If you can help it, take buses instead of the metro. It's too easy to visit Paris and see nothing by only taking the subway everywhere. While it will take a lot longer, you'll see everything. Something will jump out at you and make you get off. Problem solved.
The 95 bus from Montparnasse to Montmartre is a special treat. Get off at Rue Ordener and head east towards the 18th Ward Hall (metro Jules Joffrin). When you get to the back of Sacred Heart, climb the less-interesting rear steps so you get the thrill of seeing the view from the top without expecting it.
There are also some cool bridges on the far east side, out by les Marrioles. You can also experience the New York City similarity of their Little Italy (Place d'Italie) actually being Chinatown (really, Little Saigon).
We ended up taking the Metro most of the time, because Google maps doesn't have buses here. Except the #26 which runs by Alice's sister's house, as well as Gare du Nord and our first hotel. She uses that bus a lot, and we went to her place often and to Gare du Nord several times, so we got to know one bus route.
The Louvre - go early-ish in the day and do a couple hours, then go back to your hotel, take a nap, have lunch, relax, and go back in the evening. Otherwise you will be EXHAUSTED. Go in through the "groups" entrance at the back - it's allowed, and the line is a LOT shorter. Pick a day when it's open later - it will also be less crowded after 7PM. Mona Lisa's great - then turn around and notice the GIANT ROOM SIZE PAINTING that no-one is looking at because they're all crowding around Mona Lisa.
Sainte Chapelle is magnificent. The best stained glass ever. Totally worth a visit.
There are rental bikes - the kind you pick up at one place and drop off in another, if you're into that :)
This will be beautiful spring weather - enjoy just walking around, eating out of bakeries, grocery store picnics, etc.
If you're good with heights, the roof of Notre Dame is worth the climb - it's amazing how the city falls away and everything is silent.
My favorite museum is the Rodin museum, and it's lovely to walk in the garden there, too.
If you've got enough French to say "Hello" and "excuse me" and "I would like to order...", French people will often start speaking English with you, saying they want to practice, but you have to start in French or they get pissy :) Generally, though, Parisian rudeness is not real rudeness, it's New Yorker rudeness - they just don't have time to dick around with tourists.
I have enough French to carry a conversation with someone who doesn't know English - a frustrating, halting conversation, where half the time is spent in me asking them to remind me of a French word by describing its meaning, then going back and using that word in the sentence I actually wanted to say.
I got as far as "Advanced French Conversation" in college, where we did things like write skits and perform them. So much of that ability to speak French is gone now, and I really hope this visit will bring some of it back by the end of our time there.
Which means I want to practice, dammit! :)
Fortunately, one of the things I'm best at with foreign languages is pronouncing them (though I've never tried a tonal language), so I've had natives mistake me for a native speaker in places like Italy and Finland when I only say something brief, knowing only tiny scraps of the language ... but saying them correctly. On my recent few-hours stopover at Charles de Gaulle airport on a return trip from Israel, I bought food in French and asked guards questions in French and they answered in French, most times. But those were simple tasks for which I knew all the words.
Warning about bike rentals: you have to have a chip-based credit card in most places. I learned this the hard way in Lyon.
Frankly you have to have one in most of Europe anyway. Be prepared to hit ATMs and pay cash, and to wait in lines because you cannot use automated purchasing with a 20th Century swipe card.
Depends where. I never had trouble at restaurants with ordinary swipe cards two years ago. I usually prefer paying cash anyway though, since I usually found credit card international fees to be higher than my ATM fees, although that varies with your bank obviously.
Ditto on the chip-based card for bike rentals. It's been required everywhere I've done the bike thing (which is completely awesome, by the way)--that would be Toulouse and Lyon--and I believe Paris is the same.
Cluny Museum. That's where the original Unicorn Tapestries are. It's also a former monastery that was built over several hundred years, so you get a lot of different architectural styles in one rambling building.
I second the vote for Sainte Chapelle -- and Notre Dame, which is practically right next-door. Those rose windows and gothic ceilings are just breath-takingly gorgeous.
I'd never heard of the Cluny museum, will look for it! I have been to the Cloisters in NYC, which have what I think are called the Unicorn Tapestries... any connection?
