As you probably already know, I took a trip to Paris last month. As this is my third trip to the French capital in 18 months, I’ve gotten to know the city quite well but I always have a list of places that I still need to visit.

After catching a very early Eurostar, we arrived into Paris at around 11am and headed straight to our home for the next four days which was the St Christopher’s Inn Canal hostel. I stayed here with Amy in 2013 and loved it, so when I saw that private twin rooms were selling for £8 a night I booked it up straight away! We still had a while before we could check in so we had lunch in the bar and enjoyed the view of the canal. At 2pm, we checked into our rooms, got changed into something a bit more weather appropriate (it was so hot!) and left to explore!

Our first stop was the Champs Elysees where we did a bit of shopping for some hot weather essentials (a light cardigan and Caudalie Beauty Elixir for me), had iced coffee in the sunshine and watched the daily ritual at the tomb of the unknown soldier underneath the Arc de Triomphe which takes place at 6:30pm each evening.

We then hopped on the metro and went over to the Eiffel Tower. I was lucky enough to be able to book us tickets to go up to the summit at 7:30 – there were no other times available but I thought that this would be perfect as we would get to take in the views of Paris as we go up and then we could hang around and watch the sunset from the top. I wasn’t wrong, 7:30 was the best time we could have gone up the tower (I’ve been up at 10am and 1pm on my last two visits) watching the sun setting over Paris was just breathtaking it was such a magical experience, one that I will never forget. There was a whole bunch of people crowded on the West side of the tower trying to get a glimpse.

After taking some obligatory photos outside the Eiffel Tower we listened to our rumbling tummies and wandered off to find some grub. We decided to try the first little bistro we came across which was Le Castel where I had an open sandwich with ham and goats cheese and chips. We didn’t realise that this was actually right under the Eiffel Tower until we left and crossed over the road!

We were all exhausted so we went back to the hostel but not before experiencing a bit of sexual harassment on the RER (nowhere is safe!) although I’ll save that for another post.