Paris Travel Guide: What to Know Before You Go

The most common mistake in Paris is trying to fit the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre-Dame into one day. You can physically do it. You just won't enjoy any of them. Plan one big sight a day and fill the rest with walking.

How the city is laid out

Paris is divided into 20 arrondissements, numbered in a spiral from the centre outwards like a snail shell. The river runs through the middle: the Right Bank to the north, the Left Bank to the south. Most of what visitors come for sits in the 1st to the 8th, which is small enough to walk across in an hour. When a Parisian gives you an address, the arrondissement number tells you roughly where it is.

What to book before you land

Timed tickets for the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and for the Catacombs if they're on your list. In spring and summer these sell out days or weeks ahead. Notre-Dame is free to enter, and you can reserve a time slot online to skip most of the queue.

Money

Paris is expensive, mostly because of hotels. Food can be reasonable if you eat a set lunch menu rather than dinner at the same place, and picnic from markets and bakeries. Cards, including contactless, are accepted almost everywhere, even for a coffee. Keep a little cash for markets.

Service is included in restaurant bills by law. Rounding up or leaving a euro or two for good service is normal. Nobody expects 15 or 20 percent.

Etiquette

Say "bonjour" when you walk into a shop, a café or a bakery, and "merci, au revoir" when you leave. Skipping it comes across as rude, and it's the reason a lot of visitors think Parisians are unfriendly. A few words of French, even badly pronounced, change how you're treated.

Small practical things

Plugs are the European two-pin type, 230V. Tap water is safe, and there are free drinking fountains all over the city. Pickpockets work the metro, the area around the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur, so keep your phone out of your back pocket.

Museums close one day a week, and it's not the same day everywhere: the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, the Musée d'Orsay on Mondays. Worth checking before you plan each day.