Huh. Apparently there are two sets and I misremembered which was which. The more famous Unicorn Tapestries are indeed at the Cloisters, and the set at the Cluny is The Lady and the Unicorn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_and_the_Unicorn. Still, worth going to see. I remember there being a lot of symbolic detail, with different types of animals representing... virtues? seasons? Clearly I need to review my art history!
Cluny is great. Particularly the beamed ceilings in the later parts, and yes, the tapestries (which are in a dim room, and may be hung in the wrong order, as there is some debate about the story they are telling, but just about everyone agrees that they are supposed to represent the experience of the senses, as well as having seasonal aspects and appearing and disappearing animals). As far as I know there's no connection between the two sets of tapestries, though I wondered the same thing.
Do be careful to check the schedule, because, as with everything in Paris, it closes unexpectedly on days you'd expect it to be open, and they also host private parties. In the park across the street from Cluny, there is a very small sculpture of Romulus and Remus.
The archeological tour under Notre Dame is pretty interesting, particularly if you like Roman ruins or want to learn more about how Isle de la Cite was formed and what it was like in medieval times.
Oh, and definitely visit the medieval parts of the Louvre. I at least did a serious double take when I got down there. I won't spoil the visual.
I second or third Musee D'Orsay and the rest of the Louvre, where you can be two inches from a sculpture that is the same age as say, the Trojan war, with no glass between you, and also see their futuristic rising column elevators in the area where the three wings meet up. I especially recommend the Near East section, which has the twins of some of the middle eastern sphinxes that are in the British Museum, and some terrific temple paintings.
There is so much to do that before we went I went around to all the websites for attractions I wanted to see and made a spreadsheet of their hours and the days they were open and what neighborhood they were in (this will differ in the summer) so I could group things appropriately, and also so we wouldn't discover we had gone to a closed attraction and not know what to substitute.
Also, Paris is littered with miniatures of the Statue of Liberty that are the original molds and models for it including one that stands in the courtyard of the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
Have a wonderful time! Take photos, eat in a different place every time you can, and make sure to get the flower-style gelato ice cream cones at least once, because it's fun to watch them make them, especially if you get more than one flavor.
I grew up with ancient things :) One of my favorite childhood beaches was the site of a ~2200 year old aqueduct that we could play or swim around - and that also, since it goes out into the water, protects the beach from jellyfish, which was why we liked it. However, I bet Paris's ancient things are, on average, much more beautiful than most of the ruins we had scattered around us.
We really ought to go to the Louvre... how much time should we expect to want to spend there? Considering we'll have only about 7 free days and so many other things to see, what's your guess of how the Louvre stacks up - half day? full day? return on a second day?
Hmm, do Paris museums tend to be open on weekends? Do they have the American security-theatre obsession that would get in the way if we're wandering around the city with full backpacks?
We really ought to go to the Louvre... how much time should we expect to want to spend there? Considering we'll have only about 7 free days and so many other things to see, what's your guess of how the Louvre stacks up - half day? full day? return on a second day?
The Louvre is enormous. You could literally spend two weeks there and not see all of it. I would say the 'return on a second day' strategy makes the most sense. That's what we did, and while I still felt that I wasn't getting to see as much as I would have liked, it helped to know that we would have a second crack at it.
Hmm, do Paris museums tend to be open on weekends? Do they have the American security-theatre obsession that would get in the way if we're wandering around the city with full backpacks?
The primary place that I was turned away for having a backpack (and not for the pack itself, but for having a metal spoon) was at Sainte Chapelle, where they have amazing stained glass to protect. So they have a long security line and they're fairly anal about making sure you don't have anything that could be used to damage the glass. Sainte Chapelle is relatively near the Latin Quarter, Notre Dame and various other Isle de la Cite attractions so you may just not want to take your backpacks that day if you can help it.
Outside of that, they did a fairly rudimentary bag check at the Louvre and at Versailles, but they didn't confiscate anything. I think I recall that pecunium also got some weird reactions to the fact that he carries a pocket knife.
As to weekends, the museums and attractions are open and in general extremely crowded, so go to something more obscure, or go very early.
