Interrail Day 1 - Paris

This morning, I left home at 7am to catch the train for Paris! This first day in Paris wasn’t originally intended, but both other trains I could’ve taken were fully booked by the time I booked mine (2 weeks ahead). Our train for Milan was at 2.46pm.

I took advantage of this long layover to wander around and explore Paris a bit.

My train came into Paris Montparnasse at 9.46am, and had 5 hours ahead of me before I needed to catch the train for Milan.

I went straight away to Gare de Lyon, where our train for Milan was going to leave from, to drop my big bag off in a locker. This cost me 5.50€ but it saved me having to carry around a massive backpack for 5 hours through Paris.

This amount of time allowed me to walk through the streets of Paris and see a couple of famous places.

I like wandering around without following a precise path because I get to see the more “real“ side of Paris, and walk through places I never would’ve been to otherwise.

At one point I ended up on the town hall place. The town hall had some sort of Olympic games decorations, ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics. I stayed there for a bit to watch people go by.

It’s not the best picture but it was really hard to take properly in this lighting

After that I ended up on the Pont d’Arcole, a bridge that goes to the Île de la Cité, the island where Notre Dame cathedral is.

On this bridge I stopped to take a picture, and two people came up to me to ask me to take a picture of them. It was a film camera, and a proper one, not one of those disposable ones.

They were a very nice Dutch couple on holiday in Amiens, spending a day in Paris.

I then walked past the Notre Dame cathedral - still under reconstruction since the fire in 2019 - before going to the Gare du Nord to meet Arno out of his train from Antwerp.

We then went straight to Gare de Lyon, got my rucksack from the locker and boarded the train for Milan!

The journey went very smoothly, we arrived in Milan right on time, and caught a metro to YellowSquare hostel.

Even though we haven’t experienced it much yet, I can already safely say it’s amazing! The decoration is very lively, they offer activities every evening, the hostel bar is open until 2am - with a free beer voucher gifted on arrival -, the rooms are very comfy and clean, everything is good quality, and the list goes on!

And this wraps it up for today! We haven’t decided what we’re going to do tomorrow, but probably some exploring Milan :)