Paris Museum Pass
 

From the reading I have done I do not see any advantage to buying the museum pass in advance of our arrival in June. Is there any advantage I have not discovered?

no, you will pay more no doubt, also, if you buy in advance as you'll be buying from a for-profit agency.

thanks Christina,

Do we have to wait in the ticket line at our first museum to buy the pass? Or is there a seperate line to buy the pass?

The "secret" is to go to one of the smaller, less popular facilities that is included in the pass and buy it there. For example, we bought ours when we went to the Arc de Triomph, which is also included on the pass.

there are no special windows at museums to buy passes that I've seen, but Howard's tip is one idea -- go to a smaller, less popular museum to buy it. There are only a couple really big ones that might have lines.

YOu can buy one at a metro/RER stop, anyway, which is what I do -- or any tourist info booth, although the metro is easiest. Any metro stop that has two or more lines running through it should have them. Just ask the ticket clerk at the window.

Metro station= 1st choice; smaller museum=2nd choice. DON'T buy it before you go.

I buy them at a metro stop, or one of the less crowded museums. I also wait until I am actually entering the museum, and ask the attendant to enter the date on the pass, so I won't make a mistake, nor enter the date American style, rather than European.

I bought mine at the archological museum right by Notre Dame. NO line there!

Has anyone bought one at a Métro station since March 1? The website says:

<b>Sales outlets in Paris</b>
Participating museums and monuments
Paris Tourist Office and branch offices
Espace du Tourisme IdF
Branches of FNAC

Yes, I'd also be curious to know if you can no longer buy them at a metro station.

And where exactly would one find a &quot;tourist information center&quot; in Paris?

Do you think the concierge at major hotels would sell them?

Thanks,
Dina

I don't know if this has changed, but I believe that when I went in 2004, you could only purchase museum passes at the larger Metro stations. I got mine as Sevres Baylone.

I tried buying the Museum Pass at a couple of Metro stops and they didn't have them. So I went to the office of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau at 25, rue des Pyramides and got it from there. This was in Sep last year.

http://en.parisinfo.com/ for more info.

Decide on which museums you want to visit. Then check to see if they're on the Museum Pass List. Not all museums are. If you're over 60 you can get a senior discount at many museums. Finally, museum passes are usually valid for a set period of time. You might have to sacrifice seeing some interesting sights just to get to the museums listed on the pass.

That's interesting if they've stopped selling them in metro stations. Maybe they thought it was too much trouble for the clerks.

There are several tourist information centers in Paris (maybe 6?), I just ran across one by accident last summer that is in front of Opera Bastille. They have one in Gare du Nord, the main one mentioned above, there is a tourist sales desk in the carrousel du Louvre, where a lot of people would be. There are a couple others, I think, but the addresses are on the Paris Tourist Office web site.

Now buying them at FNAC might be convenient sometimes, also. I know they never had the rule that you could only buy them at metro stations as I think twk asked. YOu could always get them at tourist offices and museums. Yes, it did used to be the rule that it was the larger ones which is why I said one with a couple lines running through them (not just a single line). Sometimes they ran out and didn't have them, though, but so do some museums. I've been at the Musee Orsay when they had signs up that they had no cartes musees for sale, nor did the small museum across the square from them where I suppose most people went before the Orsay (some obscure museum like Foreign Legion or something).