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Paris information - travel guide and tips |
About-Paris - thematic travel guide to France |
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| PARIS The About-France.com guide A website about Paris : getting round Paris, tourist attractions, where to stay, and other things to see and do.PARIS is Europe's most fantastic city, a place that has everything for the traveller or visitor. Whether you visit Paris on a day trip, Paris in the Spring, Paris for a week or for far longer, this is a city that has it all! Museums, theatres, shops, fantastic historic monuments, a beautiful riverscape, Paris has all of these. this website helps you plan your visit to Paris, and get the best out of your stay in the French capital. |
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| Guide
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regions of France Beyond
Paris, a guide to the French regions and their tourist attractions.
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| Guide
to Paris Make
the most of your trip to Paris; Information on attractions, Paris
hotels, transport, and lots more.
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| Tourism
in France
The
main tourist attractions and places to visit in France - historic
monuments, art galleries, seasides, and more
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Information
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A mine of information about
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dictionary of modern France - key figures, institutions, acronyms,
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The Eiffel Tower
► For
your mobile: see Paris
information for mobile devices
 Like
most French
cities, Paris is not a
place to visit by car. Parking can be an expensive nightmare (though
less so than London), and the city has a great public transport
network, with a fast underground network that stretches well into the
suburbs.The public transport system includes buses, the underground and overground metro, the RER (express transit metro), and of course plenty of taxis. Taxis in France are ordinary vehicles with a taxi sign on the roof, not special vehicles as in London. Visitors who plan to use lots of public transport in Paris may find that the best or cheapest solution is to take a visitor's pass, "Paris Visite", though this is not necessarily the case (see below). The Paris Visite passes are available on a 1, 2, 3 or 5 day basis, and cover all types of official public transport in the central area or central area and suburbs, depending on the option chosen. Take care... Where to buy Paris visite pass ? The simplest is to buy it when you reach France, from any Paris area train / metro station, airport, information point or tourist office. Buy it at the ticket office, not from a machine (unless renewing). If you want to buy it on line in advance, only do so here; you'll get the tickets at the official price, but you will pay extra (at least 9 Euros) to have them mailed to you. DO NOT purchase in advance from other online websites that sell these tickets well above the real cost, and charge excessively for delivery too. You could end up paying double the cost...... For more ideas on keeping down your costs, visit the Budget Paris page Information on the main Paris passes:There are several different "passes" available for visitors to Paris, and it is a good idea not to get the wrong one, as this will mean either paying too much or else getting less than you bargained for..... Apart from the potential savings they offer, having a pass means avoiding the ticket queues at the entrance to popular sites.The main passes are:
PASSES are often the easiest solution, but not necessarily the cheapest way to visit Paris ... METRO and Bus information for Paris When visiting Paris, if you plan to use
the metro or the bus from tiçme to time but
less than six times in a day, opt
for a "carnet" (pronounced
Car-nay). This is simply ten standard tickets at a reduced rate
(€
12.50 for ten in November 2011). Carnet tickets have no date limit, and
can be shared among members of a group. If you have some left over at
the end of your stay, keep them for next time. They are valid on buses,
the metro and the "RER" within the cental area, and on metro and RER
journeys allow as many changes as you want. Changing: Just one important point to note: while you can change metros or change buses on a standard journey ticket, you can't change from a bus journey to a metro journey, or vice-versa. Though the Metro is mainly an underground system, several parts of the network are above ground, and offer an interesting way to see Paris from well above street level. Note: Neither a standard Paris metro ticket nor a central Paris pass are valid on the RER for travel into the suburbs, and notably for travel to Charles de Gaulle or Orly airports. For such destinations, you must buy a specific ticket. Specific destination tickets and carnets are available at all metro stations, and from automatic machines which accept credit cards. Carnets can also be bought in some main French railway stations outside Paris.  Finding
your way in the metro.This is no problem. Using the maps available, check the line number and terminus station of each line you want to take. If you need to change routes, follow the "Correspondance" signs on the platform and through the foot tunnels; these indicate the line numbers and the termini. Just follow the right one. The RATP (Paris transport authority) provides free maps which are usually available in hotels, metro stations and other places. Click this small map or this link for a printable Central Paris metro map. Travelling outside Paris: use the trains or hire a car at a location on the outskirts of Paris, to avoid having to drive in the streets of Paris. See tips on car hire on the outskirts of Paris. Click here for travel to and from Paris airports General Paris transport tips :TIP - Train or bus from the airport: Generally speaking, the RER train service is fast, and cheapest. See Paris airport guide.TIP - If you arrive by air in Paris for a day trip, buy the 1 day "Paris visite" visitor pass for zones 1-5, which includes the airports. that way you also have unlimited hop-on hop-off public transport during your day in Paris TIP - Changing trains at "Chatelet" metro hub. Chatelet is the biggest interconnection station on the Paris metro system: three main RER routes cross here, notably B (for the airports) and A (serving the Gare de Lyon and Disneyland). If you are changing from a southbound "B" train to a south/east bound "A" train, (for instance, coming from Charles de Gaulle airport and heading for Gare de Lyon or Disneyland, a common combination), just cross the platform. The same goes if you are taking these routes in the opposite direction (for example coming from Gare de Lyon and heading for Charles de Gaulle airport). Nothing could be simpler! For other changes, follow the indicator boards, having noted which RER or metro routes you want. TIP - Your ticket. Always keep your ticket until your journey is finished, even if it is just a single journey ticket. If you use the RER in the central urban area of Paris (which you can do, of course), you will need to put your ticket through the machine both to get onto the platforms and again to get out of the RER area. Click here for Paris tourist attractions guide : Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Montmartre, Moulin Rouge, and much more |
Guided tours of Paris |
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