Bonjour!(Well one of the only few French word I know) Everyone wish you guys late Christmas And New year. Hope you guys had lovely time with your loved ones. And wish you guys have a lovely year ahead of you. As always please do not expect very top notch English writing but any feedback’s are more than welcome 🙂

As for myself me and few other friends decided to celebrate Christmas in France. The plan all started when I posted screenshot of all remaining holidays that I to use up before end of 2018. One of my childhood friend whom I’ve known since we were 4 or 5 yrs old asked me if I would be interested in a short trip. After filtering out list of countries we decided to go with France as none of us had been there and wanted to go somewhere close.

Visa Application

My Schengen Visa which I had received for my trip to Swiss has expired so I had to apply for another one. Since we planned the trip pretty late, I had hard time booking an appointment as the dates available were only few days earlier the flight I had book. So I had to apply for visa through some third party to send my application for me. After checking out various third parties I decided to apply through VisaPoint. Be aware that applying through third parties are easier but very expensive compared to normal method. All in all was a very smooth process and managed to get my visa after 5 working days.

Paris

It was my first experience travelling with Eurostar and it didn’t disappoint. The journey from London to Paris was only about 2 hours and was quite comfortable. After we got off the train in Gare du Nord station, to be honest with you I didn’t like the surrounding as it was smelly and dirty.

After a while asking help from locals we managed to buy a one way ticket to the station close to our hotel. A helpful suggestion would be if you are planning to make multiple trips while your stay in Paris, you have an option to buy one trip tickets in bundle of (10,20..) this works out to be cheap instead of buying an individual tickets for every journey.

Our hotel was in the 6th Arrondissements(i.e districts) which felt way better and safer than the area where we had initially got off. So the experience of your stay in Paris really depends on which district you decide to stay and explore( I guess its the same in any other place in the world). By the time we had reached our hotel it was late evening so we decided to stroll around check out Arc De Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower then grab dinner in the local area. Few weeks before our trip, there were many uproar about protests that were happening in Paris. We didn’t think we would be able to see one while we were snapping pictures around Arc De Triomphe. The scenes weren’t scary at all, you could see people in yellow vest doing a peaceful protests while other people just minding their own business. We managed to reach Eiffel tower at the right time when it was about to light up. While in Paris do be careful of your belongings, one of our mate’s phone was pick pocketed and we did not have a single clue of where it could might have happened.

We visited other very common tourist attractions such as Louvre Pyramid, Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris (Also known as Cathedral on the hill) and Disneyland. If you decide to go Paris do checkout the Cathedral on the hill as the walk to top of the hill you come across many attractive mural’s, cafe’s and small town. Also I suggest you to go there during the day as it might look little dodgy at night as you walk down the hill. Disneyland in my opinion is not to be missed. As you grow old you want to feel young again don’t you? well this is the perfect to be if so haha Feel young and act like a kid where no ones juding you 😛

Nice

After 3 days of stay in Paris, we made our way to Nice. Nice lies in the southern part of France, it is very popular city to be during summer but what about winter? Well to find out please continue reading 😛

As we walked out of airport, I was glad I came to Nice as my experience in Paris wasn’t very good. The city just has chill and laid back vibe and as you make your way to the city from Airport you cannot help but get attracted to the beauty of French riviera. The city Nice is mainly divided into two part: Old town and New town. The name is kind of self explanatory if you love the classic feel of the city with plenty of markets, old structure and restaurants I would suggest you to stay in Old town.

Since we had arrived on Christmas day, most of the shops were closed so we just decided to have dinner at any restaurant that looked decent. If you come to Nice, I personally think you should checkout of the view of the sunset and the city from Colline du Château. At the viewpoint you can witness mesmerising sunset and the colours in the sky while the city is filled with lights. We also made a day trip to Monaco which is also known to be Tax haven which is a sovereign city-state. If you are a shopaholic and into branded items I think you would enjoy your visit there. Personally I loved the Oceanographic Museum. Another day trip we did was to Cannes. We all know the very reason why the place is well known. It is for its annual film festival. Around the venue you can checkout hand print of various celebrities on the floor. If you feel tired and want to have a look around the city, I would highly recommend taking the mini train. The mini train shows you around every major point in the cities and gives you explanations of what kind of events occurred through the headphone. And finally for the last day we decided to spend our shopping around in the New city part of Nice.