Organized Tours

By Bus

Before plunging into sightseeing on your own, you may like to take the most popular get-acquainted tour in Paris: Cityrama, 2 rue des Pyramides, 1er (tel. 01-44-55-61-00; Métro: Musée du Louvre-Rivoli). On a double-decker bus with enough windows for Versailles, you take a 2-hour ride through the city. You don't go inside any attractions, but you get a look at the outside of Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower, among other sites, and it helps you get a feel for the city. There's commentary in eight languages on earphones. Tours depart daily at 10am, 11:30am, and 2:30pm. A 1 1/2-hour orientation tour is 20€ adults, 10€ children. A morning tour with interior visits to the Louvre costs 42€. Half-day tours to Versailles (64€) and Chartres (63€) are a good value and relieve some of the hassle associated with visiting those monuments. A joint ticket that includes Versailles and Chartres costs 110€. A tour of the nighttime illuminations leaves daily at 10pm in summer, 7pm in winter, and costs 30€; it tends to be tame and touristy.

The RATP (tel. 08-92-68-77-14; www.ratp.fr), which runs regular public transportation, also operates the Balabus, a fleet of orange-and-white big-windowed motorcoaches. The only drawback is their limited operating times: Sunday and national holidays from 12:30 to 8:30pm, from April to the end of September. Itineraries run in both directions between Gare de Lyon and the Grand Arche de La Défense. Three Métro tickets will carry you along the entire route. You'll recognize the bus, and the route it follows, by the Bb symbol on its side and on signs posted along its route.

Friday Night "Rando" Fever

The Paris Roller Rando takes over the city on Friday nights, "rando" being short for randonnée, meaning tour or excursion. The starting time is around 10pm at the place d'Italie (also the name of the Métro stop). Roller folk from Paris and throughout Ile de France amass here to begin their 3-hour weekly journey through the city on rollerblades. Every Friday three motorcycle policemen lead the way with dome lights flashing, signaling moving cars to get out of the way. First-aid wagons follow the "rollers." On an average night in Paris, some 20,000 rollers show up. Many visitors like to stay up late that night to watch these "mad, mad Parisians" in all their crazed "rollermania."

Cruises on the Seine

A boat tour on the Seine provides vistas of the riverbanks and some of the best views of Notre-Dame. Many boats have sun decks, bars, and restaurants. Bateaux-Mouche (tel. 01-42-25-96-10; www.bateaux-mouches.fr; Métro: Alma-Marceau) cruises depart from the Right Bank of the Seine, adjacent to pont de l'Alma, and last about 75 minutes. Tours leave daily at 20- to 30-minute intervals from 10am to 11pm between April and September. Between October and March, there are at least five departures daily between 11am and 9pm, with a schedule that changes according to demand and the weather. Fares are 10€ for adults and 5€ for children 4 to 13. Dinner cruises depart daily at 8:30pm, last 2 hours, and cost 95€ to 135€. On dinner cruises, jackets and ties are required for men. There are also lunch cruises Saturday and Sunday at 1pm, costing 50€ for adults or 25€ for ages 11 and younger.

Some people enjoy excursions on the Seine and its canals. The 2 1/2-hour Seine et le Canal St-Martin tour, offered by Paris Canal (tel. 01-42-40-96-97; www.pariscanal.com), requires reservations. The tour begins at 9:30am on the quays in front of the Musée d'Orsay (Métro: Solférino) and at 2:30pm in front of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie at Parc de la Villette (Métro: Porte de la Villette). Excursions negotiate the waterways of Paris, including the Seine, an underground tunnel below place de la Bastille, and the Canal St-Martin. Tours are offered twice daily from mid-March to mid-November; the rest of the year, on Sunday only. As you glide along the waterways, recorded commentary in French and English relates how building supplies and food staples were hauled, with relative efficiency, into central Paris during the capital's building boom in the Napoleonic age of the 19th century. The cost is 17€ for adults, 14€ for seniors 60 and older and students ages 12 to 25, 10€ ages 4 to 11, and free for children 3 and younger.

Other Tours

Context:Paris (tel. 888/467-1986 in the U.S., or 01-72-81-36-35; www.contextparis.com) is an organization of graduate students and art-history professors who lead thematic walking tours of the city. Tours range from 1-hour orientation "chats" to 4-hour in-depth visits of the Louvre. Being academics, the guides try to create a college seminar feeling without being too obscure and scholarly. Context:Paris also rents cellphones, arranges transportation, and organizes culinary excursions. Prices vary widely depending on what itinerary you select, but many tours cost 35€ to 90€ per person.