Paris 2011 Day 3 – Palace of Versailles and flight to Rome

We planned a visit to the Palace of Versailles before our flight out to Rome. Versailles was a 40minutes metro ride away from our accommodation and the tickets could be purchased online, costing us 36euros for 2.

There were many of such rooms with huge painted ceilings and the walls decorated with huge paintings.
It was quite crowded

Our flight to Rome Ciampino airport was on Ryanair at 920pm at night taking off from the Paris Beauvais airport. There was a shuttle service that takes passenger from Porte Maillot to the airport so we took the metro there from our accommodation. We took a while to find the pick up location but managed to do so eventually. The ride to the airport was about an 1hr 15mins.

Waiting to board in the Paris Beauvais airport.

Paris 2011 Day 1/2 – Arrival in London and onwards to Paris, Sainte Chapelle and Paris city walk

Day 1
This was the first time we were on the Airbus A380 and we were drawn to the really huge screen in front of us! First impressions of the plane was good already!

Day 2 Arrived into Paris after the 2.5hrs on Eurostar from London. Immediately after depositing our luggage at our hotel, we took the metro to the Montparnasse for our train ride that we have booked online to Mont Saint Michel. Upon arrival at the station with 15mins left, we tried to retrieve our train tickets from the self service machine and was unable to retrieve our tickets (later we found out that the machine does not accept retrieval for bookings by AMEX and we should have gone to the customer service instead. We also couldn’t get it refunded by TGV)! By then we were late for our train and there wasn’t any more schedule to Mont Saint Michel already.

Since a day was created because the day trip was cancelled as we missed the train, we thought we would just spend the day in Paris for some attraction visits and shopping!

Escape Plan to Europe, May 2005

A brief summary on the itinerary

Escape Plan to Europe, May 2005:

Total duration 27D26N
London is 7hr behind Singapore while the rest of Europe is 6hrs behind Singapore.
Flight time is 7hrs 25mins on Emirates Airlines from Singapore to Dubai for transfer. Flight time is 7hrs 35mins on Emirate Airlines from Dubai to London Gatwick International Airport.
Flight time is 2hrs 25mins on EasyJet Airlines from London Gatwick to Rome Flumicino.
Return flight is 6hrs 30mins on Emirates Airlines from Paris to Dubai for transfer. Flight time is 7hrs 10mins on Emirates Airlines from Dubai to Singapore.

Early morning flight on 23rd May at 325am and arrival in Dubai in the same morning at 655am. Transfer to another flight in the same morning at 8am and arrive in London at 1235pm on the same day.
Afternoon flight on the 13th Jun at 505pm and arrival in Rome at 830pm.
Return flight from Paris on the 17th Jun at 950pm and arrival in Dubai at 620am the next morning, transfer to another flight in the same morning at 945am and arrive in Singapore 855pm.

Day 1 Arrival into London, exploring London
Day 2 Salisbury and Stonehenge tour
Day 3 Tower Bridge 
Day 4 Brussels 
Day 5 Amsterdam
Day 6 Sankt Goar and Heidelberg
Day 7 Lucern and Lauterbrunnen
Day 8 Jungfrau visit
Day 9 Liechtenstein and Munich 
Day 10 Dachau Concentration Camp and Innsbruck
Day 11 Verona
Day 12 Venice
Day 13 Florence
Day 14 Pisa and Monaco
Day 15 Nice and Cannes
Day 16 Barcelona
Day 17 Barcelona
Day 18 Carcassonne and Bordeaux
Day 19 Paris
Day 20 Paris
Day 21 Paris
Day 22 London
Day 23 Rome
Day 24 Rome and Vatican City
Day 25 Milan
Day 26/27 Home Sweet Home

This escape plan was planned our graduation trip which started off the whole wanderlust. We decided on an almost month long trip with a first visit to Europe. As we were really tight on budget, being recently graduated, we thought it would be great to do a bus tour around Europe with Contiki tour (Day 4 till Day 21), which offered more places to see without breaking the bank! And they say the rest was history.

Budget nature: Not cheap

It was not cheap to go to Europe during times when Euros were almost twice our currency. We managed to get good flight prices through Emirates and we tried to save up on accommodation living in hostels and eating bread for quite some days in order not to spend too much.

Complexity: Easy

Major European cities were very well connected by public transport which we used to get around while exploring. The major part of getting from city to city was taken care by the coach. Domestic flights and interstate trains were easy to arrange as well.