By Daniel Rodriguez | Dr. Budgets
Sometimes the most memorable travel experiences are the least expensive. A great personal example of this is the night in Paris my wife and I spent on our last trip to Europe…
On our last trip to visit my family in Germany, my wife and I made plans to travel to Lisbon, Portugal. I was excited to explore an new city with my wife, who had been to Europe only once before. While checking flights between Germany and Lisbon we discovered that it was less expensive to fly from Paris; so we booked that flight and a hotel in Paris for the night before. Also, before our trip, my wife posted an ad on Craigslist in Paris (I guess Craigslist is everywhere now!) for a photographer to take our pictures while we were there. What a great idea!
We arrived in Paris around noon after our three hour train ride from Germany. It was a nice, but somewhat rainy Fall day. We checked into our hotel room, and then grabbed a quick bite to eat before meeting the photographer at the Eiffel Tower. It turned out he was an American living in Paris with his girlfriend, and he had done plenty of “gigs” photographing tourists in Paris. He knew all the places where we could pose for the best pictures, so we were able to get an assortment of amazing pictures in one short hour (total cost: 50 Euros). We explored the city for a little while longer, then took a short break at the hotel room before heading back out.
We were on a mission to buy this special tea (Mariage Frères – Rouge Bourbon) that our friends really lik
e, so we found out that a store called Le Bon Marché carried it. We took the Métro there in the early evening, found the store, and the tea! The tea was very affordable there (less than 10 Euros for a bag the size of my hand). This was enough for our friends and for us! Now whenever we drink that tea we think of Paris. Also, while we were at that store we saw a giant (and I mean giant!) jar of Nutella. We didn’t buy it, but we did take a picture of it. We were hungry after all of this running around, so we decided to eat dinner right there in the store. They had a deli where we ordered sandwiches and soup, and paid less than 20 Euros between the two of us.
At this point the rain had cleared up a bit and the sun had set, and it was a beautiful evening
. We decided to walk in the direction of the hotel, which was at least two miles away, and take the Métro if we got tired (or if it started to rain again!). For 1 Euro be bought a baguette at the store and for another Euro we purchased a postcard from a street vendor along the way. Our stroll back on this crisp Fall evening in Paris is one of our fondest memories of the entire trip. Paris at night is beautiful, and we soaked it all in on that walk back.
Total cost for our entire day, including the photographer, was around 100 Euros. A drizzly evening spent walking and talking in the most romantic city in the world…priceless!