Paris is one of those cities where most of the agreed-upon Obvious Tourist Stuff really is totally worth seeing. Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, Eiffel Tower, Arc d'Triomphe, etc etc: yes, all of it, really.
My personal favorite not-on-the-obvious-list thing in Paris: the sewer museum. Early summer is, sadly, probably not the greatest time to visit it (dead of winter, really, is your best bet), but it's still fascinating.
Second on the sewer museum. And the food, though maybe not right afterwards.
The Palace of Versailles is completely worth a visit. So is Chartres, which has the famous cathedral as well as two others, and parts of which still look like the 16th century. Versailles is near the end of the RER C line; Chartres is about an hour out on the Transilien (commuter rail) from Gare Montparnasse.
Sainte- Chapelle! (moreso than Notre-Dame) Musee de Cluny! Musee D'Orsay! Louvre (assuming you aren't totally museum-ed out by then)! AND OMG THE SEWERS!!! Seriously, the sewers! Food, glorious food! And walk along the Seine. And over the Seine. And drink wine! Yummy wine! I'm very excited for you. :)
Sainte- Chapelle! (moreso than Notre-Dame) Musee de Cluny! Musee D'Orsay! Louvre (assuming you aren't totally museum-ed out by then)! AND OMG THE SEWERS!!! Seriously, the sewers! Food, glorious food! And walk along the Seine. And over the Seine. And drink wine! Yummy wine! I'm very excited for you. :)
I CAN"T BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT--You MUST go to Pere Lachaise cemetery. Anyone who was anyone is buried there. The best time I ever had in a cemetery was at Jim Morrison's grave.
* Do you want to go up to the top of something, but would be willing to take an escalator and not climb yourself, and don't want to go up *really* high? The Centre Pompidou, in addition to being a wacky building of its era (the 1970s) with interesting (and wacky) fountains near it, and modern art inside it, is also someplace where, at least 15 years ago, you could go. I remember the view as being nice, although obviously not as high up as you can possibly get... but also not nearly as long a wait.
* There are tons of terrific art museums in Paris, several of which have been mentioned. One which I found very interesting, and which hasn't been mentioned, is the Picasso museum.
I also recomment Montematre and the cementary which is close to it, with all these cats and famous people. And look out for space invaders, they are aaaaaaaaall over the city. Hundreds of them, really.
> I also recomment Montematre and the cementary which is close to it, with all these cats and famous people.
Cats wandering around and famous people in the ground, I assume? Or cat sculptures? Or do they bury famous cats there? :)
> How long are you staying?
We're flying out this Monday, June 10th, though we won't arrive there 'til Tuesday morning. We're flying back on Wednesday, June 19th. Want to come visit us?
I loved going under the big structures (tour, arc, etc) and looking straight up.
Not that you would, but don't go to disneyland paris. My inner child attempted escape and we went - it was awful.
The Parisian Pride Parade should be happening approximately the time you are there? I recommend it - it was probably the best experience we had while in Paris.
Oooh, you had my hopes up briefly! But it turns out Paris' Pride is June 29th, more than a week after we return. (We're flying out this Monday, and returning the following Wednesday)
Don't worry, I don't think it would even occur to us to go to Disneyland :) In fact I forgot it existed until reading your comment.
We were there recently and had a marvelous meal at Le Comptoir du Relais (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d719090-Reviews-Le_Comptoir_du_Relais-Paris_Ile_de_France.html). All the websites will tell you to make reservations months in advance--do, if you can--but they serve continuously (unlike many places, which take a break between lunch and dinner) so we were able to walk in about 5:45pm and sit right down. It's across the street from the Horse Tavern, which serves great mussels and is a fabulous place to sit and people-watch. Street performers often move through that intersection, adding to the entertainment.
We also enjoyed dinner a few years ago at Les Bookinistes, the more downscale enterprise of Michelin-starred chef Guy Savoy.
I'd second everything other people have been recommending with the addition of the Musee Rodin--if you're a Rodin fan, it's heaven and if you're not, this might be your chance to change that.
Eiffel Tower tickets can be purchased in advance online. Warning--the tickets only get you up to the 2nd floor, where you then have to wait in line for the summit elevator with everyone else.
