police Girls 

Police duty of carrying cones :-) 

Dentists next 

Torturing the poor "patient" 

Spent some hard earn kidzos on makeup session 

Pump Attendants 

Firemen 

Putting out a fire! 

Spray, spray water 

Wall climbing 

Erin made it to the top and rang the bell! 

Time for some manual labour. 

Window Cleaning 

The girls had a blast! After that, we all met up at Ku Jie's condo together with BIL's family. Went for a quick swim and then dinner after that.  What an exciting Sunday for them.  Erin absolutely loved, loved her birthday present :-)