this video is an excerpt from a muchlonger france travel talk by steve smith. to view other topics or to watchsteve's france talk in its entirety, visit ricksteves.com, or check out myrick steves youtube channel. enjoy. paris, world capital, paris, city of light, worldcapital of fashion, art, literature, food, and all things fine that civilizationhas to offer. this is the highlight of anybody's trip to france, probably, ifthey have never been before. notice the city that you're looking athere, the man-- the beauty is man-made. notice the height of the buildings, eightstories, it's a very human scale, and throughout the entire central part,city of paris.
here pedestrians are treated to this sort ofhuman scale that makes them feel good about walking from point a to point b.the city works well in any season, and a i'm not a big fan of travel in theoff-season to every place, but cities like paris, whether it's summertime and thewarmth of the summer in the city becomes like one big festival, and by the wayhotel rooms tend to go on sale in the month of august, because europeans don'ttravel that much to cities at that time of year. this time of year, paris lookslike this in the fall, it's beautiful. all the trees are deciduous,they all change. the parks. paris has-- the amount of space devoted to people isremarkable in the city, and in the
wintertime, my favorite time to go andi'm not kidding, is when the city of light earns its name. christmas in paris or anytime near orafter that, it's a lovely time to experience the city, it rarely snows, the moderate temperatures of travelingin paris can be compensated for with proper dress. cafes, you'll share them withthe locals, and museums will be much quieter, naturally, at this time ofyear. i like winter travel so much that i read a whole chapter about it in theguidebook to help you understand why, and where, and what to do about it in paris.consider that, flights are cheaper, hotel
rooms commonly are cheaper in january,february, march, as well. hotel rooms in paris are smallerthan the average, get ready for it. book your rooms early, don't wait. ilist places with great deals, 100 dollars for a comfortable double room, 125, are you kidding me? but you have to book those before other people get tothem, there are only so many of them. i list hotels in four differentneighborhoods because i-- only four different neighborhoods, because i'drather have average hotel in a really cool neighborhood than a really greathotel in a crummy neighborhood, think about that. so, the neighborhoodswe list in paris are the rue cler area,
the pedestrian only shopping street thatyou see near the eiffel tower. the hip and trendy, if you're young youwant to stay out at night, marais district near the ile saint-louis, we also listhotels on the ile saint-louis, as those areas are basically connected. the statelyluxembourg gardens area, surrounding this beautiful park, i think paris' mostbeautiful park on the edge, on the latin quarter for those who want to dabble inall things latin. to the budget neighborhood of montmartre. the further youget from the river, the cheaper hotels get in paris. and montmartre is a fifteen minutesubway ride from the river, where along the river most of paris' sights reside,you see. like about focusing on four
neighborhoods is in each of those neighborhoodswe list restaurants, lots of them, cafes, travel tips, allowing you to comehome after a busy day of sightseeing and not need to take a bus or subway to arestaurant, or to go do something. you're a temporary local in thatneighborhood, post offices, and all sorts of things like this so that you canfunction as a local. your learning is understanding what you're looking at andwhy it matters. this is why you came to paris. our books,i think, respect that by offering terrific information focused on yoursightseeing. our main guide to paris describes 21 different walking tours ofmuseums, neighborhoods, castles, and monuments,
and 50 other sights with good descriptions, listed in thatguidebook. our paris, pocket paris book on the other side, is for those with lesstime and shorter attention spans, it's abbreviated. if you want that information,the main, primary difference in these two books; if you want those walking toursyou need the main paris guide. if you have other ways of getting thatinformation or you're taking a guided tour, don't worry about it, buy the pocketparis book. either way, download our free audio tours in paristo your device, if it's a phone or any kind of application, or device, for free.you can do it on our website and you'll get
rick's voice narrating you through thelouvre museum, the d'orsay, and the palace at versailles, and the historic walk incentral paris. i'm a big fan of local guides for your learning, not all thetime, not every day, but they add a dimension to a tour that a book thatyou're reading and a self-guided tour just can't, you see. so in museums like thelouvre, where you'll have several english tours departing each day. theydo a credibly good job. or the d'orsay, or neighborhood walking tours likehere in montmartre, where neighborhood walking organizations, my favorite iscalled paris walks, they offer tours every day.
