Girls weekend in Paris: itinerary for 2 days of fun

What better way to spend some time with the girls than a weekend in Paris, France, right? That's what my friends and I thought too and so my friend Inne and I were tasked with putting together a weekend in Paris itinerary. Here's what we came up with.
 

 

Girls weekend in Paris: itinerary day 1

The Louvre

After we checked into our hotel on Saturday morning, we headed straight to the Musée du Louvre. We didn't want to go in because it's just so huge and we preferred spending our two days in Paris exploring the city to spending hours in a museum, but we did want to have seen the place.

The Louvre is a great place to start your Paris walking tour. It's impressive, huge, and such an icon that you'll immediately feel like: “We're in Paris!”.

If you do want to visit the Louvre, check out this skip-the-line timed entrance ticket. It guarantees entry within 30 minutes and comes highly recommended.

 

The Jardin des Tuileries

After the Louvre, we walked on to the Jardin des Tuileries. This is nice for a stroll, but I'm sure it's even prettier in spring when the flowers are in bloom.

 

Place de la Concorde

Exiting the Jardin the Tuileries on the other side, we walked onto the Place de la Concorde with the Obelisk… but also with crepes stands. When in Paris, you should have crepes, non? That's what I thought. And since I was hungry…

After the Place de La Concorde, we crossed the Seine to head to the Eiffel Tower. Here's a view on the river from the Pont de la Concorde:

It's possible to take a cruise on the Seine, including some crêpes tasting!
 

To the Eiffel Tower

We followed the Quai d'Orsay to get to the Eiffel Tower, but by that time it was already way past noon and since we'd all gotten up early, we were pretty hunger (Yes, even me after having had my pancake). We decided to leave the Quai and wander around a bit to find some food.

We ended up buying some things at a supermarket (thinking budget) and after having filled our bellies, we reached the Champs de Mars with the Eiffel Tower.
 

Oh, Champs Élysées – and the Arc de Triomphe

After having hugged some bear statues, we crossed the Seine again on the Pont d'Iéna. So here we are, on the Avenue de New York, passing the Trocadéro, towards the Avenue Montaigne.

This last street has lots of upper-class shops and it's almost like a neighborhood in itself. No wonder it's situated in the Triangle D'Or (‘Golden Triangle'). You can immediately spot who actually goes shopping there and who's just passing through.

No pictures here. I think we were all going “Wooow”, “Look at that” and “Damn those prices!”.

At the end of the Avenue Montaigne, we reached the Champs-Elysées.

We actually didn't do any shopping here – especially not at Abercrombie & Fitch where there was this huuuuuge waiting line -, neither did we take a lot of pictures because we were on a mission: we wanted – no, we needed – to find a MacDonald's.

I know, I know; you don't eat McDonald's in Paris… But when you want to be full and not pay that much, McDo is a good way to go. We ended up finding a Quick faster than a McDo (the McDo was about a 100 meters further up the Champs-Elysées…) and we were all happy to have a seat and enjoy a non-nutritious but oh so stuffing meal.

After our fries, burgers and chicken dips we walked to the Arc the Triomphe. It was really crowded there and since it was still quite foggy, non of us felt like going up. If you want to avoid being faced with long lines like we were, get a skip-the-line ticket beforehand.
 

Modern Paris: La Défense

You can see it was getting dark when we took the subway to La Défense. I'm so glad we went there in the evening because all of the buildings were lit up, which was quite spectacular.

But if you'd like to go during the day, I'm sure you'll find it amazing as well. Since it's a business area, I suppose it's much more alive during the day (and the week) than at night and in the weekends.

The only downside was that there was a Christmas market on Le Parvis which wasn't open yet. So not only couldn't we see the Christmas market, but it also spoiled the photo opportunities a bit.
 

Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge

From La Défense we took the subway to our last stop of the day: Montmartre. We got out at Place de Clichy and immediately saw the famous Moulin Rouge theater.

We didn't have tickets to catch a show there, but Kate from Adventurous Kate gives us a good idea of what a night at the Moulin Rouge looks like. If you want to experience the Moulin Rouge for yourself, you can get tickets here

We then walked uphill through Montmartre's little streets to get to the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. Walking there in the dark with all those lights made up for the large amount of tacky tourist shops in the area.

And that was it for our first day in Paris!

We left Montmartre to go back to our hotel and stopped on the way for some drinks. Although we were all very tired, we ended up in one room talking and talking until common sense told us we'd better get some sleep if we wanted to get up early the next morning. We still had a bunch of stuff on our things to do in Paris list!
 

A weekend in Paris: itinerary day 2

After a good night's rest for some and a lot of lying awake for others, we were ready for our second day in Paris. After having had breakfast, of course.

Île de la Cité

We took the subway to Île de la Cité where we wanted to see the Notre-Dame. To be honest, we were all a bit disappointed.