Leave lots of time for simply walking around, enjoying the beauty of the place.
Buy a Paris Museum Pass (http://en.parismuseumpass.com/). Not only will you probably save some money, more importantly, you can CUT THE LINE at all the museums. No standing in line, anywhere! Oh and you can also use it to bop in and out of places of possibly minor interest, knowing that you can bop right out again if it's not interesting, but you've spent no extra money to find out.
I suppose I'll depend on Parisian friends we're visiting to warn of us a strike, but I don't know that we can do anything about it even if there is one. Maybe take a cab.
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The 95 bus from Montparnasse to Montmartre is a special treat. Get off at Rue Ordener and head east towards the 18th Ward Hall (metro Jules Joffrin). When you get to the back of Sacred Heart, climb the less-interesting rear steps so you get the thrill of seeing the view from the top without expecting it.
There are also some cool bridges on the far east side, out by les Marrioles. You can also experience the New York City similarity of their Little Italy (Place d'Italie) actually being Chinatown (really, Little Saigon).
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Sainte Chapelle is magnificent. The best stained glass ever. Totally worth a visit.
There are rental bikes - the kind you pick up at one place and drop off in another, if you're into that :)
This will be beautiful spring weather - enjoy just walking around, eating out of bakeries, grocery store picnics, etc.
If you're good with heights, the roof of Notre Dame is worth the climb - it's amazing how the city falls away and everything is silent.
My favorite museum is the Rodin museum, and it's lovely to walk in the garden there, too.
If you've got enough French to say "Hello" and "excuse me" and "I would like to order...", French people will often start speaking English with you, saying they want to practice, but you have to start in French or they get pissy :) Generally, though, Parisian rudeness is not real rudeness, it's New Yorker rudeness - they just don't have time to dick around with tourists.
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I got as far as "Advanced French Conversation" in college, where we did things like write skits and perform them. So much of that ability to speak French is gone now, and I really hope this visit will bring some of it back by the end of our time there.
Which means I want to practice, dammit! :)
Fortunately, one of the things I'm best at with foreign languages is pronouncing them (though I've never tried a tonal language), so I've had natives mistake me for a native speaker in places like Italy and Finland when I only say something brief, knowing only tiny scraps of the language ... but saying them correctly. On my recent few-hours stopover at Charles de Gaulle airport on a return trip from Israel, I bought food in French and asked guards questions in French and they answered in French, most times. But those were simple tasks for which I knew all the words.
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Frankly you have to have one in most of Europe anyway. Be prepared to hit ATMs and pay cash, and to wait in lines because you cannot use automated purchasing with a 20th Century swipe card.
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I second the vote for Sainte Chapelle -- and Notre Dame, which is practically right next-door. Those rose windows and gothic ceilings are just breath-takingly gorgeous.
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Now I want to go to the Cloisters again.
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Do be careful to check the schedule, because, as with everything in Paris, it closes unexpectedly on days you'd expect it to be open, and they also host private parties. In the park across the street from Cluny, there is a very small sculpture of Romulus and Remus.
The archeological tour under Notre Dame is pretty interesting, particularly if you like Roman ruins or want to learn more about how Isle de la Cite was formed and what it was like in medieval times.
Oh, and definitely visit the medieval parts of the Louvre. I at least did a serious double take when I got down there. I won't spoil the visual.
I second or third Musee D'Orsay and the rest of the Louvre, where you can be two inches from a sculpture that is the same age as say, the Trojan war, with no glass between you, and also see their futuristic rising column elevators in the area where the three wings meet up. I especially recommend the Near East section, which has the twins of some of the middle eastern sphinxes that are in the British Museum, and some terrific temple paintings.
There is so much to do that before we went I went around to all the websites for attractions I wanted to see and made a spreadsheet of their hours and the days they were open and what neighborhood they were in (this will differ in the summer) so I could group things appropriately, and also so we wouldn't discover we had gone to a closed attraction and not know what to substitute.
Also, Paris is littered with miniatures of the Statue of Liberty that are the original molds and models for it including one that stands in the courtyard of the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
Have a wonderful time! Take photos, eat in a different place every time you can, and make sure to get the flower-style gelato ice cream cones at least once, because it's fun to watch them make them, especially if you get more than one flavor.