meet at ten o'clock, virtually every daythey do the montmartre and the impressionist neighborhood, but they do many others.it's whoever shows up at ten o'clock goes on the tour, about $20 a personfor two and half hours of a walking tour. pepper your trip with with walking tourslike this when you're in paris. the paris museum pass makes sightseeing a breeze forninety percent of any of the museums that you're interested in, are covered inthis pass. over 60 different sites covered with a museum. it comes in two, four,and six day increments, it averages about $15 a day, cost-wise. you'll save money, noquestion. the average site in paris is 11 or $12, all you have to do is go to two sites,that day and that's pretty easy to do
and you've saved money. but the realreason to buy this pass is because you own it, and you have this pass, and you'lldart into simple other museums that, well, steve or rick or gene described in thebook, but i don't know if it's not great, but i wouldn't pay $10 for it, but i gotthe pass so why not, and you'll be astonished at what you, what you discover in some of thoselesser-known museums. the pass also saves you waiting time in line for ticketlines, but not for security lines, like this. this reminds me that the travelersgreatest challenge today in paris are the crowds at the key monuments, likeversailles or the louvre. thanks to
growing economies in various parts ofthe world, more and more people want to see this grand city, and if you don't payattention, if you don't read your guide book, you'll end up here at versailles ona tuesday, when all the big museums in paris are closed. "hey, good idea, let's go totheir side at 10 in the morning." not an original brainstorm, read yourbook, arrive after two, there's no line. that's not that hard to do, but if you'rethere at ten o'clock what you gonna do? tour the gardens first, rick saidthat in his guidebooks. the gardens don't get crowds, and then come back later totour the inside of the palace. trust us and our guidebooks, really the best,probably, service we provide you with, how
to avoid lines these days in paris.getting around this city works just really well, it's a walker's paradise, ithink. it's a flat city with the river running through the center of it, right. east to west to send river runs, anythingto the right, if you're on a boat, as the current goes as the right bank. to theleft, is the left bank. it's a flat city, if you remember. walking and human scalewith these eight-story buildings, you don't have these wind tunnels as we do in ourhigh skyscraper cities, and it works well. just to give you a sense of scale,walking from the eiffel tower all the way to the louvre museum is a little bitover an hour along the river. most of
those sites that you want to see arealso within a 10 or 15 minute walk of the river. you could walk a heck of a lotof the city, but you have to remember that once you get to the sight. you haveto keep walking. so the subway system, europe's greatest subway system, itcovers you everywhere you go in paris. when you're exhausted, there will be a subway stop somewhere nearby learnthe words, "ou est le metro, monsieur, s'il vous plait?" and "where is the nearestmetro stop?" and you'll be whisked home on a subway line. the subway in paris works logically, it's easy to figure out, andhonestly gets you everywhere you
want to go. but it seems a shame to me tobe underground in this beautiful city, so i'm a big fan of using the buses when itmakes sense. bus 69 that you're seeing here is one ofthose examples. you get beautiful views, and this bus connects the eiffel tower andthe rue cler neighborhood with the rodin museum, the d'orsay museum, the louvre, the ile de la cite, and notre dame, the marais district, and the pere lachaise cemetery. thisbus gets you to many of the sites that you wanna see in paris. we liked it somuch we wrote a self-guided tour. start at the eiffel tower, hop on the bus andyou'll see when you cross the street, look to your left, now when you cross thestreet look to your right. for $2, for the
price of the bus ticket, you get aself-guided tour through the heart of paris. only rick would agree to thatcrazy idea of mine, and i know we've had happy readers that use that. the best wayto buy tickets is a "carnet" of 10. it's really the easiest, most flexible way togo. they work on buses and on subways, thoughyou can't transfer between the two. you can transfer between buses. you can splitthose ten tickets between two travelers or three travelers, children get acheaper version of the "carnet." "carnet" means 10 of something in french. thereare bus-- transit passes, pardon me, that work on a weekly basis or on a monthlybasis, but they are harder to use and to
