lavance davis

Any suggestions for what to do in Paris on New Year's Eve?

Jim Rosenberg

Find a nice brasserie outside of the tourist areas, dine and enjoy beverages with the locals -- and if you happen to need something extra for the magic hour, head down to the Champs-Elysees and join the crowd. (Well, that's what I'm doing anyway...)

jodi

The Metro stops @ midnight...taxi's are very hard(translate to impossible) to find so plan your hotel within a reasonable walking distance from you celebration! We had to be in Paris for a wedding on Jan.2 a couple of years ago so I planned on the opera @ the Paris Opera House...called in May, got good seats and never have it another thought. When we got to Paris I thought we should pick up our tickets so we would have them for the 31st just in case we were running late...saw the poster as we walked into the box office area and were very surprised to see that we were seeing/hearing the Houston Grand Opera doing "Porgy and Bess"!! It turned out fine, the French subtitles obvious, and kind of fun to hear/see what a European audience reacted to an American <BR>racially charged jazz opera/operetta.

Erica

We were in Paris for the faux millenium (2000)celebration--great fun and festive atmosphere down by the Eiffel Tower for the fireworks. But take heed and get down there with plenty of time to spare (i.e., at least an hour before the new year)--we had a dinner party run very late and had to sprint down to the tower. By fifteen minutes to countdown, we found that we couldn't get closer than about five blocks away because of the large crowds and had to make do with a seriously obstructed view of the tower behind a building. Also, somewhat worrisome when one fellow shot off a flare gun (!) above his head at midnight amidst the enormous thronging crowd. Still, quite the magical place to be...

BTilke

We were in Paris for the "real" millennium celebrations and unfortunately, they weren't anywhere near as special as the "faux" celebrations (my husband works in IT, so we spent the "faux" night in a boring office building near the Brussels airport waiting to see if there were any computer problems, which of course there weren't). Ditto to what others said re the taxi problems. What we did do was see a performance of Die Fledermaus at the Bastille opera house on Dec. 30 (got great seats online, excellent performance, but somebody in the audience actually died during the first act, so the intermission went on and on while they figured out what to do--apparently he came alone--no friends or relatives with him. Sad.) Anyway, we had our New Year's dinner early at Scosa on the Place Victor Hugo in the 16th, then went down to watch the fireworks--quite middling compared to the year before--in the rain. We still had a great time, but it wasn't like the wild night of 2000. <BR>BTilke