PARIS
the
About-France.comguide
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.
►
Staying in Paris Check out the Paris Hotel Guide page.
► Selected hotels See our Paris Hotel map
for a hand-picked selection of conveniently located hotels, from luxury
and boutique hotels to economy hotels.
►
Planning your trip to Paris Check out the
About-France.com "Week in Paris" page: a
sample six-day programme that will help you get the most of your week
in the French capital.
Like
most French
cities, Paris is nota
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.....
The main passes are:
Paris
Visite - giving unlimited use of the metro / RER / bus
network for a given numer of days. Prices
start at €9.30 for a one day adult pass or 15.20 €uros for 2 days
(Summer 2011). Full details in English, plus downloadable Paris Metro
and
public transport maps from the official
Paris visitor website,
Paris
Pass-
giving free use of public transport, Cars Rouge tour buses,
and
admission to some 60 monuments / museums in and around Paris - though
NOT the Eiffel Tower. Prices
start at 89 €uros for two days.
Paris
Museum pass - giving unlimited admission to some 60
monuments / museums in and around Paris, excluding the Eiffel Tower. Prices start at 30
€uros for two days.
Other
passes:
Hop-on
hop-off sightseeing bus pass
for les Cars Rouges, open-top guided tour buses linking nine major
sites; a two-day pass costs just 22 €., and can be bought on the bus.
An alternative is Cityrama, where a 2-day hop-on hop-off pass costs 32
€, and covers four different routes. Les Cars Rouge are now included in
the Paris
Pass
The
"Batobus" and travel on the Seine. The Batobus
are river buses that go up and down the Seine from the Eiffel tower to
the quai de Montebello (near Notre Dame). There are 8 stops in all. A
day pass in 2010 costs 13 €, and a 5-day pass costs 20 € per adult.
PASSES are
often the easiest solution, but not necessarily the cheapest
...
METRO and Bus information for Paris
If you plan to use the Paris metro or the bus
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.
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
Bookmark
and share
In
an emergency
in Paris:
24
hr chemist / pharmacies:
a) 84, av des Champs-Elysées 75008, tel 0145
62 02 41
b) 6, place Clichy 75009, tel 0148
74 65 18 .
English-speaking
pharmacies:
British Pharmacy
62, Avenue des Champs-Elysées
75008 Paris 0143
59 22 52
British-American pharmacy,
1 rue Auber, 75009 0142 65 88 29
Like
most 
If you plan to use the Paris metro or the bus
less than six times in a day, 
