Food is relatively expensive in Paris, but since I was on a holiday, I had to eat out sometimes though I really preferred to eat at home. I'm not much of a cook but Sab is. Since you'll be expecting to spend between SGD$60 onwards for a meal, it'll be better to know which restaurants to avoid. I didn't eat at many but these 2 really top the list of Never Again...

1) La Duree

It's a popular restaurant I know. I went to the branch near Concorde. The Macarons at this place is really quite good but besides that, food is average and the service was really bad. Rude and impatient service staff who sat 3 of us on a tiny table to have lunch while others had 1 table to themselves just to have tea, and the waitress couldn't explain the menu and order taking properly and we had to pay an additional e10.00 for the mistake in order taking. Not to mention she was close to raising her voice at us when we tried to explain our orders. Worst experience ever.

2) Le Jardin Du Roy

We went to this alley near to the Notre Dame Cathedral one day to grab some kebab, for some reason we ended up in this restaurant. The owner was fun and friendly. He greeted us on the streets and said they served authentic French food and so we decided to give it a shot. French food tasted like supermarket instant food. The steak, the chicken (or was it duck) leg, escargot all tasted like instant food that was badly done, the wine tasted like it was mixed with water. It was really really bad. I think we helped trick the next few customers (there were none before us). If you are walking by the areas outside Notre Dame, especially where you see a lot of Greek food (kebab), take note there's a friendly French man waiting to trick the next customer into his restaurant.

Saving tip: Order a 3 course set meal and share it with a friend. If all else fails, there's always free flow of baguette with every main course.

The first Sunday of every month is Museum day in Paris. That means you get to go into any Museum for free! I was at the Louvre on the first Museum day of 2010. Only problem is that you (by that I mean I) can probably only last about half a day with endless paintings of long long ago. They are beautiful but a little too tiring to go on and on.

Pack some sandwichs, chocolate bars and beverages, the queue for food in the Louvre can get quite long. Find a quiet corner (there is a seating area near the cloakroom, it's a nice spot to eat without too many people walking around you) to take a break when you are done viewing the endless paintings.

The other museum that I highly recommend is Museum D'orsay. It's along Line C at station Musee D'Orsay.

That night we went to the Eiffel Tower. How much do Souvenirs really cost?

Saving tip: If you can't see all the Museums in Paris on the free Sunday and cannot afford to stay a month. There's a ticket for "students" or a younger age group sometimes below 24 or below 26. Ask when in doubt.

Note: I don't think the french guy behind the counter can really tell what age Asians are, and we can look really young to them because of the relative build. And who goes sightseeing with his/her passport or student ID or any ID for that matter anyway. ;)

Arriving at Charles De Gaulle Airport, first thing was to catch the train to the city. Cabs are really expensive and if you are planning on using a taxi then this is probably not the guide for you. Trains from the airport cost e8.50 (there's a cheaper way to get back which I'll explain later). You'll probably have to pay this e8.50 and you can ask for directions at the information counter in English, probably the last time you will be able to do that, the other stations are not so English-friendly once you leave the airport. Get a Metro map and a City map at the information counter while you are at it. The automatic payment machines will all be in French, you can try to figure it out but risk buying the wrong ticket.

Here's when the fun begins. The Paris metro is made up of many lines. To change between lines you will need to look for stations where the lines intersect. Let's use an example starting from the airport and getting to Gare de Lyon

1) You will take line B (the only line) towards Orly.

2) Get off at Chatelet Les Halles and change to line A towards Gare de Lyon/Nation or line D towards Gare de Lyon or line 14. You can only pick 1 of the 3 lines as the platforms are a long distance from each other. From experience line B and line A towards Gare de Lyon are just next to each other, so just get off the train and walk across the platform.

Take note of the direction that the train is travelling towards. Trains with the same number may not always be on opposing platforms. For example Line A at Chatelet Les Halles towards Gare de Lyon is NOT facing Line A towards La Defense.

The naming of the stations may vary slightly from the map. Gare means station in French, Gare du Nord is also referred to as Paris Nord. Tickets are per entry no matter the distance, so if you are traveling between 2 really near Metro stops, you might want to refer to the City Map and take a short walk instead. That also means if you are lost in the city, it doesn't matter which Metro station you get to just ask for directions to the nearest Metro station it'll cost you the same amount to get to your next destination.

Saving Tip:

1) You can buy a set of 10 tickets for the Metro for about e11.00. This ticket will also get you back to the airport. For some reason if you ask the guy at the information counter, he will tell you to buy a e8.50 ticket to go to the airport.

2) If the entry gate to the station is open, dun bother inserting your ticket just walk right in, you've just saved a ticket for the next trip.

3) Try and reuse your tickets from the same day. Sometimes they work!

Note: The train stations in Paris are really old and the system is kindof faulty or has loop holes. I've once seen about 10 students put 1 ticket into the handicap entry gate and all of them got right in, and of course 2-3 persons walk through the normal gates while it is still open. You can do that at your own risk (of the door slamming on you), but it's a common sight.

Next we'll be visiting the museums.

Right up to 2 weeks before my trip, I still couldn't confirm my flight. Mostly because flights were really expensive during the december season, and I couldn't be sure if I could take leave to go for that long a duration (which I eventually confirmed by resigning from the dumbass company that I was working for. No regrets. Ungrateful lot.). After I resigned, I booked myself for a 3 days church camp to Malacca and I wanted to waste no time in getting there(to Paris) after coming back. Finally I managed to book a ticket on Qatar Airways for slightly less than SGD$1,500, but I had to make a 8 hour transit at Doha (which I made full use of). It was probably the best deal at that time and here's how I did it.

It'll be crazy to check every single airline I knew for a flight before deciding. All I needed was a good local agent and a good international aggregate site to narrow my choices. Logged onto www.airfares.sg and Zuji to find the cheapest flights +/- 3 days from the date that I wanted to leave Singapore for Paris. It helps if you can allow a +/- 3 days, sometimes the flight just the next day coulde be more than 20% cheaper and that's about $200 on a $1,000 ticket.

The results showed on both sites that Emirates had the best deal around $1,500-1,700 depending on how long you were willing to transit at Dubai. This was followed by Qatar Airways at $1,800 and a couple of others like Air France which were pretty close in pricing as well.After I've short listed about 3-4 airlines between the 2 sites, I went direct to the airlines to check the prices for a +/- 3 days as well. That's when I found that if I booked direct from the Qatar Airways site, I could book a flight for less than $1,500 but I had to wait 8 hours in Doha on the way to Paris (this option wasn't available on Airfares.sg or Zuji.). I didn't have a problem with that because I had to go to the bank to close my account which had been there since I left Doha 2 years ago. Booked the ticket. Saved a trip to Doha to close my account and got the cheapest available flight to Paris.

Saving tip: Use aggregators and agents to narrow down about 4-5 airlines that are flying to your destination. Then go to the airline's main website to check for other variations of transits and transfer, you might find a better deal there (or plan for a "additional" short trip on your transit destination.) otherwise, just go back to the original aggregate site and book the tickets there. Air tickets get more and more expensive as you approach the departure dates so it's always wise to book early.

Note: So sites do allow you to reserve tickets without paying for them first. Don't feel bad about booking first and cancelling later. e.g. Airfrance allows you up to 3 days to pay for your ticket. But if you don't, they will just give up your ticket.

Next up... Arriving in Paris and saving(cheating) on the Metro.