Yes, yes, I know - "Only one day in Paris? Sacrilege! Fie, for shame!" I agree, but sometimes, sadly, a person only has a day, and that person deserves solid info, too.
Whether you have a long layover or you are taking a day trip from Luxembourg, Belgium, London, Strasbourg, Normandy, or elsewhere, we're here to tell you that you can do quite a bit with 10-12 hours in continental Europe's most visited city.
Our one-day Paris itinerary includes:
The Eiffel Tower
Notre Dame
The Louvre
Av. des Champs-Élysée and Arc de Triomphe
Plenty of time to walk around and eat - eat, eat, eat!
And no tours or buses necessary! (Except the tour Eiffel! Language joke score!)
You'll likely take a regional train into one of the major rail hubs, e.g., Paris Est, Paris Nord, Paris Gare de Lyon, etc. Once in town, you'll want to buy a day metro pass for zones 1-3 for about €10, and this will bring you everywhere you want to go. We also recommend an app entitled "Next Stop Paris - RATP" that has maps - including a metro map - and suggestions and works offline.
Where to first? Where else? La tour Eiffel, the Eiffel Tower! One can take elevators all the way up from ground level. We don't play that game, though. We tramped up the stairs to the first and second floors to preemptively repent for our cheesy and chocolatey sins that would recur throughout the day. The second floor is the main viewing area and contains many amenities for those in need of a snack or souvenir, and if you visit in the winter, you can ice skate on the first floor terrace.
You can only ascend to the very top via elevator. With the long line, cramped quarters, and high price tag, we decided against the very top and enjoyed the second floor views perfectly fine. We then descended the stairs rather than take the elevator - up for the chocolate, down for the cheese, I suppose.
We then proceeded to Notre Dame Cathedral. In fact, we visited ND twice in one day: we spent the mid-morning inside (when it was cloudy and grey outside) and walked around the perimeter in the early evening after the sun came out. We would like to express our condolences to all those deeply affected by the recent fire at ND, and we hope that our thoughts and our photos can help ease the pain. We have no doubt that ND will be restored beautifully, and we are sure that even a fire-damaged and under-construction ND is still well worth anyone's time.
The Louvre is not far from Notre Dame. We recommend walking and buying tickets in advance.
The best advice we can offer concerning the Louvre is the same advice that we would give for any museum of any type anywhere in the world: you're not going to see everything in one visit. Museum fatigue is real. Decide on the things you must must must see in advance, seek them out, and then wander a bit. Budget about 2 hours - this is a normal person's museum time limit no matter how much the person loves the material. Also know that the more famous the item, the more crowded it will be, and this goes at least doubly for the most famous museum on Earth.
The walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, first along the Seine and then down the length of the Champs-Élysée, is lovely. Alternatively, if you want to save some time, you can take a shorter walk along the Champs-Élysée from the Concorde, Clemenceau, or FDR metro stops. You could also train nearly all the way to the George V stop.
We think that the best views in town are from the Arc de Triomphe. It's not the tallest building, and it's not up on a hill, but it is the center of a wheel with 12 streets for spokes. The symmetry of the Paris cityscape from the top of the Arc is remarkable. In a city that lacks skyscrapers where the Eiffel is still the tallest building (the skyscrapers of the La Défense business district are well-outside the city limits), one doesn't have to go up very high to get a great view - placement is the key. I suppose the other key is that you can see the Eiffel Tower from the Arc but you can't see the Eiffel from the Eiffel.
Seeing these key sights still leaves a fair amount of time for cafés, strolls along the Seine and around various parks such as the Louvre Tuileries, and running into curiosities such as the Statue of Liberty's torch's flame's twin at the entrance to the tunnel where Princess Diana...once was...that one time...
As far as restaurants go, we can recommend the café right next to the Comédie Francaise, which is near the Louvre, but beyond that we just stopped into as many cute places as we could find. We ate all over the place. We bought excellent sweets from holes in walls, and we ate sandwiches with way too much cheese at least twice each. We had coffees from stands and coffees from elegant cafés. I even ate a salad. The names really don't matter. Much as in Rome or Beirut, delicious is everywhere in Paris - you just have to find a place with a seating arrangement you like, walk in, and try to speak the language at least a little bit. Don't be that guy.
If you have a day in the area, don't not go for fear of missing something. You'll see a ton, you'll eat well, and there's always next time to stay longer and see more. Also, if you don't go to Notre Dame twice (like we did) or don't stop off for treats too often, you can likely squeeze in another spot such as Sacré-Cœur, the Moulin Rouge, or another museum or two! Vive Paris! Vive La France!
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