Leaving for France â€“ Any advice?

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Ryan82

Paris is GREAT!!! Love the City! I will list the things I consider a must do, or at least I enjoyed the most while I was there.

1) The best view of the city is not the Eifle Tower, or Arc de Triumph. The best view is hiking to the top of Notre Dame. The tower is just too high up, it feels like you are looking at a map, but its nice. The best time to go is right when it opens as the lines can get kinda long, but it over looks the romantic and older part of the city and seeing the gargoyles close up is a treat too! If you have to pick one of the 3 DEFINATELY go with Notre Dame.

2) If you are planning on visiting sites/museums definately look into the museum pass. It will save you lots of time and money when going between the churches, museums, historical sites, and attractions. You can get them at nearly every place you use them, but for the most helpful people and information use the Tourist Information (TI) Offices, the one I remember the best was in the mall attached to the Louvre.

3) Have to try the crepes! They are amazing, and after traveling throughout the city and France, and traveling with a native. The best place we found is a little cart on the west side of the street on Rue Cler. Its a great street worth visiting, near the Eifle tower, but having those amazing crepes just added to the awesomeness factor.

4) Go to Versaille. It's a little bit of a drive/train ride, but a must see. Take the time to walk the grounds too!

5) If you are planning on going to the Louvre, there is a lot too see! My recommendation is to download, for free, the Rick Steves audio guide tour from iTunes. You can play it on any MP3 player or iPod and it will give you a rought hour and 1/2 tour of the top pieces and then you can stroll through and see what else they have. It will save money off of the audio guides they try to sell at the museum.

6) You are going at a time that wont have a bunch of tourists, but still the best times to be out and about are early mornings and the evening!

Where we stayed we were a bit outside of the city and didn't eat at too many nice resturants downtown, so I wont be much help there.

Have a great trip and enjoy! Hope this helped.

B'sMomma

I'm soooo jealous! I spent a month in Europe a few years ago - 2 weeks in France. I'd LOVE to go back!

Must sees: of course the obvious: Eiffel Tower, Arch de Triumph, Louvre, Notre Dame. And if you have any time to visit South France there's a village nicknamed the Red Village (can't remember the real name, sorry) that's absolutely beautiful! Def go to Versailles and visit the castle.

Foods: Try their duck, it's AMAZING! Cheese (my fave was a variety of goat cheese), wine, duck patte. And Yoplait sells a yogurt over there that you dump out of the container and mix with some sugar - it's soooo good, I wish they'd sell it here. Beware if you order meat their well-done is comparable to our Medium. Breads, pastries, choc mousse. The food there is so much better than here. Enjoy some of it for me while you're there! Oh, and if you order water you will get cabonated water, you have to specify not-carbonated.

Avoid the subway after dark. And be very cautious if you have to travel through the "shady" parts of the city.

I was lucky to be staying with a friend who is from Versailles. Her apartment was only a few blocks from the castle. I can't speak a word of French (as you can probably tell from the spelling above LOL).

Let us know how it goes!

ETA- And if you happen to be a Doors fan, Jim Morrison is burried in a famous cemetery in Paris. I went there, it pretty amazing. A lot of famous people are burried there.

brian b

go to the louvre(sp), versailles(sp)castle, paris is expensive, notre damn was nice, and the tower is a must, we ate in the latin quarter nice, and dont eat at a place(expensive) le champ du mars (rip off) bad food, its down town. you are going to love visiting paris. have your camera ready when you fly over greenland beatiful snowy mountains view, musee du orsay is nice also

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