By: Shoubhik Bose & Debanjana Maitra
Shoubhik and Debanjana, senior engineers in software companies of repute in Bangalore love travelling in India and abroad. They take time out to share their experiences through their travelogues.
The best of different worlds. In the summer of 2017, we traveled to 7 cities in two and a half weeks.
In each city we stayed for at least 2 nights, used physical maps to navigate our way to the different parts of the city in public transport like a local.
Choosing the 7 cities
- We wanted to see Salzburg, Paris and have a beach holiday too — this became the basis of our planning.
- Tickets to/from is Paris is usually the cheapest — that made it easy to decide that Paris should be our first stop 😉
- Since we were traveling to multiple countries, we figured our which country would be cheaper to fly back from, and we holed in onto Budapest ( which turned to out to be my favorite city ).
- To travel from France to Austria, one would need to cross Italy – and Italy had beautiful beaches — that helped us decide that we should go to a beach town in the Italian Riviera.
- So, that’s how we holed in on these 4 countries — France, Italy, Austria & Hungary.
Paris , France
If you are in Paris, you must try out crepes , croissants, the eclair cake , the tiramisu cake, the cheese cake, the chocolate dip , the chocolate croissant , the butter croissant and fresh fruits. And definitely..
Day 1
We landed in Paris about 5 pm and took a metro to the AirBnB.
We stayed at a studio apartment which was very artistically decorated, in a residential area.
It was raining outside so we stayed home the first evening.
We cooked dinner, opened a bottle of champagne ( gifted to us by our host ) and played Bruce Springsteen on the Gramophone.
Day 2 — See Paris from the River Seine
We took a Seine River Cruise which had stops at major destinations like Notre Dam.
The Eiffel tour looks great at sunset which is around 8.30 pm local time. Hence, we planned our river cruise stop so that we could witness it while at the cruise.
After sunset, the lights of Eiffel tower came up, and there’s a mini light show happening every hour. We witnessed it at 10pm!
Day 3 — Sacré-Cœur and Versailles
We started our day by visiting the highest point in the city, the basilica of Sacré-Cœur
We traveled to the Palace of Versailles, which his outside the city of Paris. Versailles was the seat of political power in the Kingdom of France from 1682 — a monarchy which fell after the French Revolution in late 1700s . In modern history, Versailles is famous for the peace agreement signed between the belligerents of the World War 1 .