fit into your travel schedule. so formost people that is the best way to go. the latest rage in paris today isbiking. 15,000 bikes are at your disposal in over 1000 different, not 1000, i don't know howmany different bike stands, allowing you to pick them up at one point and dropping them atanother. the french, the parisians have embraced this big time. it's used mostlyby locals, but tourists can now take advantage of those bikes, even if theircredit cards don't work on them, by booking on the website or, and the reason to dothis really isn't a sight-- to use this is a sightseeing instrument, if you feellike just getting out one day and taking advantage of all the bike lanes thathave been built
now for bikers, because of thispoint-to-point bike, it's called vã©lib’, built for locals. we can take advantage of it, renta bike through one of the bike rental agencies agencies i recommend in the book,it's easier that way, and go for a two hour ride if you want to. ride betweennotre dame and the eiffel tower and loop back on the other side, easy to do in a couple of hours. historicparis. i've decided to organize my sight seeing for you today around my favorite fourdays in paris, because of this way i can describe to you an example to organizingyour sightseeing ahead of time, not just running out, "let's go to the louvremuseum, oh, oh, oh, the orsay museum's close
by let's go there too." premeditatedsightseeing, organizing your sightseeing plans ahead of time makes so much sense.let's go, and you'll see how i do this. start with the city of paris, historic paris,right, its grandest gothic monument, recently cleaned, it looks just like thistoday, it's glorious, as it stands. started in the year 1163, taking over 200 yearsto complete. imagine the medieval mindset then, itdidn't matter to them. the community built a cathedral like this, time was notimportant. all that mattered was contributing tothe construction of this grand edifice of which they were so proud.today, if mychild doesn't get on the internet in 10
seconds, we're screaming. our patiencecompared to medieval times is dramatically changed, isn't it. put yourselfin a medieval mood then, when you're going to cities in europe and paris likethis, and understand how different things were then, and try to grasp, oh, pardon me,try to grasp how differently they thought. you can climb, rarely does this-- is thisever a possibility in europe, climb to the top of the gothic cathedral, yes you canit's covered in the museum pass. the entry for the church itself, thecathedral, is free but i think this is the greatest view you have over paris.if you have a museum pass it's free, be careful, lines are long because thefour hundred steps up naturally are
winding and slow. strategize when youchoose to go up the tower, the south tower of notre dame. then tour the, dropdown to the inside of this beautiful cathedral. our walking tour and our audio tour take, self-guided tours takeyou through it. a stone's throw away, a long stone's throwwith a good arm, lies the chapel of sainte-chapelle, still on the island ofthe cite where the city of paris was founded, between a split in the river seine.this chapel that we're looking at here today, almost smothered by the law courtsof paris, is the greatest example of gothic architecture, if indeed thepurpose of gothic architecture is to
stretch the church taller andto raise the windows using buttresses, and to fill the windows, pardon me, with stainedglass to tell stories of the bible. this has got to be the ultimateaccomplishment. for here, at the sainte-chapelle, built by king louis xi, theonly sainted king of france. because he found the crown of thorns, he wanted anappropriate place to house them, that's motivation. took only six years to buildthis, compared to the two hundred years it took for notre dame, thanks to the king'senergy. here, over 1,000 panels will tell you the history of christiancivilization, from the beginning of the world to the end of the world. designedso, because when it was built in the 1200s,
