Paris Night Tour
 

Was wondering which company provides the best night ground-tour along with a cruise on the river to see all the famous site lit up in the night sky.

A good company that is friendly(with the best price), will stop at the sights during the ground-tour for pictures.

Has anyone checked out the night ground-tours with segways(motorized machines that you can ride on)? Is it recommended?

Currently, looking at cityrama.com tours for the combined river and ground tour of 30 Euro/person.

Thanks all

Hi Trojan,

There has been some discussion about the Segway tour here recently. You can try to search for some recent threads, but the search function here is spotty at best. I'll see if I can find one or two threads for you.

I did the Segway tour through Fat Tire Bike Tours, although during the day (LOVED it!), and some of the other people in our group raved about the night time bike tour. It is 4-5 hours long, makes several leisurely stops, and ended with a river cruise and a glass of wine. We wanted to do it but never had the energy as it was screaming hot at the time. All the tour guides I met at Fat Tire Bike Tours were fun, young Americans.

www.fattirebiketoursparis.com

Thanks for the help Jocelyn! Does the segway tour stop at the sights long enough for you take a good picture? Or do they just fly by?

Has anyone taken the cityrama.com tour with the cruise? And if so, do they stop at the sights for the ground-tour?

You're welcome! On the Segway tour, not only do they stop long enough for you to take pictures, but the tour guide will TAKE your picture with you in front of the sights. The tour guides are very loose and flexible. Whenever possible our guide would find a place where we could sit down for a few minutes while he talked about what we were seeing.

My husband has informed me that we can only visit cities now that have Segway tours.

I HIGHLY recommend the Segway evening tour. We left during daylight and returned after dark. After picking up our Segways and receiving training (a snap), we started at Ecole Militaire and the Tour Eiffel. From there, we went to Eglise du Dome, Invalides (where we restarted our Segways with a speedier key), through the Esplanade (I love those trees!), over Pont Alexandre III, past Grand Palais/Petit Palais, to Place de la Concorde, through Tuileries to Place du Carousel, around the Pyramid, down Quai de Tuileries, over the Solferino Bridge (wow!), past Musee d'Orsay, then all along the bike path riverside (awesome) over to the Tour Eiffel. We paused all along the way for Jill's amusing commentary and photo ops. We looped around Tour Eiffel a few times, then headed to Champs de Mars for the twinkling. We were having such a blast that Jill, our guide, let us extend our tour. So, we went around Champs de Mars a few times, pausing at Place Joffre. Our guide would stop whenever, and for as long as, anyone requested. She also took photos for us (so we could be in them).

Not only is the scenery magnificent (which you can really enjoy 360 from your Segway), riding all about on a Segway is really great fun! Especially the bike path by the river.

I cannot imagine doing a night tour on a bus. Better bet (if you don't do the Segways) would be to print out a one page map of Paris and highlight the monuments/sights you wish to see. Then, grab a taxi. The driver will get you to all of them, wait (these days may be at the nearest taxi stand) for you to spend a few minutes. Overall fare would be quite reasonable and far less than the price of a bus tour. We did this on our first trip to Paris, with minimal French, and it worked out beautifully. If you do this, select a nice place to finish, such as Chez Francis where the terrace has a fabulous view of the Tour Eiffel, or Cafe de la Paix for the view from the terrace of L'Opera all lit up, etc.

As for the river tours, there are so many and they run so often that you really don't need to book a tour to do this.

Best time for a river tour is daylight into dusk into night. We like the ones that start and end at the Tour Eiffel, but the ones that leave from Pont Neuf are excellent as well.

But, for photo ops from boats, the Bateaux Mouches are the best. Because they're much larger, they're taller, and you can walk all about them for better shots (without people, etc., in the way).

I did the night bicycle tour with Fat Tire a couple of years ago when it was still Mike's Bike Tours. If I return to Paris, I will do it again.

The ride was incredible. We had no lights, but everywhere we went was well lit. We rode a mixture of sidewalks, parks and streets - mostly bicycle or bus lanes.

The pace was steady but comfortable. I guess that the total ride was only about 5-6 miles. We stopped several times for details of the area, but mostly rode through busy downtown Paris by night.

Most of the ride was on the left bank and we passed places like Les Deux Magots. One stop was for ice cream at Berthillon.

The highest point was the Louvre Museum where we rode the inner courts while listening to a man named Pierre playing classical flute.

The tour concluded with a one hour cruise. The guide brought along 4 bottles of wine and we chatted, sipped wine and rode the boat past Notre Dame, la Tour Eiffel, Musée D'Orsay and othre sights we had just seen from the bikes.

Keith

Thanks for all the wonderful responses!!! I'm very excited about my first trip to Europe and Paris.

I'm just going to add a "ditto" to djkbooks - her detail is so fantastic that I can only add that we (self, husband, 16 & 17 yr olds girls) did the same evening tour in mid-July, and I was the hero of the entire trip for arranging it - it was truly the highlight for all of us.
The guides are young, and delightfully fun, trying to get the newbies to have as much fun as they're having. Our guide, Weston, had worked so hard on all of the architectural & historical details that I learned some neat facts (I love trivia & it was my 6th trip to Paris, so I was surprised, frankly.) As mentioned, they work at your pace.
Our evening, they had 3 guides lined up for 4 of us, a group of 6 and a 3rd group of 9. We were delighted at getting a guide to ourselves!
Love Jocelyn P's comment (all future cities visited must have Segway tours). My husband has been pricing them on the internet and wants one desperately - next year's his 60th, and I'm almost considering it!
By the way, I've done Cityrama before (trip #2, I recall, at co-traveler's urging.) Wasn't as bad as I would have thought, but I also would just build my own with a good taxi driver if I were doing it now. And, I have to add that being on the shore and realizing how obnoxious those huge lights are from the tour boats at night - not sure I'd care to do that, either. Yep, I'm a Segway-er!