Paris Information for tourists

The city of light probably boasts more world-class museums, hotels, and restaurants than any other spot in the world…. but that’s only part of the story. Paris is a big, bustling city with neighborhoods that have a small-town feel, where people take time out to wind down and enjoy the simple things in life. Just look at how crowded the sidewalk Paris cafes are! The scale is human and the pace can be as fast or as slow as you want it to be.

 

Not to get lost or feel confused you should look through Paris information for tourists if you intend to travel there. This will be you guide to Paris. The French are nice reliable people, but you are an American in Paris, you are alone, and you must know at least emergency phone numbers.

 

Paris time

Paris time – 1 hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (+1 GMT). Daylight Saving Time is observed March-October

The first place where you go to find Paris Information for Tourists or in if you are in a trouble are Paris Tourist offices and centers.

•  Banque de France, Service des Caisses

31 rue Croix des Petits Champs

75001 (Telephone: 01 42 92 42 92)

Metro: Palais-Royal – direction la Défense

Hours: 0845 to 1530 – no interruption (Monday-Friday)

can change coins and bills every day.

 

For more information:

www.paris-touristoffice.com

Telephone: 01 49 52 53 68

08 92 68 30 00 (0,34 euros/minute)

Marie-Christine Rabot

mcrabot@paris-touristoffice.com

 

•  New Paris Tourist Offices:

Gare de Lyon welcome center

20, Boulevard Diderot
75012 Paris

Open from Monday to Saturday (Closed on Sundays and May 1)
08:00 – 18:00
Metro:  Gare de Lyon (line 1-14) RER Gare de Lyon (line A-D)

 

•  Paris Office of Tourism – Office de Tourisme de Paris

127, avenue des Champs-Élysées
75008 Paris
Métro: Charles-de-Gaulle-Étoile
Phone: 01.49.52.53.54
Fax: 01.49.52.53.00
09h-20h daily except January 1, May 1, December 25.

 

International Dialing Code:

All numbers for Paris and the outskirts of the city begin with 01 and have 10 digits. The country code is 33. (use the country code only when calling to Paris from another country). Calling cards can be purchased at tobacco stores, post offices and at main métro/RER stations in Paris to use in placing calls from public or private phones. To call the operator: dial 13. For directory assistance, dial 12. If you call from you hotel, ask a receptionist for more details.

If the number you need is 01 23 45 67 89,
then you must dial:
Your international dial out code, which is generally 00
+ 33 1 23 45 68 89

The Most Important Paris Telephone Numbers

Emergency:

police: 17
fire: 18
ambulance: 15
Emergency calls are free from phone booths.

 

Lost credit card

Visa, Master, Euro: 08 36 69 08 80
Dinners: 01 49 06 17 50

Public rest rooms:

Restrooms are not difficult to find in most places. There is a small fee to use the facilities in train stations.

In your Paris Hotel

Free Paris maps and other information can usually be obtained in hotel lobbies or from the front desk. Check in, freshen up, and, with your bags unpacked, your room key in your pocket, a city and Métro map, and a few spare euros, Paris is all yours!

Electricity:

220 volt A/C). Most hotels have 110V shaver outlets. Plugs have 2 round pins or sometimes 3 pins in a vertical row. American appliances will need a plug adapter and will require a transformer if they do not have a dual voltage capability.

Visitors with disabilities:

Ease of access is improving. A well researched guide called Access in Paris is available at no charge from Access Projects, 39 Bradley Gardens, London W13 8HE. It deals with all aspects of travel and sight seeing.

Children:

Children under 4 travel free on France railways. Admission is free to museums for those under 18. For more information concerning your kids see Kids’ Paris page

 

Some facts about the French.

Certainly, Paris information for tourists should include brief outlook at the population. You are not going to stay in your hotel all the time, are you? Then you should know something about French people to feel more relaxed and to make new friends.

French have taken pride in the sophistication of their culture, the beauty of their spoken language, and their diverse accomplishments in literature, the arts, and sciences. Even French cuisine and clothing fashions have long been a source of national pride. During the second half of the 20th century, as French society grew increasingly middle class and consumer oriented, a new set of attitudes and pursuits appeared alongside these elitist cultural attitudes. Material comforts, such as homes, new appliances, and automobiles, became synonymous with a high standard of living.

Anyone who has been to France will give you this advice: if you know any French, use it. If you don’t, learn a little. Simple phrases will do just fine. Smile. You’ll catch more abeilles with miel. Yes, you’ll run into the occasional jerk, but you’d do that anywhere. Most people you will run into probably won’t be on vacation like you and may just be short on time. Of course, you can take a dictionary or any book like “Paris Information for Tourists” or some such, which usually include the most commonly used phrases. Yet it is not that helpful as it seems to be. Overall, if you make an effort to learn a little and appreciate a little about the language and culture, you’ll win new amies!

Last but not least, there is a common misconception that Frenchies don’t like Americans. This is simply not true. Apart from the usual percentage of ‘fubars’, French people like American people. Just go beyond the media-hyped ‘French cultural exception’ and the NYC-like mood of this species called ‘Parisians’, and you’ll find rather nice people ready to help you around. And this holds truer and truer as you sail away from Paris. So don’t take Bill O’Reilly’s rants against the Frenchies for God’s word. Just relax, open your mind to a different culture, drink a little wine, and you’ll get along famously with Lafayette ‘s offspring.

