Everyone books the Louvre. The rest of Paris takes a plan.
Which Eiffel ticket actually reaches the summit. What a dinner boat on the Seine costs once the wine is on it. Whether Versailles beats Giverny when you only have one spare day. Every tour in this city, reviewed.
A first Paris trip hangs off four bookings.
Four tickets that fill up, priced, with the traveller verdict on each.
01The one everybody booksLouvre Museum Timed-Entrance TicketTimed entry to the Louvre, nothing else attached. Take a slot before ten or the Wednesday late opening and the Denon wing is almost civil.
02The climbEiffel Tower Summit or Second Floor AccessLift to the second floor with the summit as an option. The top shuts in high wind, so an early slot is the one that survives the weather.
03The day out of townVersailles Palace and Gardens Full Access TicketPalace and gardens on one full-access ticket. Go on a fountain day and the whole park runs to music.
04The first eveningEvening River Cruise with MusicAn hour on the water with the bridges lit. The cheapest good idea in Paris, and the one nobody regrets.
Four Paris monuments run on slots. Sort them before you fly.
The queue is decided at the checkout page, not at the door. What each one costs to walk into, and which is worth paying a guide for.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance Ticket
The LouvrePlain timed entry, or a guide who goes straight to the Mona Lisa.
Eiffel TowerSecond floor by lift, stairs if you want the cheaper ticket.
Notre-Dame and Sainte-ChapelleThe reopened cathedral, and the glass upstairs on the island.
Musée d’OrsayImpressionists behind the old station clock.
All 84 Paris tickets and passes →
The Seine is the cheapest good hour in Paris.
Sightseeing boats turn round every twenty minutes at the Eiffel quay and the Pont de l’Alma, and the same river becomes a dining room after eight. Glass roofs, open decks, and the small boats that lock up into the Canal Saint-Martin.
Six Paris quarters, and the walk that makes sense of each one.
The hill with a vineyard behind it, the Marais and its falafel queue, the bookshops of the Left Bank, the island the city started on, the avenue up to the Arc, and the cemetery where everybody famous ended up.
The Eiffel Tower, and the two Paris views that include it.
Every tower ticket →
The second floor is the view most people come for. The summit costs more, sells out first and shuts in high wind. The stairs are cheaper, emptier, and 674 steps to level two.
Lift to the second floor
Enough for the drop down the Champ de Mars and the bend of the river. Take the first slot of the morning or the last of the evening and the queue is a different animal.
Tower, then a boat
The quay directly under the tower is where the sightseeing boats turn round, so the two go together as one afternoon and cost less bought as a pair.
The roof of the Arc
Twelve avenues spoking out below you and the tower in the frame, which is the one thing the tower’s own summit cannot give you. It stays open until eleven at night.
The Paris days out more travellers book than anything else.
The whole Paris catalogue →Two timed tickets, a boat at dusk and a palace an hour west. This is what the city actually books.
1
Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance Ticket
Book a timed Louvre entry ticket for $26 and enter through the Pyramid, Porte des Lions, or Carrousel entrance. You get access to the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions, but not a guide or audio guide. Plan your route before arrival because the museum is enormous.
From · $26
Read our review →
2
Disneyland® Paris 1-Day Ticket
from $61
3
Versailles Palace and Gardens Full Access Ticket
from $17
4
Evening River Cruise with Music
from $27
5
Eiffel Tower Entry Ticket with Optional Summit Access
from $29
6
Eiffel Tower Summit or Second Floor Access
from $59
7
Louvre Guided Tour with Reserved Access & Boat Cruise
from $81
8
Moulin Rouge Cabaret Show Ticket with Champagne
from $115
The day trips that pull people back out of Paris.
Versailles is forty minutes on the RER and a whole day once you are inside the gardens. Giverny is a half day and the pond is the point. Normandy and Mont Saint-Michel are twelve hours in a minibus, and both are worth the alarm.
Paris after dinner: a cabaret, a lit river, a car with no roof.
The Moulin Rouge still runs two shows a night and still sells out. The dinner boats push off around eight with a glass roof over the table. And a 2CV with the top rolled back gets you the tower sparkling from six different bridges for the price of a taxi across town.
