Sat. Sun. Mon. Paris
 

Hi,
We will have 3 full days to see Paris.

Please help with what days are best to see what sites.

We will get advanced tickets to all the sites we can/need to.
Avoiding mobs (is this possible?) and closures is objective.
There will be 4 adults. 3 of us have been once before, 1 hasnt.
We are going this fall.
We will be staying in the Marais and renting studio apt.
(we are looking for 2 studios within budget $125-150 per night if possible)

Here is what we would like to see.

MUSEE D'ORSAY
RODIN GARDEN
LATIN QUARTER
LUXUMBURG
PERE LACHAISE
MARAIS/shopping
SACRE COEUR
ISLE DE LA CITE/ST. LOUIE
NOTRE DAME
ST CHAPPELLE
SEINE CRUISE
EIFFEL TOWER AT NIGHT
NIGHT BUS TOUR TO SEE LIGHTS

How would you break up the 3 days and nights?

Thanks

First you need a map. I recommend Streetwise (or similar) since it is small, yet easily readable and laminated. Mark all the sights you want to see and it will quickly become apparent which sights to group together.

Then you need to be familiar with museum/sight closing days/times.

Rodin - closed Monday
Orsay - closed Monday
Luxembourg (I presume you mean the gardens) - closed at sunset.
Eiffel Tower - closed 11:45 except summer when it is open 1 hour later

Groupings by location/days:

- Orsay & Rodin
- Pere Lachaise & Marais
- Ile de la cite/st louis/notre dame/ste chappelle/Luxembourg Gardens
- Eiffel tower and seine cruise should be done on a nice night - no rain and I would not do them on the same night
- Sacre Coeur isn't near the rest of your itinerary so fit it in when you have time. I would put it on day 2 with Pere Lachaise and the Marais but only you know how much shopping you plan to do and if it will fit there. I could spend hours at Pere Lachaise.

Night bus tour - you can see many of the lights from the Seine boat that runs between the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. To save money (if this is important to you) you can take a city bus (1 metro ticket each) that goes from the Hotel de Ville area to the Arch of Triumph. You'll see lights on the Champs Elyssee from the local bus.

Forgot to mention that you can buy a combined ticket to the Orsay and Rodin (must be used on the same day) for a 2 Euro reduction per person. You can buy tickets on line for an extra fee or buy the combo ticket at the Rodin Museum first (shorter lines) and then bypass the line at the Orsay.

The online combo ticket is 13.50E; at the museum it is 12E.

http://musee-orsay.fnacspectacles.co...4563592091.htm

Except for the Marais, don't expect to do any shopping on Sunday.

Stu Dudley

thanks for replies.
It is nice how we can buy tickets online.

I agree that you can see most of the lights without a tour if $ and time is a concern. Paris is not that spread out. You will probablly see all the lights if you eat dinner Parisenne time schedules.

what is typical dinner time in Paris?

I would say 9. I have eaten there as late as 10:30 (at L'Entrocote de Relaias I believe.

can anyone recommend any of these?

Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris

Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City's 102 Best Restaurants

Sandra Gustafson's Great Eats Paris

Wikitravel Paris: The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable guide to Paris

If you want to eat at 9:00 you would need reservations. If you are choosing your restaurants ahead I would make reservations no matter what time you want to dine.

I haven't looked at any of the books above but there are lots of resto recommendations on this board.

I forgot to mention the excellent free Notre Dame tour, Saturdays at 2:30.

And while you're in this area stop to see the Deportation Memorial, directly behind the garden that is behind Notre Dame. Cross the street behind the garden and go through the wrought iron fence and down the stairs. It's a moving experience and won't take more than 10 to 15 minutes.

ttt for more info

I prefer Hungry for Paris among the books you listed. Clothilde's Edible Adventures is good but better for inexpensive places outside the immediate center which is where you'll be spending your time visiting the tourist sites.

Since you already have your itinerary planned in detail, I'm not sure why you'd need a guidebook? I'd use internet forums to organize your restaurants, much more current than a guidbook can possibly be, which is a couple years out of date by the time it is publisehd.. And get a decent map of the city. Those things on your list don't really need any explanation, is my point, and except the cemetary all quite centrally located.

For the river cruise, I would recommend the Vedettes. Their website offers the choice of a 2 euro discount coupon or you can prepurchase your tickets right there. If you do that now, you can save 5 euro (reg. 12 down to 7). We did this cruise on our last trip and really enjoyed it, so much so that we bought tickets for our trip in June as well. The prepurchase option is great because you are not locked into a particular date or time. Just bring the printout and show up when you want to go. You bypass the ticket line and they send you down to the loading area. We did this at sunset and it was really nice!

