I am going to be in London for four days and Paris for three. I am interested in hitting the main museums in both places. would a museum pass for each be worth it? Thanks

HI
many of the museums in London are free, no pass needed.

In Paris the carte musee is good for a designated number of consecutive days.
You have to give some thought to which days you will be visiting, and if the museums you want are open or closed that day.

the best advantage of the Paris pass is not so much the savings, but being able to skip the ticket-buyer's line at the Louvre and the Orsay museum.
The pass can be bought at any participating museum (you can buy it at a small museum even if you don't want to visit there), many metro stations, and even at some hotel front desks.

As elaine said, the "main museums" in London are mostly free. The only place you'll probably pay for is the Tower of London; you can get tickets at tube stations, to avoid the lines when you get there.

Don't be fooled into buying a London Pass, which gives you free dmission to lots of places you don't want to go to. If you buy the London Pass in advance, you can also manage to get ripped off for your transport card!

Thanks, I needed this info as well.

"Main museums" also means different things to different people. The best advice I can give on this (and what I did when determining whether to buy museum passes) is list the places you want to see. Then, determine which of them are covered under the museum pass. Add up the prices of admission to these attractions only (readily available for most attractions in guidebooks and/or on the web) and compare to the museum pass price.

Consider when deciding that it does allow you to skip lines as elaine mentioned, and also consider that there might be smaller museums listed on the pass that you'd choose to visit for a few minutes because it's free that you wouldn't pay separately to visit. Those additional factors can be harder to put a $$ amount to, but are key in deciding whether to buy the pass. They're also very individual decisions, and to some extent will vary depending on the time of year you go and which days you're planning to see which museums.

Confused?

When determing which of them are covered under the museum pass in London, be warned that the pass web sites list some museums that are free.

Keith

But the museums that the Lonodn Pass lists that have free admission do charge for special exhibitions, and the London Pass covers those.

Haven't been to London, but we did purchase a museum pass the last time we went to Paris. I'm not sure if it was cost effective, but it was great to skip the lines, especially the one day it rained.

You can buy the museum pass at the Metro station or at your first museum. The advantage of buying at the Metro is that you get to skip that first museum line.

For one day, I'd say you wouldn't have enough time to make it worth the money, but for three days, it's probably worth it if you're going to visit a lot of museums.

Enjoy your trip.

You will only be in London 4 days - there are so MANY free museums that you likely won't be tempted by any w/ entrance charges. You could do 2+ free museums/galleries a day for two weeks and still not see all of them. So definitely skip the London Pass.

The Paris museum Pass is an entirely different thing - it is VERY worthwhile. But you don't need to purchase it ahead of time - buy it at any metro station, covered museum, Waterloo or Gare du Nord if you are taking Eurostar, or even at CDG.

Anonymous,

Those museums occasionally have a special exhibit that the pass would cover. It may or may not be something a given person would tour.

Web sites trying to sell the London Pass are very misleading about the subject. For example http://www.londonpass.com/viewCategory.asp?catId=3 has a list of attractions that are free with the pass, including The British Museum, Museum of London and Royal Air Force Museum.

Keith

I'm astonished to find myself defending the London Pass, even just a little bit, but here goes:

1. Your point about special exhibitions was exactly the same as what I thought I said in my earlier post.

2. The link you gave goes to a list of all museums that are covered in any way by the London Pass. This is a bit misleading, and I agree it would be improved by adding some sort of code, footnote, whatever, to correct the implication that the Pass covers basic admissions fees for all these places.

3. Following the link on that page to "All attractions and services" gives a list with attractions sorted into 3 groups: free, discount, and value-added, and indeed the museums that do not charge admssion are in the final category. The list specifies what the "value added" is, such as "Free entry to paid for exhibitions or between shows, free souvenir guide."