Its a bit surreal to be sitting here writing this knowing that this trip has already come and gone.  I feel like I had been waiting forever for August to get here so that I could knock a bucket list item off of my list.  Strangely enough,  I ended up adding on a city I never would have thought I’d visit.  This Greece trip may have started off all wrong when we were planning but it will likely always be one of my favorite trips.

I’ll give you a little back story on why we ended up in Paris + Moscow –  we tried to beat the system and the system beat us for our lack of research. We all know once you are in Europe, its far cheaper to travel from country to country.  To fly round trip to Athens in August (peak season) was about $950 or so while a round trip to Moscow was only $600.  We were saving a bunch of money and getting to see another two cities as we would have a long layover in Paris on our way over.   Well, as we booked the non-refundable flight we quickly learned that we would need a visa just to switch our planes in Russia because we booked a round-trip flight from Moscow to Athens separately.  Moral of the story is, don’t do what we did because we ended up having to spend about $200 MORE than what we wanted.

Even though we ended up spending more cash than we originally had planned, I am still pretty happy with being able to see Paris AND Moscow.  Paris was everything I expected it to be.  I am not much of a city gal and it was a bit much for my personal liking but I am glad I was able to spend at least one day in Paris.  There are far more places in France I would much rather explore!  Moscow was a whole other ball game compared to Paris. Moscow was so clean! No one Russia seems to speak any English so it was much more difficult to communicate and ask for directions since we certainly weren’t able to read the Russian language.  It was definitely one of the fun parts if you ask me.

Moscow was definitely far better for me than Paris which is definitely something I never thought I’d say.  It ranks number 2, ,after Greece of course. I definitely recommend checking it out!  I hear great things about St. Petersburg.  Maybe I’ll add that to my list before my visa expires.

I didn’t take nearly a fraction as many photos in France or Russia as I did in Greece but those are for later posts.  For now, enjoy a little bit of Paris + Moscow!

 There she is!

 The little cafes that we of course had to check out.

 That European architecture.

 The views we were greeted by the moment we got off the metro in Moscow!

 So much art in one spot.  It was beautiful!

 Basic tourist photos.

 The Russian architecture was blowing my mind!  So beautiful! ps- Architecture is easily one of my favorite parts of traveling!

 Its Val’s go-to pose haha!