Mimi Nguyen | The Blog

viva la france! paris was our second destination on our european adventure!

and what an adventure it was to get there! our flight got delayed for over 6 hours so we were stuck at the airport for more than 8 hours and we were up for over 24 hours by the time we arrived at the apt in paris. the thing that really sucked was our flight was the only flight delayed because of a strike. LAME.

we stayed in the 3rd arrondissement, le marais, with an’s [bff’s hubby] good friend, thomas millet, who is an amazing photographer. they were so kind to host us during our 2 week stay in paris for the bff’s wedding at the domaine de la butte ronde in la boissiere-ecole, france [countryside of paris].

my friend and i had a couple days before the wedding festivities so we did another bike tour! we chose to do the paris night tour since the tour includes a cruise along the seine with complimentary wine. watching the eiffel tower light up while sipping on wine and cruising down the seine was seriously…magical! [i know it’s so cliché but it really was!]

what made paris so fun was having friends around who flew in for the wedding. the bff’s sisters and i planned a girl’s day out/bridal shower and rented bikes at the velib stations. we had an amazing brunch, rode around the city and lastly went to a hammam at the paris mosque. the hammam was an unique experience and we will definitely never forget it.

the wedding was ahhhh-mazing and one of the best ones i’ve ever attended. we danced until the wee hours in the morning and stayed at the ranch for 3 days…1st to prep for the wedding and lastly to enjoy the ranch amenities with motorcross, horseback riding, soccer, etc.

the rest of our stay in paris was great! we did a lot of shopping since it was the biannual summer sale. we also hit up the usual spots: the louvre, the pompidou, montmartre, champs elysees, arc de triomphe, notre dame and of course versailles. the bf and i felt like locals by the time we left paris so on our last night, we decided to go to the cinema [as the french would say] to watch ‘inception’. there were two theaters that were nearby, one was showing with subtitles and the other was dubbed. we got lost since we couldn’t find the street so I asked a local and she pointed us to an underground theater…no wonder we couldn’t find it! we got there just in time but it was packed so we had to sit an aisle away from each other and luckily it was the theater with subtitles. =)

here’s a glimpse from our paris trip:

this was our stop during our stay in la marais
the seine during the day…and at nightthe famous laduree macaronson top of the pompidougorgeous gardens at versaillesthe louvrethe mona lisasacre coeur in montmartreour gracious host, camille…our friend, alain, showing us around paris’ chinatowngetting some gelato in front of galeries lafayette next to uniqlothe BEST pistachio gelato i’ve ever hadbansky in paris! love really is the answer =)montmartre

note: some of the photos were taken with our leica. =)

bisous.