Paris 2022: Three Days with the Iron Lady, Macarons & Mixed Feelings

Paris is not a place that can be covered in few days, and definitely not in my few words. Whenever you think of it, you can have different words for it. The ones I keep coming back to are: little overhyped, confused emotion, a sense of belonging and being outcasted at the same time. We rolled into Paris from Prague after a 13-hour bus ride I'd booked by mistake (long story), and we left it three days later with our hearts full, our feet wrecked, and a parcel of half-eaten pasta we still regret throwing away.

This is our honest diary from August 2022 — me and Harshit, two Indians doing Europe on a tight schedule, trying to squeeze the city for everything it had while also not pretending it was perfect. Paris was both: the dream studio I'd always pictured, and the museum painting that disappointed. Both, often in the same afternoon.

Day 1
Bercy Seine, the Iron Lady & a 10:40pm Cruise

We reached Bercy Seine station after the longest bus ride of our lives. The plan had originally been a RegioJet train from Prague, which I confidently booked — except the booking turned out to be a 13-hour overnight bus. Harshit took it well, as he takes most of my blunders. The bus was actually fine; my pride was the only casualty. We took the old, slightly intimidating Paris metro to Trocadero, dragged our suitcases across cobblestones, and got our first eyeful of the Iron Lady. There she was — exactly like in the photos, except she was real and we were tired.

From Trocadero we dragged the suitcases the rest of the way to our studio apartment at 43 Rue Spontini. I will always be thankful to Harshit for booking that one. I had earlier complained it was costly, but it was worth every penny. That studio was very much like what I had imagined I'd own once I started earning — small, smart, full of light — but it's still not the kind of place I've managed to build for myself in India. I got to live in one because of Harshit and Airbnb, and even now I think about that little flat.

We could not stay long though. A short power nap, a face wash, and we were back out for the Hop on Hop off. Honest note for any future traveller: the Paris bus is slow. Painfully slow compared to Vienna and Prague. By the time we'd done a partial loop, our priorities had quietly rearranged themselves — and from this bus seat onwards, we decided that the food included in our Paris pass was top priority and museums were bottom priority. We followed that rule diligently for the rest of the trip.

For dinner we ate pizza near the Eiffel Tower, then joined the queue for the river cruise. The queue was endless. We wanted a night cruise anyway, so the wait was almost a blessing — we ended up with the second-last cruise of the day, the 10:40pm one. While waiting, we got chatting with an Indian couple living in the Netherlands; that little homesick swap of "where in India are you from" made the wait feel shorter. The cruise itself was lovely. Every monument under the night sky and artificial lights looks like a different city. It was technically the same daylight tour we'd already done on the Hop on Hop off, but the night air turned it into something else. We were tourists and we did the touristy thing on Day 1 — we watched the Iron Lady until our eyes closed on their own.

Day 2
Café Louise, the Mona Lisa Letdown & Rain in Montmartre

Day 2 was jam-packed, and to our own surprise we hit every checkpoint ahead of schedule. We started with breakfast at Café Louise. From this morning onwards, almost everything we ate was included in our Go City pass, and we'd quietly planned every meal, snack and drink before even leaving India. At Louise, the croissants were fantastic — I can never spell the word right but the taste was perfect — and honestly every item on the menu seemed to work.

Then we walked over to the famous Louvre. We picked a good spot outside and did a slightly weird photoshoot before going in, because we knew the inside would be all about one thing: the Mona Lisa. We walked straight to her room. There's a separate queue just to look at the painting. And then there she was — the 1st most disappointing thing of our entire trip. Smaller than I'd imagined, mobbed by phones, behind layers of glass and shoulders. We clicked our share of random Louvre shots and left.

Next stop was Flyview Paris — a 360° virtual reality tour of the city. When we reached, we got told we could pick a second show as well, so we ended up with two and both were thrilling. We left Flyview still early for our next booking, the Montmartre walking tour. The weather had turned perfect: no harsh sun, a little drizzle. A train got cancelled, we struggled with the map, climbed approximately a hundred stairs and arrived a little flustered but on time.

And then Montmartre quietly stole the day. The vibe was great — restaurants spilling onto the streets, cafés humming, artists lined up sketching caricatures. We walked in expecting a glass of champagne and a snack with our pass. Instead the restaurant pulled out a whole menu — starters, mains, desserts. After much deliberation we ended up with a cheese starter, two mains (a pasta and a burger), and two desserts (fruit salad and a chocolate brownie). The burger was better than the pasta. I couldn't finish my pasta and asked them to parcel it; we got a neat little box that we sadly never ate from. We rushed to the tour with about fifteen minutes to spare and made it.

