The Journey to Europe: What a Well-Planned Trip Looks Like

The flight from Australia to Europe is not short. Melbourne to Paris via Dubai is close to 24 hours in the air, plus the connection. For many Australians, that journey is either an ordeal to be endured or an opportunity to travel well. The difference comes down to planning.

Before You Leave Melbourne

A well-organised European trip begins at home. Every flight, transfer, hotel and train connection documented. Not buried in email threads or screenshot folders, but printed, labelled and ready to hand over at check-in. Paris transfer. Paris hotel. Paris train. Car leasing. Each leg in its own envelope, nothing left to memory or last-minute searches on airport wifi.

For travellers who prefer to enjoy the trip rather than manage it, this level of organisation makes the difference. The 3am departure is easier when you know exactly what happens at the other end.

First Class on Emirates: Melbourne to Dubai

Emirates first class offers private suites with closing doors. Each suite has its own vanity mirror with lighting, a personal bar that rises from the console, and enough space to forget you are on an aircraft. The entertainment system is comprehensive, if not always intuitive. The menu runs to multiple courses, though the real luxury is choice without constraint.

Pyjamas are provided. Showers are bookable, with the crew asking your preferred time shortly after takeoff. The bathroom is larger than most aircraft toilets, with a fresh paper seal around the seat for each use, proper amenities and a separate shower cubicle.

The onboard bar, up past the business cabin, has seating and full service. You can sit there with a drink, or you can stay in your suite. Both work.

The Dubai Connection

Long connections at Dubai International can mean long walks. Emirates provides buggy transfers for first class passengers between gates. Not essential, but welcome after 14 hours in a seat, even a first class one.

Arriving in Paris

Two days of travel compress into one calendar day when you cross enough time zones. You leave Melbourne on one date and arrive in Paris still feeling like it is the day before. The body knows it has been travelling, even if the watch says otherwise.

Paris Charles de Gaulle is large and busy. The first task is usually currency. ATMs are available throughout the airport, though they can take time to navigate if you are running on no sleep and crossing languages. Patience helps. So does having your first night clearly sorted before you arrive.

When This Works

This kind of journey works for Australians who want to arrive in Europe ready to travel, not exhausted from managing logistics. It suits long trips where the planning pays off across weeks or months on the ground. Travelling well from Melbourne to Europe is possible, but it requires someone to arrange it properly before you leave. Cartier World Travel handled the organisation for this trip, and the difference showed from the first envelope handed over at Melbourne Airport.

In his own words

What Sam said

Sam mentioned Cartier World Travel multiple times: 'This is what we've been given by Cartier World Travel in Ballan' when showing the organised envelopes for each leg. Later: 'Not going to mention Cartier all the time, but they've helped us with a bit of the trip. And um so organized. So organized for people who are so disorganized.' At Dubai transfer: 'This is Cartier World Travel. What a what a delight. I thought I was going to have to walk.' Sam Newman, on the ground

See it for yourself

Sam Newman in Melbourne to Paris

Filmed on Sam's own trip through Europe, parts of which Cartier World Travel arranged.

The route

Getting there

What to see

Melbourne to Paris, up close

Musée du Louvre (The Louvre Museum)

Museum / unmissable sight

The world's most visited museum is also a former royal palace, so the building competes with the collection for your attention. Beyond the Mona Lisa scrum there are the Assyrian reliefs, Vermeer's Lacemaker and the Cour Marly sculpture courts, which are often near-empty. Treat it as two or three short visits rather than one death march.

Closed Tuesdays; book a timed slot online and take the earliest of the day or a late-evening session, entering via Porte des Lions or Carrousel to skip the pyramid queue, allow 3 hours per visit.

Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower)

Icon / viewpoint

Yes, it is the obvious one, and it is still worth it, the ironwork is far more delicate and strange up close than photos suggest. The summit lift gives the wider view, but the second level is the better one for actually reading the city's boulevards and rooftops. Go up once, then admire it from the Trocadéro side or a Seine cruise.

Open daily year-round; book summit tickets the moment they are released (roughly two months ahead) and choose a slot about 90 minutes before sunset, allow 2 to 2.5 hours including security.

Sainte-Chapelle

Monument / stained glass

Louis IX's royal chapel on the Île de la Cité holds 15 metres of 13th-century stained glass telling the Bible in more than a thousand panels. The lower chapel is deliberately dim so the upper one hits you all at once. It is small, so timing matters more than time.

Open daily; go in the first hour of the day or late afternoon on a bright day for the strongest light, book a timed entry, and allow 45 minutes, combine with the neighbouring Conciergerie.

Septime

Restaurant / eating and drinking

Bertrand Grébaut's Michelin-starred room on rue de Charonne is the clearest expression of modern Parisian cooking: a short set menu, superb produce, natural wine and none of the starched formality. The sibling wine bar and seafood spot on the same street handle the overflow. Book it and build the day around it.

Closed weekends; online reservations open exactly three weeks ahead at 10am Paris time and go within minutes, so set an alarm, allow 2.5 hours for dinner, or try walk-in seats at Clamato next door.

Passages Couverts (the covered arcades)

Walk / what most visitors miss

Paris's glass-roofed 19th-century shopping arcades survive in a chain across the 2nd and 9th arrondissements, and most visitors never step into one. Galerie Vivienne has the mosaic floors and rotunda, Passage des Panoramas the stamp dealers and tiny bistros, Passage Verdeau and Passage Jouffroy the antique cameras and old bookshops. It is the best rainy-morning walk in the city.

Arcades are shut or shuttered on Sundays and open only in shop hours, so walk them on a weekday morning, starting at Galerie Vivienne and heading north, allow 2 hours with coffee stops.

Melbourne to Paris

Tell us roughly when and for how long. We build the rest around you, the way we built Sam's.