Paris in a pandemic

After getting through half of the most unpredictable year that 2020 has been, once the government finally gave the thumbs up to travel outside of the UK, that’s exactly what me and my boyfriend did.

Everything is not back to normal yet at all, but it still feels like we have come a long way from when I think about the quarantine days when the whole country was only allowed to leave their houses once a day for essential reasons. In the past few weeks I have seen a few friends at the pub, started going to the gym again, been to the hairdressers and had my first holiday outside the UK since all of this started. Its nice to fall back into a bit of normality.

Me and my boyfriend decided we wanted to go to Barcelona originally, so we booked the getaway 2 weeks in advance. A few days after booking it all the government announced that anyone returning from Spain or any Spanish island now has to quarantine for 2 weeks when they get back. This obviously wasn’t ideal, especially as I don’t get paid for time off which hasn’t been requested and approved weeks in advance. I’m also still financially recovering from lock-down, so we had to come up with a new plan.

Instead of just cancelling and going another time we decided to go somewhere else last minute. Paris was on both mine and my boyfriends list of places we wanted to go and there was no restrictions on going to France so it was not a difficult decision. By no means were we settling on going to Paris either, we were just as (maybe more) excited.

I was slightly concerned about traveling in times like these but that was quickly overpowered by my excitement. It’s obviously understandable all the social distancing measures which are put into place at the airport and while we are waiting to get onto the plane, however this was all contradicted when we got onto the plane and are all shoved together like sardines. Very strange times.

The flight was fine and only 1 hour, so we got to Paris quicker than I get home from work sometimes. For some reason I get more anxious flying over the water than I do land, not sure why as there’s no logic to it. Then it was just a 30 minute Uber ride to the hotel. We arrived at 11 pm which was nice as we got to see the Eiffel Tower lit up and Paris was beautiful at night. It was a warm evening too so felt like we were far from England and far from English weather.

We didn’t exactly get up early to seize the day in the morning, instead we slept in and woke up naturally around 10 feeling the most well rested I had for about 2 weeks. In fact every night throughout the 4 days I slept for 9+hours. We had a few drinks every day, not getting drunk but definitely a little tipsy. On a morning we went into the local supermarket and picked up some to-go coffees and a brioche and walked 5 minutes down the road to the Eiffel Tower to sit on a bench and have breakfast. It was dreamy.

We did a good amount of walking on our first day, a little too much for my feet in some new Primark sandals, they were not in a good way by the end of day one. A few drinks numbed the pain while we were out but I stuck to my vans for the rest of the weekend.

We did all the touristy things throughout the weekend, finishing our time in Paris by going all the way up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Wearing masks was compulsory which was not a problem. By the time we got to the top the sun was setting on Paris and it was beautiful, perfect end to a lovely getaway. I didn’t realise how big Paris actually is, there is so much to do and places to explore. As we were walking around it was hard to imagine what Paris looked like during lock-down as it was such a lively city. I would definitely go again for a longer amount of time.

4 days in Paris was amazing and regardless of the measures me and my boyfriend still had the best time. When we got back the only main difference was that we were wearing face masks in half of our pictures, luckily I managed to pick up some pretty ones before we went. We did everything that we wanted to do as shops, bars and restaurants were all open.

Hopefully its not going to be long until our next holiday.