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Paris is not only one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but one of the most fascinating. It is a city of world-class museums, important religious architecture, sculpted parks, and great historical landmarks, but it is also a city of little neighborhood cafes and bakeries, winding cobblestone streets, and charming little markets. The best visits to the city balance the big and the small, the cosmopolitan and the traditional. And sometimes striking this balance means bringing in a professional tour guide. Whether you want a personal historian to guide you through one of the best museums in the world, a grand tour of the entire city in an air-conditioned coach, or something else entirely, a perfect Parisian tour is almost certainly waiting for you. . Take a look below to find the best Paris tours to book today.
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Best Overall Tour: Paris in One Day: Montmartre, Notre Dame, Louvre, Eiffel Tower
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This comprehensive small-group city tour is perfect for those who only have a short time in Paris, but it also works well as an orientation tour on the first day of a longer trip. Starting in the historic art district of Montmartre, with its famous funicular and the great Sacré-Coeur cathedral, the tour passes through the Métro and on foot through the city, including stops at the famous Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, the huge museum from the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, where you will get a skip the line pass to take the elevator to the second level. At the end of the long day (10 hours!), Your guide will leave you with a ticket for a one-hour boat cruise on the River Seine. If you are too tired, you can use the ticket on a different day of your trip, but it will be almost sunset when the walking cruise ends,
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Best Combination Tour: Paris Pass Including Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tour
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If your plans in Paris involve seeing as many museums and monuments as possible, you won’t find a better deal than this tour package, which combines a comprehensive sightseeing pass that includes most of the city’s famous attractions, as well as hop-on, hop-off access. direct to a network of buses that take you between them and throughout the city. On the possible file: the Center Pompidou, the Louvre (these first two with skip-the-line entrance), the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée Rodin, the Arc de Triomphe, the Orangerie, the Opera Garnier, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, Sainte Chapelle, the Tour Montparnasse, various castles and loads more. If the 15 hop-on, hop-off bus stops don’t include the neighborhood you want to visit, fear not: the pass also includes free use of the city’s bus and metro system. This tour can be purchased in two, three, four,
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Best Private Tour: Private Day Tour: Guide in Paris
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Private tours are a bit more expensive than group tours, but if you want a personal touch and maximum flexibility, they are well worth it. This tour is led by a local guide who knows the city back and forth. You will plan ahead with him and explain his interests: museums? Performing Arts? Food? – and he will plan everything, pre-purchase all the necessary tickets and coordinate all the other necessary details. The morning of your tour, he will meet you at your hotel and you will go! The best part: Among your planned sightseeing stops, you’ll visit your favorite little shops, markets, and restaurants on your route, so you’ll see a side of Paris that you don’t see much of on larger shopping tours, and pick Ideas to see where you could. stop in the days after your visit.
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Best Boat Tour: Bateaux Parisiens River Seine Dinner Cruise
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The Seine River runs through the heart of Paris and many of the city’s most famous landmarks – the Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre and many more – are visible from its UNESCO World Heritage-listed banks. This evening cruise (with departure options at 6:15 AM and 8:30 PM) goes by slowly as you sip champagne, dine on traditional French cuisine, and enjoy live music, immersed in the sheer romance of the city . The four-course meal is top-notch, with selections including items such as foie gras, roasted sea bass, duck breast with cherries, a carefully selected cheese board, and a chocolate-raspberry millefeuille. The ship departs near the Eiffel Tower and returns passengers there at the end of the cruise.
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Best bike tour: Paris Bike Tour
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Pedaling through Paris is a favorite (and often necessary) activity for locals and visitors alike. This three-hour small-group bike tour takes advantage of the efficiency and convenience of general city bike friendliness and lets you cover a lot of ground while still seeing, hearing, and smelling all the lovely things Paris has to offer. . Your guide will lead you through the central part of the city, passing the Louvre, Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower, the Tuileries Gardens, the Arc de Triomphe, and more. The tour moves through relatively flat areas and is suitable for anyone of any age who can ride a bike comfortably.
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Best Food Tour: Paris Chocolate and Pastry Food Tour
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Bakeries and patisseries offer a curse to spare in food-loving Paris: after all, there are only so many meals a person can eat, and every corner bakery looks more tempting than the last, with overwhelming displays of croissants, macarons and more. Let a professional guide show you some of the best chocolate and pastry shops in the St. Germain neighborhood, from the oldest to the most avant-garde, while using the culinary traditions of the city to illuminate various aspects of its history and culture. The walking tour lasts approximately three hours and guests can sample the products at five or six different establishments.
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Best Louvre Tour: Louvre Museum Walking Tour with Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa
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The Louvre is the largest and most visited art museum in the world. Its massive collections include more than 38,000 pieces of art displayed in more than 780,000 square feet of public space, which is to say… well, it’s a lot. Due to its sheer size and the breadth of its collections, the Louvre is truly difficult to navigate, and a tour guide can be an invaluable resource. They will provide navigation through the massive multi-winged palace, showing guests a curated selection of highlights (including, of course, famous pieces like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory, and many lesser known but still important and beautiful pieces), and give an idea of the techniques and the historical context of the art and the people who made it. This tour also allows guests to skip the typically long lines and, if they wish,
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Best Catacombs Tour: Paris Catacombs Small Group Walking Tour
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Without a doubt, the scariest attraction in Paris, the underground catacombs are also one of the most interesting. Stretched out beneath a vast portion of the city, this network of caves and tunnels was originally a series of mines, from which most of the stones that built the city were mined, and later, when the above-ground cemetery space it became scarce, it became a repository for the bones of generation after generation of Parisians. Some of the tunnels are available for the public to explore on their own, but there are more than can only be seen with a tour guide (mainly due to vandalism, but also because it is so easy to get lost there). On this tour, which allows guests to skip the line (often several hours), your guide will lead you through some of these special access tunnels,
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Best for Kids: Paris Walking Tour for Kids and Families
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Designed and led by Parisian mothers, this walking tour takes a small group of children on a child-led adventure through the Left Bank. The tour will stop at the Jardin du Luxembourg, where children can ride toy boats, ride the famous carousel, and watch a puppet show. Other stops include the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the Middle Ages, as well as the Grand Serre, a giant jungle-like greenhouse in the Jardin des Plantes. Kids can plot their route, and with just five kids per tour, they’ll get plenty of personal attention and can ask all the questions they can think of. Parents can join in, although they are also invited to drop off the children and take a few hours for themselves. The tour is specifically geared towards children ages 7 to 12.
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