The last day of my long weekend birthday family trip to Paris, I planned to visit places that I didn’t get to visit on my last Paris trip. First, we purchased the one day Mobilis ticket for unlimited travel in central Paris for €7.50 per person, what a good deal and so convenient to use. The first stop was Trocadero for one of the best views of the Eiffel Tower, you probably see a lot of photos in Instagram taken from here. There were quite a few people there despite the early and foggy morning including a local couple having their engagement session.

Afterward, we walked to Bir-Hakeim Bridge aka the Inception Bridge along the Seine riverbank. There were some foliage on both sides of the river but too bad no sun to bright out the colors.

We walked to near the Eiffel Tower to search for breakfast place that opens in the early morning and found ELV. We knew restaurants around the Eiffel Tower are more expensive but we don’t want to waste time to detour so ended up a breakfast for 5 of us for $103. The food was below average sigh and the service was very, very slow!

We hopped on the train to Arc de Triomphe, we had been there before but my family wanted to see it as it’s one of the Paris must see sight. Standing in the middle of traffic in that little space is always scary!

Since we were at the famous Champs-Élysées, it was time to do some shopping including a visit to the famous Louis Vuitton store (checking it out for my brother’s friend who is a LV-addict, seriously).

On the way to Pont Alexandre III, we walked through Monument à Lafayette which was surrounded by foliage! We missed the foliage in New England due to our busy wedding photography schedule so it was nice to see foliage in Paris.

The beautiful Pont Alexandre III!

We did more shopping at Lafayette and then my mom got tired so my brother brought her back to the hotel to rest while we continued our hunt for Jason’s stamps. I got a Paris Disney themed stamp set from the post office and we found a stationary shop – Le Carre d’Encre that has a good collection of stamps.

Mission completed, we walked back to the hotel to take a break before heading out for dinner at Vin et Marée – Suffren that I made a reservation via The Folk at 7 pm for 50% off the menu. Vin et Marée is a seafood chain that has many restaurants in Paris and I picked the one at Suffren which is the closest to the Eiffel Tower so after dinner we can take night photos.

The food was unbelievably good especially the oyster and the crab. Jason ordered an oyster sampler and he said those oysters were better than the ones he had in The Reminet. Therefore, the best oysters he ever had is now at Vin et Marée!

I didn’t get a close up pic of the crab with my DSLR but it was filled with eggs….literally, the eggs covered half of the crab, I have never seen a crab with so much eggs! It was so good that my mom wanted to order a whole crab to bring back to the hotel LOL. Unfortunately, when we wanted to order a second one, it’s already sold out…awww.

For the main course, most of us ordered lobster and steak which were excellent as well.

For dessert, my mom and I had the souffle Grand Marnier which were freshly made. I ate till I reached the alcohol part and stopped since I can’t take any alcohol. The souffle was very fluffy, yum!

My family all agreed that it was the best meal of this trip and cost $206 for 5 of us with all those seafood at 50% off. After dinner…almost 9:45 PM, we walked to the Eiffel Tower for night photos. It was so quiet at night during the off-season.

We waited till the sparking light at each of the hour…10 PM.

We got on the last bus of the bus near the Eiffel Tower to Louvre…that was how late we stayed. Louvre at almost 11 PM, a handful of people were there. I finally get to see Louvre at night! On our last trip, we planned to go there at night on our last day but it rained so it has been a “regret” that I didn’t get to take night photos of it. Now fulfilled 🙂

We took the train back to Opera and snapped a photo before walking back to our hotel. It was quite a long day and we made a good use of the unlimited one-day train pass. When we got back to our hotel, I went to the concierge to book a taxi to the airport tomorrow since the 5 of us made it hard to get a van taxi off the street. It cost extra €7 for advance booking though. Our flight the next day was at 12:35 PM so we get to sleep late. The re-booking with WOW Air was valid so we made it home without issue, phew!

The long weekend trip to Paris was…..hum….have goods and bads but I was glad to show my mom Paris-Europe; nope, it didn’t change her mind that travel is wasting money though! We had our first (probably the last LOL) family trip and took many photos that will be in our memory forever.