We're leaving for Paris in 4 days, and I've enjoyed mapping out our walks to the various sights using mappy.com and for sights not within our walking distance I've used ratp.fr.

Using Mappy I've discovered that we are loser to many sights than I had imagined. And with ratp.fr, I've found the best routes, often avoiding the need to change metros in the busiest stations where lots of walking and stair climbing are involved.

I think to truly "experience" the city it is nice to see it on foot and also using public transport.

Imagine living in a city in which "every building is within 500 meters of Metro station"...I wish we had that in the U.S.

I strongly suspect many people end up taking the metro between two places in Paris, and if they added it all up, the would find they did more walking getting to the train and getting back out at the other end, then if they just stayed above ground and walked the distance to begin with.

We just got back and we clocked an average of seven miles aday. And we wern't going crazy either. I would strongly suggest learning to use the Metro so that you can do both. There are times when you just can't walk anymore. You also, IMO, get to cover more ground if you can metro part of it. You might want to use the Batobus on one of those days to get around. Great way to see the city and get to the major points of interest.

Neopolitan is so correct! Those steps in some places are killers and it might be easier to just do it above ground or hop a bus! Even better than the ratp site for metro routes..try this one

http://www.paris-eiffel-tower-news.c...etro-maps.html

Staying within a few blocks of the Notre Dame Batobus stop, we had planned on buying a 5 day Batobus ticket for 16 Euros vs. 1 day for 11 E, but the forecast for our stay is quite rainy, so we're going to have to play it by ear.

On my trip to Paris 7 years ago, our Batobus ride was one of the highlights.

Thank you, Jody, for the link to the other metro maps.

We LOVE walking in Paris. However, we usually walk away from our hotel, covering several miles a day. By the end of the day we're exhausted so we Metro back.

Why not utilize the excellent bus system? Pick up a pocket bus line guide--"le Bus" by L'Indispensable. Samllish print, but veey easy to use. Shows all the routes with names of all of the stops and "correspondances" with other lines, Metro and RER.

By the time you climb down into the ground, ride to an intermediate station, walk a kilometer to a connecting line, ride to the destination, and climb back out again, you could have caught a direct bus and enjoyed the scenery on the way. And stopped off on the way if you saw something that interested you.

We only use the Métro if we're going halfway across town. If it's less than a mile, we walk. In between, it's the bus every time.

<i>p.s.</i> The <i>ultimate</i> bus map is here:

http://www.ratp.info/orienter/f_plan...eur&amp;fm=pdf

(Paper version free at any M&eacute;tro station.)

Several factors to consider:

1. No point in the city proper (within the city limits) is more than 300 m from a M&eacute;tro station. Bus stops are much more densely spaced.

2. It's misleading to imply that many M&eacute;tro trips are unnecessary. If you know the layout of the city, it's easy to figure out which trips merit the M&eacute;tro, and which do not. Tourists may tend to take the M&eacute;tro for spots that are only 200 feet apart, or they may try to walk several miles, but checking out a map carefully in advance can help avoid this.

3. The bus system is fine, and the closely spaced stops can make it more efficient than the M&eacute;tro &hellip; but there are far more lines and stops, with far more convoluted routes, and if you don't already know the nearby routes very well, you spend more time trying to find buses going your way than you would just taking the nearest M&eacute;tro. The bus system is good for commuting residents, but the learning curve is high for temporary visitors. Also, buses are slower (but more scenic) and have more pickpockets in some cases.

4. The Batobus is a bit of a solution looking for a problem. It serves too few stops in too few locations to be useful for mass transit, and it doesn't include the commentary of the excursion boats, so it's not completely ideal for tourists and yet it's not terribly useful for residents, either. And it is not part of the RATP, so it requires special tickets, and they are very expensive.

We always find a mixture of both work fine! I agree with other posters who say you walk far more than you ever realise!

bookmarking

bookmarking

I mostly agree with AnthonyGA (as usual), but I would like to add that I use a program called <b>M&eacute;tro</b> on my PDA that calculates the optimum bus route from anywhere to anywhere else in milliseconds. Even a first-timer can be an expert navigator with very little effort.

It is available for <i>free</i> for a wide variety of platforms at http://nanika.net/metro

You can buy a Palm Pilot for a few dollars on eBay that will run it (and a whole lot of other travel-related programs, too). Anything with at least 8mb will work.