Our tour guide had warnings galore about Paris, but we were lucky and had no bad experiences. He shared the strangest trivia — that pressing the Dalida statue's bust is supposed to bring you a partner, despite Dalida herself having three difficult marriages, two husbands who died by suicide, and eventually a tragic end of her own. Montmartre's hilltop is full of windmills and old beer-brewing history; it also has the famous Moulin Rouge, which we walked past but didn't watch. After the tour we took our photos at Sacré-Cœur, then got hopelessly lost trying to find the macaron and ice-cream shop the guide had recommended. We saw the love wall while wandering, window-shopped past some very Parisian shops, and by the time we found the macaron place we were completely drenched. The rain in Paris is its own character. We ate Parisian ice cream, packed every macaron flavour, and walked back through wet streets buying bread on the way. Rain and Paris had done something to my heart that night.

Day 3: 15th August
Climbing the Iron Lady & Saying Goodbye

Day 3 was Indian Independence Day, and we were running late. We overslept, made pav bhaji for breakfast, and decided to throw the leftover Montmartre pasta — a decision I still regret because I was just too full at that moment to honour it. Our morning slot was the Eiffel Tower walking tour, and we literally ran through the streets to Trocadero. The view from there is spectacular, the kind that stops you mid-step, but we had no time to admire it. We sprinted straight to the meeting point and slid into the queue just in time.

Our guide was Hexcel, and he was excellent. The tour started with the long queues, a couple of dumb security checks, a fun guessing game about the tower's history, and then the actual climb. By halfway to the first floor we were panting; the group's energy pulled us up. From the first floor, Hexcel ran us through the tower's history and a string of facts about the city. The view is genuinely nice, though the place is heavily commercialised — from the outside you can't tell how much is happening inside her. One of the more bizarre facts: there's a small Statue of Liberty up there facing New York, and most of these famous statues were originally gifts between cities. We went up to the second floor for a few more clicks, said goodbye to the Iron Lady, and walked back to Rue Spontini to shift our luggage into lockers.

On the way back to the studio, we spotted other Indians waving the Indian flag at Trocadero. It being 15th August, we did what any homesick Indians abroad would do — we got the flag, took a stack of photos, and basked in a tiny pocket of India in front of the Iron Lady. Saying goodbye to the studio at 43 Rue Spontini was harder than it had any right to be. The Indian gentleman at the luggage locker shop refused to let us use his wifi, which was a small heartbreak; we eventually borrowed wifi from a nearby café and re-planned the rest of the afternoon.

We tried a crêpe at a nearby restaurant — and that's our second disappointment of Paris. I think mine was egg-based and I really didn't enjoy it. Then back to Café Louise for a light snack and cocktails. We picked two different ones, an orange-based and a coconut-based, and somehow finished both. By the end of it I had confirmed for myself that I am not really an alcohol person; even the dilute versions weren't doing much for me.

We tried to claim our free goodies at BAPAP, got lost without internet, and reached to find the shop closed. So we made our way to Montparnasse — a 56-floor tower with a sweeping view of the city, and a quieter, less-photographed alternative to the Eiffel. By then we were hungry and behind schedule. We collected our luggage and headed for Bercy Seine, taking two buses instead of the metro because dragging suitcases on roads is easier than lifting them up metro stairs. Our second bus was so late we nearly took a cab. While we were waiting at the stop, an open dance session broke out — I don't remember the music or the dance form, but it was the kind of golden, unplanned European evening I'd love to live again. We finally caught the FlixBus to Zurich and said our hard goodbye to Paris with hungry stomachs and heavy hearts. Sayonara to Paris.

Our Honest Take on Paris

So — did Paris live up to the hype? Sort of. Sometimes. In flashes. The Iron Lady was mesmerising, the Mona Lisa wasn't. The studio felt like a dream, the Louvre felt like a queue. At one point you want to live in this city for years; another time it feels like it has nothing more to give you. That contradiction is, I think, the most honest thing I can say about it.

We had started watching Emily in Paris just before the trip, and once we got there the streets and corners from the show kept feeling familiar — like we'd walked them in a past life on a laptop screen. That, combined with the studio on Rue Spontini that matched the apartment I've quietly fantasised about for years, gave the city a strange, almost personal grip. It wasn't just a holiday. It was a checklist of small, private dreams getting ticked off, even though I hadn't realised I'd written them down.

We came back to Mumbai a week later and I'm writing some of this from there. Not a single day has passed without one of us missing European food or weather or pace. I think travelling is a next-level addiction — the planning, the running for buses, the bad crêpes, the great macarons, all of it. After Paris, the will to come back isn't a question of if; it's only ever about when.