My Day Trip to Paris Yielded a Popular Photo on Google

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This is theInTersectionof, and this is your daily dose of feel good tech and cool gear that will change your life

Here’s what connects with you today:

  • If you happen to be in London, consider taking the Eurostar to Paris

  • Google Maps is still the king of all mapping software

  • As a Local Google Guide I review and recommend cool spots

5 min read

Table of Contents

Welcome Wagon

Can a business trip be pleasurable?

Surely it can. Take it from me and turn work trips into a bit of a vacation. That’s my motto. Especially when you find yourself in locations you wouldn’t normally be able to visit. Now, I should caveat this with, so long as you have vacation time to extend the trip. If you do, enjoy it and while you’re at it, snap a photo!

I did, and my photo is now Google Local Guide famous!

Work Trip

I had to take a quick work trip into the main office back in June of 2023. My main office at the time was located in Manchester, UK. This would be my second time visiting Manchester, and the first time my wife was able to go with me.

Due to the June 3rd train strike, (who plans a train strike, folks in the UK thats who 😆) my plans were immediately in jeopardy. You see this was no ordinary week. This week Manchester vs Manchester United were playing soccer, err football -my apologies. As an American apparently I have no clue how hallowed an institution and event this is. After speaking further with my coworkers, NOW I can somewhat relate. You see I live in Durham NC, so I can relate it to the great Duke vs Carolina rivalries of college basketball. But that wasn’t it. Apparently, some band named Coldplay was in town as well. Oh, and apparently Beyonce was also going to be in town that same weekend performing for her Renaissance tour.

So it was a PRIME time to PLAN a train strike. If you’re going to hold em up, might as well hold up as many as possible.

I was flying into London Heathrow (round trip) and my plan was to take the Avanti West Coast train to Manchester, spend a couple days there before I had to go into to work, then take the train back to London for a few days to make a bit of a vacation out of the trip.

Oh, but the dreaded train strike.

NOW, there were no trains to Manchester, and any other transport at that point was ridiculously expensive - even by US prices. What a fun start to the trip!

Still, I made it, I was there in a wonderful City with a vibe all to itself.

Mate, You Should Take The Eurostar

After I worked my 3 days in the office, we were ready to head back to London. We happened upon some friends outside the Manchester Piccadilly station. Engaging in small talk, one of them said “mate, you should take the Eurostar”.

And ‘by golly’ did we do that!

Post-ride on The EUROSTAR train to Paris

We decided on a whim really, to just go for it. We purchased a ticket and decided to take a day trip to Paris. I’ll write more about the ins and outs of the trip in another post, but the Eurostar experience was truly special and handily beats anything I’ve ever experienced on a local Amtrak.

Honestly, the most exciting and truly scariest part of the trip, wasn’t going underwater, no problems there, it was arriving in Paris and seeing everything and I mean EVERYTHING in French. For an American, that is just not something we are used to, and was a bit jarring initially. We tend to take for granted that EVERYONE speaks, reads, and writes in English, but uhh clearly that is not the case.

Laisse-moi te voir naviguer dans cette voie 

Now, I pride myself on being a natural navigator and one who tends to figure out how things work. Once we arrived at the Gare Du Nord station, this travel fact hit extremely hard. It’s always an adjustment whenever you are in a new city, new country, but this felt different. This felt new.

Alas, with a little bit of time and a lot of effort we were able to correctly choose which connecting train to take to get us along the way.

Tidbits for you!

Having traveled a couple times to the UK, one would think that your travel charger will work in France. However, that is NOT the case. We arrived to Gare Du Nord, with phones that were burning through batteries running hot on Bluetooth headphones, roaming and bad service along the trip. Either make sure you have a Universal travel charger or make sure you have one equipped for the UK and for Europe (usually designated EU). Here is one I found that works well. Travel Charger

In true theInTersectionof fashion, tech definitely came into play. I had to rely VERY HEAVILY on good ole Google Maps, planning out the best route from the Saint-Michel Notre-Dame Metro stop and the actual Notre-Dame to see the historic landmark.

After maneuvering through a couple alleys that honestly felt a weird combination of charming and shady (again first time in Paris) we happened upon Kozy a brunch restaurant with charm and wonderful food.

Highly rated on Google Maps, and looked, just as the name stated: cozy (Kozy). We knew it was time. Time To Grub!

Local Google Guide

Once inside we were seated pretty nearby the counter. In fact the pic of the counter bar is my image that went famous -by my local Google Guide standards anyway. 65000 views and counting!

Here it is, and below a few other pics I got from that day.

Wonderful food! Helpful staff (willing to let us non-French speakers leave dignified)! Refreshing drinks!

Most of all another cool spot on an adventure of a trip that was completely done on a whim. And yes, I gave them a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ recommendation!

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