most people couldn't read, they wereilliterate. but they did understand symbolism, through those stained glasswindows, you see. get out, get off the island after this, after notre dame and saint-chapelle, wander into the latin quarter, ties in perfectly, see the beautifulviews of the flying buttresses of notre dame from the left bank. wanderdeep into the latin quarter, so called because some of europe's firstuniversities are located here, and the professors taught in the latin languageonly and students lived here, this is still a student ghetto. today the latinquarter is in paris, check the pulse of your lost generation compatriotshere at shakespeare and company. in the
early 1900s, thanks to wwi,the lost generation of people of ernest hemingway, scott fitzgerald, james joyce,and more, aldous huxley, gertrude stein, would gather here and try to figure outwhat sense of the world there was, and meet to discuss their writing.further deep into the latin quarter, a few blocks away, you can dart into, withyour museum pass, my favorite, one of my favorite, museums in paris. this is thecluny museum, it's the museum to medieval times in paris. here, because you'll seestiffer examples, lots of medieval relics gathered from monuments throughout paris,like the heads here that you're seeing here, were chopped off on the facade of notre dame, during the french revolution. they
are gathered here and on display for youto see today. you see, this is our historic paris tour, celebrating themiddle ages. the highlights though, of the cluny museum, are the several panels oforiginal stained glass from the sainte chapelle church that i just showed you.these are original, 800 years old, posted about five and a half feet highso you can see them very closely. you see, normally when you see stained glass, it'sso far away, "how could i possibly, without binoculars, understand and appreciate thedetail?" well you can at the cluny museum, you canactually reach out and touch these things, and see how heavy that lead isthat they used in stained glass
windows. the highlight for many is theseries of six tapestries called the, "lady and the unicorn," where a noble lady teachesunicorns about the senses of human touch, sight, smell, and taste. guided tour,self-guided tours, one of our self-guided tours in our guidebooks, city of paris,cluny museum. end your day going local. hangout at this park, theluxembourg garden. this will be a highlight that you haven't anticipated.enjoy watching parisians at play. rent a little sailboat if you have kids, andeven if you are a kid yourself, rent one at this point right here, andlet it race with other people's sailboats. there's no shortage of activities forchildren in the luxembourg gardens, but
mostly i just like to sit at one ofthose chairs and watch what parisians do in a park, in the afternoon. you see, thisis a perfect blend of heavyweight sightseeing sights, museums, neighborhoodwalks in parks, blended into one day. day two, we're going to tackle the louvre museumand then sashay up the champs-elysees to the arc de triomphe. the louvre museum. the louvre isthe palace of the kings and queens of france over the centuries. come therevolution in late 1700's when the museum was closed to kings andqueens, it was turned into europe's first public art museum. and today it remainsas such, it's though not designed as an art museum in the least bit, so thatpyramid that you see, the glass pyramid
was added in 1985 to rationalize theentry, and boy did that work. it's a grand entry to a grand art museum that makessense of getting between the various wings, you can't imagine improvementunless you had seen it beforehand. with over 30,000 works of art, the louvremuseum is a full inventory of western civilization. from mesopotamian artifacts5,000 years old egyptian mummies, to classical greek sculpture, to renaissanceart, to napoleonic art in the early 1800's where the museum stopschronologically. here we're seeing the crowning of napoleon byhimself. no small ego there. this museum, to remind you we provideself-guided tours in our guidebooks, the
audio tour that you can download onto yourphone or tablet works very well for the louvre. there are local guides as well, andcrowds can be an issue here. if you want to get closer to the mona lisa, you wantto strategize when you enter this museum. and yes, the mona lisa does look a bitsmaller than people realize she's going to be when they see her in person.go at night if crowds are a problem. it all depends on the time of year you're going.i would go at night even if there weren't crowds, because the museum onwednesday and fridays is open till 9:30 at night. so go about six. everybodyelse is tired, they're going home, they're done, they're going to cafes, they're done.
