The evening boat tour is all you need--skip the night bus.

I agree.

We are talking about a nightime boat tour?

I appreciate your experience and feedback.

Yes, the boat tour is in the evening, to give you a view of Paris "city of lights" at night.

When I first looked at the tour, it looked okay until I priced the boat seperately.

Now, what I really need to know is if there is a city bus that does the core route. I thought I had read that there was one somewhere but can't seem to track it down. Could have been on a different website though.

For 34 E perperson I would think you could get a cab.

But why not walk past some of themajor ones - in Paris nothing is more romantic after dinner. And you don;t have to see them all in one evening.

My husband and I took a nighttime boat tour with Bateaux Parisiens 2 years ago (early October). We found it quite enjoyable...it was beautiful to see the city from a different perspective at night. I don't think a bus tour on top of the boat tour would be necessary. Enjoy!

The "regular" boat tours offer night tours for about €7-9 and then you can take a "regular" city bus for the price of a metro ticket. Just look at the bus routes to see which ones go past the major sites you'd like to see.

the good thing about being ON the boat is that you are not blinded by the far too bright lights of the boat as it "illuminates" already well illuminated buildings.

anyone else bothered by this as they stroll along the river?

You can just take the Batobus boats which are really taxis on the Seine - we grabbed one at the Louvre at about 7:30 pm and had a lovely ride / tour of the Seine for about 11 euros...was not illuminated but we saw everything we wanted.

Kittrdg has a great suggestion, and you can a 1 day unlimited ride Batobus ticket for 11 Euro and a 2 day unlimited pass for 13 Euro. If you have a Carte Orange there is a discount on the passes. The Batobus runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in October. Here's the website for more information: http://www.batobus.com/english/qui.htm#

walkinaround - yes, the incredibly bright boat lights, passing at frequent intervals, are also very annoying when you are sitting in a riverside restaurant !

I almost did this last summer but never got around to it. IN the summer, you have to go very late for it to be dark, which is why I didn't, although that's not a problem in Oct.

I remember seeing the itinerary and do not think the boat goes by all the buildings that are on the bus tour--which I guess is the idea, of course. I was going to take it, it sounded fun to me, but I don't mind spending that amount of money for something like that even if it's not wonderful. There isn't any city bus that does an illuminations tour and trying to cobble one together from all the various bus routes wouldn't be feasible IMO. A lot of the buses stop running around 8:30 pm, also. I've never been crazy about boats down on the Seine, myself, as you are low and can only see buildings right near it and it's a different perspective than normal. You wouldn't be able to see a lot of the buildings from the Seine that are on the illuminations tour.

Now, there are tourist buses, those hop on/hop off things, I suspect those could well work for an illuminations tour quite well. They aren't cheap, but the ticket is good for two entire days for around 25 euro (around 20 euro one complete day), so you might use it in the day time to get around for sightseeing and then at night for the views. I think the illuminations bus tour has a planned itinerary based on lights, of course, not just tourist stops like the hop on/hop off bus, so it may differ slightly. the Opentour bus does go to some of the places I was thinking would not be visible from the Seine in any way, and could be a good choice to supplement a Seine ride (eg, Opera, place de la Concorde, Louvre, Invalides, Arc de Triomphe). In October, the Opentour buses end at 8 pm (last full start at 6 pm), but I think that would be okay for darkness at that time of year. Les Cars Rouges has a similar circuit and ends around 9:30 pm. One full day ticket is 22 euro on that bus.

The Parisvision illuminations tour doesn't start until 9 pm so if the lights are not on at 6-8 pm in October, could replace the hopon/off bus. It also goes up towards Montmartre and includes place de Vendome; I think otherwise most of what it goes by is on the hopon/off bus route.

If it were me, I would not use Parisvision or a company like that for a boat ride as there is no reason for that, but might for the illuminations thing (which is expensive in itself). I would really think the hopon/off bus would be best as they have the open upper deck and even Parisvision doesn't have that, but buses (even if with good windows). I checked the calendar, and the sun sets around 7:30 pm on 10/1, 7 pm on 10/15 and then earlier of course later on. Towards the end of the month, you'd get about an hour of darkness on the hopon/off bus tour.

These are personal tastes, but I'd rather do that than a Seine boat trip if the main goal was seeing lights.