Waking up in the very early morning hours on a Saturday morning (say 5am) is not one of those things I’d choose to do very often – but given the option of going to Paris for the weekend is one small sacrifice I thought I could make this week. Luckily for me I managed to get a couple of cheap Eurostar tickets to head over to the lovely city of Paris for the weekend. It was a good test of travelling to a country whilst being vegetarian and successfully made too, though with some difficultly but more of that later.
Catching the Eurostar makes so much of a difference compared to going by plane since there is no lengthy trip to the airport and you arrive in the centre of the city both ends. Better yet you also get a lot more room and catching a snooze is relatively easy even in economy class.
Both days was packed with travelling to all the different sights that Paris has to offer. Fortunately the first Sunday of the month also means that all the museums in the city are open for free that also means that you get to enter all the museums much faster. On Sunday I managed to do a whirlwind tour of several of the museums including the Louvre, Museum D’Orsay, the Picasso Museum and the Rodin Museum. The Louvre is quite an exciting place to visit but is overshadowed by the large number of crowds drawn there for the Mona Lisa and the now popular Da Vinci Tour. I really enjoyed the Museum D’Orsay as well for its variety but the upper floors started to get really quite claustrophobic in the afternoon. My most favourite museum for the weekend was definitely the Rodin Museum – most of it is actually outside with a beautifully kept garden littered with a number of Rodin’s statues including the famous thinker. I think it seemed like a classic hang out spot for a lot of Parisians since I noticed a lot of people hanging around all the numerous benches and steps in the garden, reading their books at a leisurely pace.
Surprisingly I didn’t find it excessively difficult eating out in Paris as a proper vegetarian – I think it helped that my guide books pointed me to a couple of vegetarian restaurants. My of the diet for the weekend seemed to centre on pastries, egg, cheese and mushrooms. Unfortunately most of the French food was out since the focus seemed to be around lots of meat (chicken, duck, beef, fish, etc) and it was a shame since I was looking forward to some very nice French cuisine. I almost got tripped up on the way home by attempting to eat a spinach tart for dinner before heading home but quickly found out after a bite it contained bacon. Needless to say I ended up passing on it.
I really enjoyed my weekend in Paris – the public transport system is extremely efficient and affordable although it’s also a very pedestrian friendly city. The language barrier, though higher than I expected didn’t really end up being such a barrier, especially if you really tried to give French a good attempt. There are plenty of activities and areas to appease all types of travellers and I’ll definitely look forward to going back when I go off experimenting with vegetarianism.
Check out some photos from my weekend away here.