enter the museum then, then exit when it looks likethis. it's glorious at night. i'm not making this up, and even ifyou don't go to see the museum on the inside, make sure to pass by the louvre tosee the glistening, glimmering pyramid from the outside, glimmering from the inside. then spendthe rest of your day going a couple stops up the champs-elysees, world'smost famous boulevard, climb up the 420 steps covered in the museum pass toeurope's grandest triumphal arch, the arc de triomphe. yes, built by napoleon, twotimes larger than anything in rome, and sashay your way back down, crossingside-by-side, using our self-guided tour
of the camps-elysees as you do. passing by over-the-top, opulent shoppingstores like this, some of which you need an appointment toenter. how about that, you want to buy a dress, "i'm sorry, do you have an appointment?" i'mnot kidding. and stop to enjoy a cafe at this grandest of europe's boulevards,paying more than you ever should for a cup of espresso, 10 euros. $10.00,call it. that's crazy, on one hand, on the other, how many times do you have achance to sit and watch the conveyor belt of european traffic go by. and knowalso that the waiter won't bring your bill until you ask for it, so bring postcards,or write in your journal. two hours later
that 10 euros is a pretty good investmentof your time. he or she who comes home with the most money doesn't win. allowyourself some silly expenses once in awhile. the champs-elysees isbrilliant at night. if you have to choose and you only have one time you can go,go at night. you can still-- the arc de triomphe is open till 10:30 or 11:00 atnight, depending on the time of the year, and it truly does glisten any time ofthe year at night. my third-- day three is my favorite day in paris,impressionist paris day. we're gonna explore the hill town where theartists gathered during the late 1800's, and then visit the three art museumsthat house their collective genius. this
is a cool day to put together, and youshould think this way. wandering up then to this hill town here, thatuntil 1870 was not paris, but its own city. a wall separated that hill town from thecity of paris, and behind that wall laws were different. rents were cheaper, taxwas not booed, people were happier. buildings like sacre coeur were built, bythe way, not so interesting on the inside, you can tour it, our book walks youthrough it, but beautiful views from the steps in front of this neo byzantinechurch. but the neighborhood behind it feels distinctly apart from the rest ofparis, and the artistic heritage, cheaper rents that drew the likes of augusterenoir to paint the spirited people here.
again, drinking, dancing, having fun,because it wasn't that much fun down on the flatlands of paris. and dazzling,symbolic, "ooh, la, la," red windmill. in late 1800's this was more scary, anddaunting to the french, and the eiffel tower built in about the same time was,because they had never seen the can-can done before. it drew the attention ofcertain artists that you know, toulouse-lautrec, for example, and this was earth-shattering,and pushed i think it pushed art to another level. imentioned before we do a self-guided tour of the montmartre neighborhood in our book, butparis walks does a brilliant-- this is one of the ones i would highlight of theirs,or anybody give you a walking tour
because it really brings it to life, somany of the stories come to life of that hill town. then spend your afternoontouring the great museums, again, that house their art. the orsay museum is aconverted train station, brilliant home. now it is right on the seine river,housing all the great, the greatest collection of impressionist art, frommonet to manet, manet to monet, pardon me, i reversed that. to paul cezanne, vincentvan gogh, toulouse lautrec, and everybody in between. across the river you'll enjoythe-- fans of claude monet can make their pilgrimage to theorangerie, built precisely to hold the panels, eight panels, of his water lilies.painted at an elderly age when he had
cataracts and could barely see, these areremarkable accomplishment of this artist. 15 minutes, the other direction from theorsay museum, you can pay respects to the man who did for sculpture whatclaude monetdid for painted art. auguste rodin. his works are thoughtful and romantic. eachone of them. this is typical of impressionist art. the greatest sculptorsince michelangelo. again, walking tour in our guidebook. this museumseldom gets too crowded, and you can tour just its gardens if you want tofor a couple of euros, or spend ten, or your museum pass to get into theinterior. day four, the marais district. this is cool, backdoor, hip, trendy parisexample of seeing paris it's trendy
finest. this is medieval paris at itsbest, with stone walkways all centered around paris' greatest square, ithink, the place des vosges. the oldest square in paris as well, in the heart ofthe marais district. it's also the center for jewish culture, jewish people.until wwii, the center, the largest concentration, in fact, of jewishpeople, lived in paris. monuments, then, to their deportation during wwii,when 76,000 jews would be deported from the city of paris to concentration camps,is well commemorated at the memorial de la shoah.as well as, there's a brilliant, relatively new history museum to jewishculture, and it highlights their