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We really ought to go to the Louvre... how much time should we expect to want to spend there? Considering we'll have only about 7 free days and so many other things to see, what's your guess of how the Louvre stacks up - half day? full day? return on a second day?
Hmm, do Paris museums tend to be open on weekends? Do they have the American security-theatre obsession that would get in the way if we're wandering around the city with full backpacks?
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The Louvre is enormous. You could literally spend two weeks there and not see all of it. I would say the 'return on a second day' strategy makes the most sense. That's what we did, and while I still felt that I wasn't getting to see as much as I would have liked, it helped to know that we would have a second crack at it.
Hmm, do Paris museums tend to be open on weekends? Do they have the American security-theatre obsession that would get in the way if we're wandering around the city with full backpacks?
The primary place that I was turned away for having a backpack (and not for the pack itself, but for having a metal spoon) was at Sainte Chapelle, where they have amazing stained glass to protect. So they have a long security line and they're fairly anal about making sure you don't have anything that could be used to damage the glass. Sainte Chapelle is relatively near the Latin Quarter, Notre Dame and various other Isle de la Cite attractions so you may just not want to take your backpacks that day if you can help it.
Outside of that, they did a fairly rudimentary bag check at the Louvre and at Versailles, but they didn't confiscate anything. I think I recall that
As to weekends, the museums and attractions are open and in general extremely crowded, so go to something more obscure, or go very early.
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My personal favorite not-on-the-obvious-list thing in Paris: the sewer museum. Early summer is, sadly, probably not the greatest time to visit it (dead of winter, really, is your best bet), but it's still fascinating.
Also: OH GOD THE FOOD. ALL OF IT. OH MY GOD.
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The Palace of Versailles is completely worth a visit. So is Chartres, which has the famous cathedral as well as two others, and parts of which still look like the 16th century. Versailles is near the end of the RER C line; Chartres is about an hour out on the Transilien (commuter rail) from Gare Montparnasse.
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I CAN"T BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT--You MUST go to Pere Lachaise cemetery. Anyone who was anyone is buried there. The best time I ever had in a cemetery was at Jim Morrison's grave.
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* Do you want to go up to the top of something, but would be willing to take an escalator and not climb yourself, and don't want to go up *really* high? The Centre Pompidou, in addition to being a wacky building of its era (the 1970s) with interesting (and wacky) fountains near it, and modern art inside it, is also someplace where, at least 15 years ago, you could go. I remember the view as being nice, although obviously not as high up as you can possibly get... but also not nearly as long a wait.
* There are tons of terrific art museums in Paris, several of which have been mentioned. One which I found very interesting, and which hasn't been mentioned, is the Picasso museum.
* Enjoy!
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How long are you staying?
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Cats wandering around and famous people in the ground, I assume? Or cat sculptures? Or do they bury famous cats there? :)
> How long are you staying?
We're flying out this Monday, June 10th, though we won't arrive there 'til Tuesday morning. We're flying back on Wednesday, June 19th. Want to come visit us?
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Not that you would, but don't go to disneyland paris. My inner child attempted escape and we went - it was awful.
The Parisian Pride Parade should be happening approximately the time you are there? I recommend it - it was probably the best experience we had while in Paris.
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Don't worry, I don't think it would even occur to us to go to Disneyland :) In fact I forgot it existed until reading your comment.
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We also enjoyed dinner a few years ago at Les Bookinistes, the more downscale enterprise of Michelin-starred chef Guy Savoy.
I'd second everything other people have been recommending with the addition of the Musee Rodin--if you're a Rodin fan, it's heaven and if you're not, this might be your chance to change that.
Eiffel Tower tickets can be purchased in advance online. Warning--the tickets only get you up to the 2nd floor, where you then have to wait in line for the summit elevator with everyone else.
Leave lots of time for simply walking around, enjoying the beauty of the place.
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(oh, and don't fly Alitalia, and check for strikes on the trains or at Charles de Gaulle airport before you go)
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I suppose I'll depend on Parisian friends we're visiting to warn of us a strike, but I don't know that we can do anything about it even if there is one. Maybe take a cab.