You’ve seen the bright, double-decker, in-your-face Paris tour bus navigating the windy streets and massive roundabouts of Paris scooting around wide-eyed tourists desperate to take in every single one of the most famous Paris landmarks, all in the shortest amount of time. They’re hard to miss. While some tourists would rather set their hair on fire than get on one of these, there are others who swear by their virtues. It’s not really something I’d ever thought I’d be taking a ride on, but when we had a visitor from Japan, she could only stay in Paris for 2 days. What to do? If she didn’t HAVE to see all of the landmarks, we surely wouldn’t have done it but she did, and so we thought this was the most likely way to pull it off.

I have to admit that it’s kind of excellent for those specific situations and we had the best time riding it (ride on the upper deck!) and being able to get out at any number of stops (then get back on) There are many buses so you’ll only need to wait about 10 minutes at each stop during the summer to catch another bus, 20 minutes during the winter. The entire tour, if you stay on the bus the whole time, takes approximately two hours and 15 minutes. That’s quick, particularly if you think that during that time you could’ve been waiting in line just to get on the Eiffel Tower. I exaggerate but you get what I mean.

You have the possibility of stopping at nine different places: 1. Trocadéro, 2. Champ de Mars, 3. Louvre, 4. Notre-Dame, 5. Orsay, 6. Opéra, 7. Champs Elysées-Etoile, 8. Grand Palais and 9. Eiffel Tower. The earliest buses start between 9:30am and 10:30am with the last buses stopping between 6:25pm and 10:16pm. See the hours and stops here. Note: Weekend and week day hours differ slightly, so do check the hours carefully.

Audio guides are available in several languages and you can download the tour’s mp3 from the website here in advance if you want to hear the guide from your own mp3 player.

You can spread your trip over two days (it’s an unlimited 2 day pass), so for the price of 24 € (Adult fare) and 12 € (kids 4 to 12 fare), you might just be able to see a lot of stuff in a little amount of time. Buy your tickets online to receive an additional 10% off.

Paris Bus Tour (Les cars rouges)