I have been working on itinerary..
How does this sound??

SEPT. 25TH FRIDAY. AFTERNOON TRAIN TO PARIS FROM AMSTERDAM / FRIDAY NIGHT.. EIFFEL TOWER FROM PONT NUEF(SP) BRIDGE.

SEPT. 26TH SATURDAY ... ISLE LOUIE,ISLE DE LA CITE,
NOTRE DAME, ST CHAPPELLE, LEFT BANK, NIGHT SEINE CRUISE

SEPT. 27TH SUNDAY ....MUSEE D'ORSAY, RODIN SCULPTURE GARDEN, LUXUMBURG GARDEN

SEPT. 28TH MONDAY.....PERE LACHAISE CEMETARY, MARAIS (JEWISH QUARTER),SACRE COUER, EIFFEL TOWER AT NIGHT ( yes, again)

************

wandering and shopping will find its way into each day too.

jetsetj - Run out and buy a copy of "PARIS History & Mystery" by Peter Cain published by AA Publishing.
This little book is absolutely incredible! Not only does the author give one a little map to follow on each walk through parts of Paris but very informative historical facts at what the person is actually looking at, plus three suggestions for dining in each locale.
The whole book is put together so cleverly that a person can go from one walk to another in historical order.

For instance: Your first day(night)
Sept 25th - Eiffel Tower from Pont Neuf bridge.
What do you actually know about The Eiffel Tower ( apart from the fact it is extremely beautifu!) and what about Pont Neuf?

His walk titled " The Iron Lady of Paris" Walk 17 will guide you from the Trocadero metro station, via the Cimetiere de Passy ( which you obviously won't do in the dark?? or would you?) Ha Ha! Then down into the gardens past the floodlit fountains towards Pont d'Lena - the bridge named after a Napoleonic victory in 1806 and which looks directly at Ecole Militaire behind the Eiffel Tower, where Emperor Napoleon trained as a young man.
The bridge crosses the Seine in five 92ft spans sitting on four piers. The sides are decorated with Napoleonic eagles.
During the siege of Paris, the Prussians thought the name Le`na brought back bad memories, so they re-named the bridge and removed the eagles. During Louis Philip's reign the bridge's original name and sculptures were reinstated.

You see, it's all significant!

Then you walk beneath the tower maybe stopping to see the statue of Eiffel by the sculptor Bourdelle before walking onto the Champs du Mars and waiting for your first glimpse of that gorgeous structure to sparklle into action!
She was unveiled in 1889 soaring 1,000 ft above Paris and attracted 32million people resulting in the construction of new roads, the metro, bridges, railways, hotels, restaurants and even cabarets to cope with the influx of visitors.

Sept 26th - Isle St Louis etc.,
I won't go into detail here except to say the walk around Ile de Cite is titled "The Birthplace of the City" and takes in Notre Dame with fascinating information.

All your other 'must see's' are covered beautifully in walk 9 "The Romantic Island", and walk 8, "Home of The Dead" and also in walk 11 "Bohemian Montmarte".

Don't go without this book even if you have a dozen other guide books - this little book is great and with it's information you could cover much more than planned!

Totally agree with Tod. So many people go to Paris and just look around without any understanding of what they're seeing, which is fine, but if you have an understanding of how it fits into the context, IMO it is much more interesting.

Also, what are you buying in advance online? Many things available online are heavily marked up and so easy to obtain in Paris that it's not worth it.

For your Seine cruise, you can by tickets online through Vedettes du Pont Neuf. Doing so, you will save 5 euro per ticket and avoid the usually long line to buy tickets. What a deal! We like to take both the day and night Seine cruise. They have a very different feel and you get a good perspective of the lit buildings, particularly Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower.

Thanks for great responses.

Tod,
I ordered "PARIS History & Mystery" by Peter Cain
on amazon.com. $11.40 + shipping.

I think this is a great idea for me and DH. Although I have been to Paris once before I enjoy learning the history and fun info about what I am seeing.
DH will really absorb as he has barely left his zipcode.

****
We will order D'orsay tickets online. Also Seine cruise tickets. Should I buy tickets to St. Chappelle before?

Ira suggests canalbus for daily transportation up and down the Seine. Will buy online if needed before hand.

Forgot to add that we will go see Thor Van Gogh house also as we will be going to Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on this trip and thought it might be a fun followup. I think it is in/near Montmart.

jetsetj-Batobus up and down the Seine, perhaps? batobus.com

Tickets sold at each of the 8 stops, among other points of sale.

yep thats it, batobus...

stealing ur itinerary for reference!
just that i reach Paris too late on Saturday to do anything, but what you have on Saturday, I will do on Sunday!
And your Sunday I will do on Tuesday.
;)

3sica,

You have to let me know how it turns out :)
I wont be there until the end of Sept.

