Like I mentioned in this post, one of the things that really helped us on our Europe trip was to purchase tickets ahead of time when we could.
When I visited Paris as part of a Europe trip in high school, we went on a nighttime cruise on the Seine River and it was absolutely amazing! The Eiffel Tower wow-ed us as we drifted by its twinkly, sparkly glory. That was a summer night I won’t soon forget!
Of course, with memories like that, I wanted to experience a river cruise on the Seine again this time around. So I bought us tickets ahead of time. We were pleased to discover that we could just show up with our ticket vouchers at any of the available cruise times that day and hop on board!
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Schedule-wise, on this recent trip we ended up choosing something like a 4 pm cruise. Not a super romantic time of day, but hey – we were in Paris and we got to ride a boat down the Seine River, so I’m not complaining! 🙂
While we were waiting to board the boat, I kept thinking about the bridge full of locks that we were right next to. Even though I’m not a superstitious person, I’ve always thought that the idea of locking our love away on that bridge was really sweet. Bjorn also thought we should quickly go do it, so he and I snuck away and bought a lock from one of the men selling locks on the bridge.
We got to write our names on our lock – “Bear & Bee” because of course, I’m “Bee”, and I may not have shared this much but I call Bjorn “Bear” about 99.9% of the time!!
Bjorn and I asked the man where the luckiest place was to lock our lock on the bridge, and he showed us a little side corner area facing some of the water.
We got little keys along with our lock which we threw into the water after a kiss! Gotta do all the romantic stuff sometimes! 😉 So that was a really sweet little memory for us.
The river cruise itself was beautiful.
It’s always fun to go on a leisurely boat ride, and the pace at which we were traveling really allowed us to soak in the sights our French tour guide was listing off – and we got to have that neat sneak peek into people’s lives as we watched them eat their lunch along the shore, meet up with a friend, or read a newspaper on a city bench.
Our cruise was only 11 Euros per person and it was totally worth it!
We got to see so many points of interest in Paris, and from a neat new vantage point!
I highly recommend a river cruise if you’re ever in Paris or other large city! I’m sure a cruise on the Thames in London would have been really fun as well!
Have you ever been on a river cruise? What was your favorite part about it? Do you like the idea of sightseeing from the water? (Okay, also – have any of you locked your love away on the bridge in Paris too??)
I did the BatoBus in Paris and loved it. It was a hop on-hop off boat cruise and was a great way to get to some of the must-see parts of town like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. And it was a great treat to relax in the boat after hours of walking around the Louvre that morning!