7 Hours in Paris, France | Notes from the Archive
the final city of my 2012 inter-railing trip!
*SHARED TO THE BLOG IN DECEMBER 2025.
ARCHIVE / aar•kive / (noun): a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.
Welcome to a new Notes from the Archive post, a series in which I am sharing some of my old & well documented travel notes to the blog. I’ve been keeping detailed notes and journals from my travels abroad long before I ever started sharing that content to this little corner of the internet. For some reason, it only dawned on me recently that, although not as thorough as my note-taking and journaling of today, this information could a. be useful to someone out there planning a trip, b. offer a glimpse into my travel days of yore, or c. just be fun for me to relive briefly under the pretense of being useful — so I figured why not share them here!
If you have stumbled across this post on a deep-dive through the blog archives, hello! I have done my darndest to make sure every piece of information shared here is just as relevant today as it was the day it was scrawled in my journal. I would also like to take a moment here to apologise in advance for any poor-quality photographs. You have been warned.
Today’s Notes from the Archive post — 7 Hours in Paris, France — covers everything myself and my then-boyfriend got up to in the tenth city of our 2012 inter-railing trip. We visited Paris on a crazy epic daytrip from Munich to meet up with my ex-partner who was spending the summer learning French in the city. The whole trip was a total whirlwind — we literally spent the same amount of time journey-ing into and out of the city as we did IN the city — but if you can’t do these things when you’re young then when can you?!
Listed below is all the useful information I could garner from my trusty old journal, divided into the following two categories: getting there and where we touristed.
Enjoy, friends!
getting there
Here’s how we made the journey to Paris:
from Munich central station, München Hauptbahnhof, we took the first train of the morning to Mannheim central station, Mannheim Hauptbahnhof. The journey time between the two cities was about 3-hours.
after a brief run through Mannheim Hauptbahnhof, we then boarded our next train to Paris’s Gare de l’Est station. Similar to the above, this journey took just over 3-hours.
7 hours later, when we needed to head back to Munich, here’s how we made the journey:
from Paris’s Gare de l’Est station, we took a train directly to Stuttgart’s central station, Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof. This journey took close to 4-hours.
from Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, we had a miniscule 7-minute window to run to our next train, which ferried us all the way back to München Hauptbahnhof in about 2-hours and 30-minutes.
if you’re counting along with me, this epic journey to Paris from Munich and back again was the seventh official use of our inter-railing tickets, which allowed us to travel on any 7-days within a 1-month period. Because the first train of our day set out within the same 24-hours as the last train of our day — 3:25am and 9:12pm, respectively — every train we took was covered under the final remaining day on our ticket. For more info on the different inter-railing tickets, see the official website here, which hopefully explains all this better than I do.
where we touristed
Walk of the Century, Paris Edition // for the last WOTC of our inter-railing trip, we decided to leave it up to the professionals and join a SANDEMANs free walking tour. This one started on the Île de la Cité, ended at Esplanade des Invalides, and took a route about 4.5-kilometres through the city. Here’s what we saw:
Île de la Cité // one of two natural islands along the Seine.
Pont Neuf // aka: New Bridge — but actually the oldest standing bridge across the river.
Pont des Arts // aka: the bridge that leads to the Louvre. One of the more photogenic bridges in the city.
Louvre Museum // does this even need an explanation?
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel // essentially: a mini Arc de Triomphe.
Statue of Joan of Arc Paris // okay, this wasn’t an official stop — but I studied it in art history and got extremely excited when I saw it.
Tuileries Garden // the pretty gardens in front of the Louvre.
Place de la Concorde // pretty square with an Egyptian obelisk in the centre.
Champs Elysees // the huge avenue that leads up to the Arc de Triomphe with the Eternal Flame.
Grand Palais & Petit Palais // two museums, both built for the 1900 Universal Exposition.
Pont Alexandre III // we really only stopped on this bridge so the guide could tell us about the Eiffel Tower, which we could see perfectly.
Esplanade des Invalides // a nice park where we sat at the end of the tour to hear a little about how Paris survived during the war.
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise // aka: Père Lachaise Cemetery, the most visited cemetery in the world! Listen, I don’t know what it is, but I just love wandering around a nice European cemetery, and Père Lachaise was no different. All winding little paths, uneven cobblestones, grave upon grave cluttered up everywhere, graves with sculptures, etc. It was lovely! A must visit. Address: 75020 Paris
And there we have it: 7 Hours in Paris, France! I hope you enjoyed this short-yet-sweet addition to my Notes from the Archive series — the final one from my 2012 inter-railing trip!
My love to you,
Vicki xo
*Date of trip: 5th June, 2012*
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