Jetsetj, are you sure that Ira suggested batobus for your daily transportation?

If you have your heart set on a particular restaurant, a reservation makes sense but just wanted to note that I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago and ate out every night for a week at what seemed to be popular places (recommended in Pudlo or Lobrano) around 8 or 9pm and we didn't have any reservations. Maybe March is slow or it is just the economy but we didn't have any problems. A couple of the places that were highly recommended didn't look that great or were very quiet when we walked by so we just picked another restaurant in the same area.

JETSETJ - I don't know if you got fixed up with a studio apartment yet. You said 2 studios? And you need accommodation Fri, Sat, Sun & Monday right?
Well, I'd like to tell you that at The Ibis Hotel La Defense (a few minutes by metro from Charles de Gaulle Etoile metro stop at the top of the Champs Elysees) you can book a double en-suite for 49 euros. Yes, 2 people staying in a clean modern facility for 49 euros! It must be booked on the internet and is a weekend special offer. If you walk off the street it's 69 euros. Only one snag - Monday will revert back to about 126 euros for the same room but hey!that's what a studio will cost anyway.
We stayed there last May and have booked the 3 night special again this May.

Tod,
Thanks for the suggestion.

We would like a place where we can cook for ourselves.
We have decided that the 5th arrondisment might not be so bad either.
We just want 2 studios or rooms with kitchettes within walking distance of each other.

IRA.. Are you here...

MrNuke on Mar 25, 09 at 08:10 PM
Jetsetj, are you sure that Ira suggested batobus for your daily transportation?
*********

I thought I read where he said he used it to go up and down the Seine for sightseeing.

In my opinion there is a difference between sightseeing and daily transportation. A lot of your sites are very near the Seine, some others aren't. Batobus isn't exactly an optimal example of effective transportation. I would recommend the metro or buses as your primary method of navigating the city. It is more efficient and cheaper.

So for example...
from Marais to Eiffel Tower is best on Metro?

Well lets put it this way, according to the Batobus time table it would take you about 40 minutes to get from Hotel de Ville to the Eiffel tower, about an hour doing the trip in the opposite direction. This isn't including the 15-30 minute intervals between boats versus the typically sub 5 minute intervals between trains.

The same trip takes under 20 minutes on the metro in either direction. The buses and trains are cheaper, quicker, and will get you closer to where you ultimately want to end up.

Well that settles it... no batobus for daily transport..
thanks mrnuke

Cathinjoetown on Mar 28, 09 at 11:37 AM
To maximize your time in Paris, I would take the batobus(12 euros) to see many of the illuminated sights along the river. You can board at Notre Dame and ride to the Eiffel Tower and back, or a bit beyond Notre Dame, on the same ticket. Fare is for all day, on and off at any point, I believe 8 stops in all.

**********
Now this person says this...

I think we showed in my last post that batobus hardly "maximizes" your time. You are still going to see all of the sites as you planned a Seine cruise on that Saturday. You can Wait up to 30 minutes for a boat that will take an hour to get from point A to B versus waiting 5 minutes for a bus or train that will do the same trip in 20-30 minutes. In addition the second option is cheaper. Especially on that last day, how would you plan on using batobus to get around?

Of course we couldnt use it on our last day :)

We may take it up and down the Seine a few times in the daylight when we want the water perspective.

Hopefully we can walk alot or take Metro too.

We will be in Paris end of Sept too so I am booking marking too

What street map should I buy ?

Streetwise?
Insight?
Michelin?

I like laminated ones.

ttt

Jetsetj - I found my Eyewitness Guide to Paris has a wonderful street map and index BUT it's far to heavy to carry around all day long - SO I colour photocopied the map etc. and made a small lightweight little map book of my own.
The useful thing is I can scrawl all over the map marking various things and use the blank back of each page to make detailed notes on restaurants without the thought that I'm spoiling my book. You can easily laminate the pages but I wouldn't bother.
I am taking this very same little 'file' from last year with me this May trip as it has so much info now I rely on it completely!

I also take a VERY detailed MICHELIN 54 fold up lightweight map to look up any very out of the way places.
I bought mine at Dover ferry terminal last year but see that the address on the bottom is:
Michelin Cartes et Guides, 46 Ave.Breteuil, 75324 Paris.
That code 75324 has me puzzled.
www.ViaMichelin.com

I still feel comfortable with paper maps but now that we have a GPS I guess they may fall by the wayside?!