Travel Journal

Paris & Versailles, France

30 July 2019

Well, we made it! I know some of you are thinking, “finally!” and trust us, so are we! Our nine hour flight out of Denver was amazingly rough as we got hardly any sleep. But we DID IT! Some people thought we would never go and others called us crazy for wanting to live in a van (in a foreign country) for four months. This took us over a year in planning, saving, and prepping! After we landed, we made our way through customs without any problems. Ben had done so well prepping all the possible paperwork. For example, we thought we might need things like bank statements, itineraries, and international drivers licenses; but it turns out, we didn’t need any of that. We had heard horror stories of people getting deported or being detained for wanting to stay so long without a visa, so we just wanted to play it safe. We may still need it all in other countries so we’ll see.

As we navigated our way through the airport, we said “Bonjour!” and “Merci!”, because that is the only French we know. We had some trouble finding the rental car place and had to go to a nearby hotel to call. This was our first moment of slight panic and frustration. But the woman there spoke English and called us a shuttle. We got to our car and everything went smoothly as we had done all that ahead of time (we will talk more about our prep in another post, but please let us know if you have questions). 

This was it! We had our car and we were free to explore! But it took some stressful moments and some terrifying realizations before we started to feel comfortable. First of all, if you have never driven in Europe and are planning a trip, you may want to take some big deep breaths and say a little prayer because WOW. 

TIP: People don’t move for automobiles, no matter how close they get or how fast they’re moving. All the road signs are different and oh, don’t turn right on red!

But we eventually found a parking space (which is like finding a needle in a haystack) and walked uphill to Sacré-Cœur. Sacré-Cœur or, The Basilica of the Scared Heart of Paris, definitely makes your eyes go wide. This tall church sits atop a hill overlooking the massive city of Paris. You can literally see miles and miles of the cramped buildings and small city streets. The area was filled with tourists and there were venders selling trinkets as well as locals offering to paint a picture of you. 

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We miraculously found our way back to the car and started on the journey of finding a gas station. Our navigation system in the car did not help much, so we used our mobile hotspot to find directions (we use Skyroam, which we can explain better too if you’d like). We soon realized that we had struggled finding gas because some of the stations are underground! We followed the signs to a station below the streets and “people watched” to understand the process. A man helped us by telling us we could pump the gas and then pay inside- they don’t have “pay at the pump”.

After our journey through the city, things calmed down a bit as we made our way to The Palace of Versailles. By the time we got there, it was closed for tours, but we were still able to enter the front gate and admire the gold plated fencing and the beautiful architecture. They checked our bags as we went in and the woman told Ben she’d be watching him closely because he was carrying his drone. He promised not to fly it and we trekked up the cobblestone walkway to admire the huge mural. The city was lovely with less people and traffic. But we still had to pay for parking. 

That night, we found a quiet spot to park near a playground and public restroom. IKEA had helped us find a mattress and some blankets for the night, but privacy was much appreciated as we didn’t have a ton of coverage for the van yet. 

In the future, we’re expecting these posts to be shorter and more informative…. with more pictures too! But it has taken us awhile to get our footing and figure out how we want to travel, update, and journal/blog.

Ben & Syd