Gratuity
Your Paris restaurant/cafe check already includes a 15% gratuity. But a gratuity around 5/10% is expected at restaurants. Your credit card receipt won’t show any gratuity line. Taxi and guides of organized city excursions will appreciate a small tip very much as will taxi drivers. Don’t forget to tip the lavatory attendant !
Paris Events and Holidays:

Jan. 1 New Year’s Day
Easter Monday (dates vary each year – Mar. or April)
April 30 Great Prayer Day
May 8 VE Day
July 14 Paris Bastille Day
August 15 Feast of the Assumption
November 1 All Saints’ Day
November 11 Armistice Day
December 25 Christmas Day

 

Lunch and dinner

French people do lunch between 12:30 and 2:30 PM, and dinner between 7:30 and 10:00 PM. If you wish to avoid the crowd, lunch at 12:00 tops and dine out from 6:00 to 7:00 PM. Paris restaurants rarely serve between 2:00 and 6:00 PM.

Making a Paris Tour by yourself.

Planning on spending Paris vacation and playing with the buses, ask for the GRAND PLAN DE PARIS at any metro ticket counter. On one side is an invaluable bus map and on the other, the metro map.

 

If you decide to just take a Sunday ride between La Defense and Gare de Lyon take the Balabus the daily 6,70€ MOBILIS ticket from RATP is good all day long for any bus, metro and RER seven days a week—very flexible. Unfortunately, the Balabus only runs between the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in September.

 

On the other hand, if you decide to ride around on a double-decker tour bus for a day or two, the Open Tour bus operates seven days a week, and stops at many of the regular bus stops and will cost 24€ for one day -26€ for two days.

- For the map, go to PublicTransportation/ ParisVisite/ Maps/ Balabus on my site.

- For information on metro and bus tickets around Paris, go to PublicTransportation/ ParisVisite/ TravelGuide/ Tickets/ Alltypes.

Check out MOBILIS for the Balabus – zones 1-3 and Versaille -  zones 1-4.
Streets
This issue of Paris Information for Tourists is about three general rules to know regarding the orientation of the streets:

- The streets running perpendicular to the Seine (North-South) are numbered in starting from the Seine.
- The streets running parallel to the Seine (East-West) are numbered in the direction that the Seine flows.
- If you place yourself at the beginning of a street (next to the address #1) and look towards the other end of the street, the odd numbered addresses are on the left side of the street and the even numbered addresses are on the right.

 

Conversion charts.

 

For easy Paris shopping women’s dresses, knitwear and blouses :

 

Women’s shoes (chaussures):

 

Men’s shoes:

To change centimeters into inches, multiply by .39 (15cm = 5.85 inches / 30cm = 11.7 inches)

To change inches into centimeters, multiply by 2.54

 

Tourist Attractions in Paris

If your appetite has been satisfied but your curiosity is still keen, Paris sightseeing offers more museums than most other large cities in the world – around 150 of them. Everybody knows about the Louvre, the former royal palace that today is home to the world’s biggest art museum. Most people have heard of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, a fabulous repository of 19 th and early 20 th -century art, and of the Picasso museum. But do you know about the city’s dozens of small museums devoted to more obscure areas of interest such as locks, hunting and dolls (all in the Marais quarter)? Paris has a museum for whatever strikes your fancy. And how about the Gustave Moreau, Zadkine, and Bourdelle museums, which focus on individual artists and are housed in the actual homes where they lived and worked? Or the Nissim de Camondo museum, a faithful reconstruction of an 18 th century aristocratic home complete with furniture, rugs, paintings, porcelain and goldplate, and the Jacquemart-Andre museum, a splendid 19 th -century mansion bursting with Italian Renaissance masterpieces? And then there’s the Rodin museum, an 18 th -century mansion where the 19 th -century sculptor lived and worked, whose gardens, with their magnificent view of the Dome of the Invalides Church, are one of the most delightful spots in Paris.

Paris Information for tourists provides you with addresses and phone numbers of some Paris museums. If you decide to travel to Paris and do not order any organized excursions, make sure you get these numbers.

Opéra – Grands Magasins welcome center

11, rue Scribe
75009 Paris
Open from Monday to Saturday
09:00 – 18:30

(Closed January 1, May 1, Christmas Day)

Metro: Opéra (line 3 – 7 -8) or Chaussée d’Antin
(line 7 – 9) RER Auber (line A)

 

Tour Eiffel welcome center

Between the east and the north pillars

Open 7 days a week from May to September (except May 1)
11:00 – 18:40

Métro: Bir-Hakeim (line 6) RER: Champ-de-Mars / Tour Eiffel  (line C)

(for more information see Eiffel Tower, Paris page)

 

Gare du Nord welcome center

18 rue de Dunkerque

75010

Open 7 days a week 12:40 – 20:10

Closed Dec 25 and May 1

Métro:  Gare du Nord (lines 4 et 5) RER: Gare du Nord (lines B and D)

«Welcome kiosk» is located beneath the glass roof, in the Ile-de-France zone – street level.

Gare du Nord serves travelers voyaging between England, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, northern France and Charles de Gaulle/Roissy airport.

Montmartre Tourist Office (Syndicat d’Initiative de Montmartre ) welcome center

21 place du Tertre

75018

Open 7 days a week – 10:00 – 19:00

Métro: Abbesses (line 12) or Anvers (line 2)

Espace du Tourisme d’Ile-de-France welcome center

Carrousel du Louvre
Place de la Pyramide Inversée
99, rue de Rivoli

75001

Open 7 days a week 10:00 – 19:00

Métro: Palais Royal/Musée du Louvre, (lines 1 and 7)