Paris in 4 hours? Are you crazy?

Old Dec 25th, 2008, 12:04 PM
  #21  
 
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...even the loop from Concorde to Etoile to Eiffel Tower to Pont de l'Alma back to Concorde is feasible on foot in 4 hours...

I think walking for four hours is the worst way to spend that limited time.

Walking is for when you have a week or more.
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Old Dec 25th, 2008, 07:49 PM
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Chacun à son goût, mon cher.

In my experience, seeing things go by at the speed of wheeled transport doesn't allow for the visuals to sink in. What I see at the speed of walking stays with me like photographic memory.

Scenes going by as seen from a bus is the same as turning pages in a picture book, you'll see more pictures go by, faster, but - you can't turn the pages backwards.

So I promote four hours of walking as the ideal solution to OP's delightful dilemma.
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Old Dec 25th, 2008, 08:16 PM
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Who said anything about racing past the sights on wheels? The bus is to get from one venue to the next.

(Incidentally, the walking itinerary you outline above wouldn't leave any time to linger the way busing from place to place would.)
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Old Dec 26th, 2008, 05:31 AM
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To each his own, but the bus ride is subject to the vagaries of traffic--and for some reason never explained to us the one we went on varied from its route and didn't drive up the Champs Elysee, which I was really looking forward to. And you are looking down on everything which gave me a sense of separation that of course strolling about does not.

As an alternative to get from place to place if you didn't want to walk, I'd use the Batobus. You could catch it at Pont Alexandre on the right bank and head toward the Eiffel Tower, get out there if you like, then get back on and ride through (past the Orsay and such) to the Notre Dame stop, get out and visit Ile de la Cite, have lunch on the Ile St. Louis, catch the Batobus at the Hotel de Ville stop, get off at the Louvre and stroll back through the Tuileries.
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Old Dec 26th, 2008, 08:07 AM
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Use maps.google.com to measure distances, for example place etoile to place concorde - keeping in mind that the walking times given aren't "stroll" pace. With the caveat that anecdotal evidence is meaningless, I will state that I have been riding buses in Paris since 1963 and never had one divert from its published route without warning.

The downside to the Batobus is that one might have to wait while one or two boatloads of passengers are accommodated before you (this seems to be especially true at the intermediate stops). So you could easily consume an hour standing at quays.
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