contributions to western europeanculture. many people come to the marais district though for the modern art that'spossible to see here. and here, at the pompidou center, at the end of theeastern, well the western end of the marais district, wandering through, you can tour europe's greatest collection of modern art. the museum itself is fun, escalate to the top, it's all glass windows, and you have brilliantviews over the city of paris, while "wham, bam," you get a sample of the greatestmodern artists today, in one floor of one museum. thanks to the brilliance of theco-author, who is sometimes silent, gene openshaw, we have a guided tour tothis, and many other museums in paris, to
help make sense of this abstraction inart. just a few blocks away, covered in the museum pass by the way, isthe recently reopened museum dedicated to pablo picasso. 400 works of his, inthe greatest single collection anywhere in paris are now-- is now open again,covered with the museum pass, and ready for you to visit. end your day with thecapital, in my opinion, the greatest monument to the belle ã‰poque in france, theopulent opera house. paris' opera house, built and finished in 1875, where onceyou enter, you can tour on your own or with a tour, a couple times a day theyoffer guided tours. you will find, right away, that the point of thistheater was to impress you, and it was
more about being seen than seeingwhatever the play was when you came, or the opera. it was all about how youlooked, how you appeared, and its surroundings that you got to enter andand have your intermission in. if you're not properly dressed, "oh, go today," if it'sopera season when you're there, it's well worth attending one and beingable to sit in this auditorium where only 2000 seats are. and it's easy, it's notthat hard to get tickets. if you're not properly dressed, why you can go right nextdoor to the galleries lafayette, built at the same generation that feels like anextension of opera house, another belle ã‰poque structure, and enjoy its grandperfume floor, the greatest i've ever
seen in a department store, and shop foryour own gown. also, what i like about the galeries lafayette, in many departmentstores in paris, they leave their top floors open for free with rooftop viewterraces. this is the back of the opera house right there, you're staring point blank at it. andcafeterias to provide cheap meals for people in those departments stores. the eiffeltower. you can't leave paris without seeing the eiffel tower, there's no way. i save itfor the end, before we head to normandy. europe's tallest structure for a longtime, that 1,000 foot, 1,063 foot eiffel tower, the greatest view from it is theplace du trocadã©ro here, and here's a tip, if you read your guide book, there's alittle museum off to the left side
dedicated to the architecture andmonuments of france. i love the museum, included in the museum pass, you neverpay the 11 euros or dollars to get in, but with the museum pass maybe you'll go.what's cool about it is there's a cafe right here on the outside that nobodyknows about, with this view of the eiffel tower. it's called the cafã© carlu. now youknow. the greatest view from the place du trocadã©ro of the eiffel tower, and it's acrowded site. this is not the line waiting to get the tower, this is waitingfor the fireworks to explode on the 14th of july, when they were lit off from theeiffel tower. but the eiffel tower is europe's, oh no-- france's most difficult siteto get into, if you don't come prepared
to wait an hour and a half in line, whichis a lot of time out of a day in your time, book ahead. you can reserve yourelevator up to the top three months ahead of time. the problem with bookingahead, that far ahead, is you don't know what the weather's gonna be, do you. you may goon a rainy day, bummer, but at least you'll get up the tower. my advice isthat you can climb-- that you can stand in line, there are certain times a daythat are quieter, or walk the stairs up to the first floor. it will take you about 10minutes, you've got to have energy to do so, you can also climb to the secondfloor. those are the two greatest viewing platforms anyway, for a fractionof the price of getting up or booking a
reservation. and then from there you cantake an elevator all the way to the top if you want, you have to buy your way from there.but go late in the day whenever you go, go late in the day watch as the sun goesdown, and the city sparkles below, then exit the eiffel tower when it'sglimmering at its best. without question, whether you go up the eiffel tower ornot matters little to me, because there's othergreat views of the city of paris, but there's nothing like seeing thismonument lit at night, every night of the year, looking this way. all the informationi've just given you, and a lot more is provided in our guidebooks, the parisbook or the pocket paris guidebook.
if you've enjoyed this video, you'll findlots more at ricksteves.com, and on my rick steves youtube channel. happytravels, and thanks for joining us.
No comments:
Post a Comment