First of all, there was some kind of tribune set up on the square in front of the Notre-Dame because of which we didn't get a nice view of the building. Secondly, I remembered it as being so much bigger and impressive. I know that the Notre-Dame is a real icon and that a lot of people find it amazing, but for us it wasn't the architectural highlight of our trip.

After our little disappointment, we left Île de la Cité and crossed the Seine to the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Walking that Boulevard you pass La Sorbonne, the university; and the Palais du Luxembourg with its museum and garden.

I'd expected more from la Sorbonne because I didn't know that it's a bit tucked away behind other buildings, but I really like the garden of the Palais du Luxembourg. My friends didn't find it that impressive so we didn't stay that long, but if I ever get back there, I'd like to take a walk around the big fountain.

From the green garden, we walked to the stone neoclassical Pantheon, a mausoleum that holds the remains of Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Voltaire and many other famous Parisiens.

 

Place de la Bastille and Place des Vosges

After we'd seen the Pantheon we walked towards the Jussieu subway station to take the subway to Place de la Bastille with the Opera Bastille. We didn't take any pictures there because it was very crowded, raining again and there were some works going on around the square.

From the Place de la Bastille we took the Rue Saint-Antoine to get to the Place des Vosges. I'd read a lot about this square and it was pretty nice indeed, although I think I'd like it better in summer, when you can sit on one of the benches and do some people watching.
 

Centre Pompidou

We crossed the Place des Vosges to get to the Rue des Francs Bourgeois. This is a rather small street with lots of boutiques and other shops. If you follow this street all the way until the end (which we did after making a little detour to get lunch) you'll see the Centre Pompidou right in front of you.
 

And that's where our tour ended! I'm a bit ashamed to say that this was the fourth time I'd been to Paris and I still haven't seen the Centre Pompidou on the inside. This would've been a great opportunity for that, but I could tell I'd worn my friends out by dragging them from one sight to the other and we also didn't want to get back home too late since some of us had work the next morning.

Thus, we decided to take the subway back to Place de la République, pick up our stuff at our hotel (we'd already checked out in the morning) and our cars at the parking lot and go home.

I can honestly say this trip to Paris for the weekend was a success. Five girls on a city trip without even the slightest argument. We kicked ass!

I'm hoping our itinerary gives you a better idea of what to do in Paris in 2 days.
 

Also read: Rock en Seine, a must-visit festival in Paris.
 

Where to stay in Paris

Where we stayed

When we originally planned our girls weekend to Paris there would be six of us going, so I looked on Booking.com for a hotel where we could all stay within a certain budget.

Based on location, price and extras République Hotel seemed like a great choice. We booked two rooms of three for €135 a night + €0,78 city tax per person. Later it turned out that one girl couldn't come along anymore and we had no problem changing our reservation to one room of three and one of two (at €95 a night).

Once we got there, we knew we'd chosen the right hotel. Personnel was friendly, the rooms were clean and not that small (I'd read about rooms in Paris always being tiny) and we had a decent bathroom.

We also had a small balcony which actually gave us a nice view on the street below, since the big room was located on the fifth floor.

The two-person room was also pretty nice, with cartoons on the wall.

Oh and maybe one other negative point: when we came back to the hotel on Saturday night we asked for Wi-Fi access. Turned out each room had a different code to use the (free) Wi-Fi, but only one of us got it to work. Maybe you can only use it one person/room at a time. We didn't really bother finding out because we didn't really need to get online anyway.
 

Hotel parking

On the hotel's site it says there's a private parking lot located a five-minute walk away, and there was. Since we didn't know beforehand what parking lot we had to park in, we first drove to the hotel and asked the guy at the reception. He gave us the address to enter in our GPS and a couple of minutes later we found our cars' hotel.

The normal price to leave your car there is €24/day, but as guests of Hotel République we got a discount and only paid €38/car for two days (you have to get a stamp from the hotel on your parking lot receipt).

I think this is a really good place to park in a city like Paris. The only thing we found a bit weird was that we had to leave our car keys with the garage owner, but the people at the reception of our hotel assured us this was normal. Nothing was stolen, nor were there any cars scratched, so I would recommend this private parking to anyone staying in the neighborhood.
 

And that's it! I hope our itinerary will help you plan your future Paris weekend trip. Let me know if you decide to use visit any of the places mentioned here!
 

A more luxurious option

If you prefer to have your own space in Paris and are looking for something a bit more upscale, check out Plum Guide. This platform only offers vacation homes and apartments that answer to the strictest quality criteria.
 

Don't forget travel insurance

Plan for the best, prepare for the worst. Travel insurance has you covered in case (part of) your trip gets canceled, you get sick or hurt abroad, and sometimes even when your electronics break or get stolen. I always make sure I'm covered every trip I go on.

Don't have travel insurance yet? Check out SafetyWing. They offer super flexible plans that you can even sign up for while you're already on your trip. On top of that, they were the first travel insurance to cover COVID, and when I got COVID, they reimbursed all of my expenses without making a fuss. Their customer support team is great and I can personally recommend them.
 

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