Every Paris night out →
Montmartre is a hill, a working vineyard and a queue for the funicular.
The domes are free to walk into and the steps below them are where everyone photographs the city. Behind the basilica the crowd thins out inside a hundred metres: a vineyard that still makes wine, Dalida’s square, the last windmill, and a cheesemonger older than the church.
- 1Montmartre Hidden Gems and Scenic Highlights Walking Tourfrom $38
- 2Montmartre Hill French Gourmet Food and Wine Tasting Walking Tourfrom $145
- 3Montmartre Cheese, Wine & Pastry Guided Walking Tourfrom $127
Paris by price: the ticket, the guided morning, the long day out.
The whole catalogue in three price bands. The bottom one is mostly timed entry tickets; the top one buys a private guide or twelve hours in a minibus.
Entry tickets, an hour on the river, a walking guide working for tips.
Skip-the-line guided visits, dinner cruises, Versailles with transport, the cooking and pastry classes.
Normandy and Mont Saint-Michel, Champagne with six tastings, private guides and chartered 2CVs.
Three Paris experiences that exist nowhere else.
Every capital has museums and a river. Six million skulls in a mine under the fourteenth, a garden that invented a painting movement, and a revue that has run since 1889 are Parisian problems.
The Catacombs
The city ran out of graveyard in 1780 and moved six million Parisians into the old limestone quarries. The route runs a mile and a half through the tunnels, the temperature sits at fourteen degrees all year, and only two hundred people are allowed below at a time. That cap is the whole reason the plain ticket disappears and the restricted-access tours exist.
- 1Catacombs Entry & Seine River Cruise with Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 1,150 reviews
- 2Catacombs, Audio Guide, and River Cruise Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 966 reviews
- 3Catacombs Ticket and Seine River Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 853 reviews
Giverny
Monet bought the house in 1890, spent the rest of his life gardening it, then painted the garden for thirty years. The water lily pond and the green Japanese bridge are the actual objects in the actual paintings, forty minutes by train out of Saint-Lazare. The whole place shuts for the winter, so it is a spring and summer trip or nothing.
- 1Giverny Day Trip with Audio Guide or Live Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 2,372 reviews
- 2Giverny, Monet’s House, & Gardens Half-Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,174 reviews
- 3Giverny Monet’s Home and Gardens Half Day Tour from Paris★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,836 reviews
The Moulin Rouge
Sixty dancers, a thousand costumes and a python in a tank of water. The revue is called Féerie, it runs at nine and eleven every night of the year, and the champagne is part of the ticket rather than something sold to you at the table. Seats near the stage go weeks ahead.
- 1Moulin Rouge Cabaret Show Ticket with Champagne★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 16,088 reviews
- 2Dinner Show at the Moulin Rouge★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,333 reviews
- 3Crazy Horse Cabaret Show★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,726 reviews
The four Paris tickets to buy before you pack.
Most of this city can be decided over breakfast. These four are governed by timed slots, a fixed curtain and a hard headcount underground, none of which cares what day you land.
- 01Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance TicketEntry is a timed slot and the late Wednesday and Friday openings go first. Arrive without one and the Pyramid queue is your afternoon.
- 02Eiffel Tower Entry Ticket with Optional Summit AccessSummit lifts are capped and the top shuts in high wind. Slots open around sixty days out and the sunset hour goes within days of release.
- 03Catacombs Entry & Seine River Cruise with Audio GuideTwo hundred people are allowed in the tunnels at once, so entry runs on a strict timed queue and the cheap ticket is the first thing gone.
- 04Moulin Rouge Cabaret Show Ticket with ChampagneTwo shows a night in the same room since 1889. The tables near the stage go to whoever booked earliest, and there is no standing room.
The Louvre shuts on Tuesday, the Orsay on Monday, and it rains anyway.
Plan the two big museums around their closed days and keep a wet list for the rest. Covered passages, a cheese cellar, a croissant class, a perfume workshop and the glass-roofed dinner boats all work in the rain, and half of them are better for it.
By quarter and by landmark
Louvre, tower, river, Versailles: the order that works.
Seine cruise
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