nostrum

This is a long overdue trip report. Our travel dates were September 12th-27th 2010. We are a family in our 30's and travelled with our infant son (21 months at the time). My mother was with us as well.
This is definitely not a trip report for foodies! If you can believe it, we didn't eat out at a single restaurant. We made our own meals at our apartments, and grabbed sandwiches on the go pretty much all the time.

We arrived in Paris on Monday morning at around 11am. Our flight was an overnight flight, and we were all exhausted and grumpy arriving on Monday. We arranged for a shuttle pickup with the shuttle-inter company that has often been suggested on this forum. We thought they were terrific! Our driver was waiting for us with our name on a sign. He didn't speak much english, and he had to pull over at a gas station to study a map for a few minutes to figure out where our apartment was but none of this bothered us at all. He was lovely, and had no problems finding the apartment. Our apartment wasn't quite ready so we dropped off our bags and went up to the Luxembourg gardens to find a bite to eat. Our apartment was booked through Haven in Paris and was pretty much right up the street from Saint Sulpice.

We absolutely loved the Haven in Paris staff. They gave such detailed, thorough instructions, our greeter contacted us before we left for Paris, everyone was so well organized and super quick to respond. I wouldn't hesitate to use them again in the future. The apartment was to die for!!! We loved it. It had an amazing terrace with beautiful views of Saint Sulpice, and even the Eiffel Tower. Simply beautiful. It is the 'rue servandoni' apartment on the Haven in Paris website if anyone is interested.

Our first day in Paris was (as everyone warned) a complete write off. We were exhausted, grumpy, out of sorts, and didn't want to do much more than shower and sleep. Once we had access to our apartment (about an hour after we arrived) we pretty much just settled in, and did a bit of walking around the neighbourhood before calling it a night.
First impressions of Paris: completely overwhelmed!!! Wow! I go to New York all the time, and am no stranger to cities, but Paris makes New York feel like a tiny village (to me). I have studied the maps of Paris so many times, and thought that I would have no problems knowing 'where I was' but it was so much more spread out than I had thought.

By around day 3 I felt pretty orientated, but those first 2 days were crazy! There are so many streets, jutting out in every direction. I had absolutely no sense of direction.
The Paris leg of our journey was quite stressful. Our little guy did really well, we did a ton of walking and sight seeing, and by late afternoon every day he would start to become very fussy and we would need to return to our apartment. He also didn't do much sleeping at night, so we were pretty exhausted the entire stay. Travelling with a toddler was not quite the great experience for us. There were so many highlights, like watching him play in the parks by the Eiffel tower, Luxembourg gardens, behind Notre Dame, getting gelato, walking by the Seine and watching the boats, and admiring all of the beautiful fountains... As my husband says, we will forget the stressful parts of the trip, but the we will always remember all of the wonderful things that we did.

t's really hard to process everything. Everywhere you turn, there are these ridiculously beautiful amazing buildings and sights, and it's just hard to take it all in amidst all of the insane traffic and regular city hustle and bustle. Every corner you turn you are faced with one important historical landmark after the next. It's really difficult to just 'absorb' it all. For me, it was the most magical at night. Traffic disappears, and it just turns into this beautiful haunting city, where you don't know if it's today, or a hundred years ago. The sound of the someone's footsteps echoing up the desolate road. Trenchcoats are everywhere! I loved that.

And the romance! People kissing everywhere. It was really incredible. Old people, young people. Everywhere you turn, in cafe's on benches, making out while riding on bikes (sitting on handlebars) it was amazing. It was just beautiful, contagious, romantic.. Paris!

I was completely in awe of the scale of the buildings. Pictures cannot capture how 'giant' everything is. I didn't expect every building to feel so enormous. It really does take your breath away as you stand before them....and that's an understatement.

We decided to drive down to Eze, and back again. It was a looong drive down, 12 hours I think maybe more, but saw some unforgettable towns, still riddled with bulletholes. Really glad we did the drive but once is all you need to do it.
The south of France was spectacular . Everything is pristine. I had a gut feeling of where I wanted to stay (in Eze) and I'm so glad I went with it because it was just perfect. I would love to go back every year. The south is like a completely different holiday, all of a sudden, you feel like you're on vacation on an island.
I know I'm a bit all over the map here, my apologies for being so incoherent, will fill in some more blanks tomorrow. ..