Paris 1: Planning

ALL PARIS PICS CAN BE FOUND HERE
and picture album that contains pics of paris not included above is found here

The planning: audioguides and passes

Gera named me the “official travel planner” of the household. I am usually pretty good at researching our destination and finding out places to go, visit, eat, etc. This time I was not so good. I left everything ‘til the last minute (or rather last 2 days). I was in a “planning” frenzy on dec. 27 and 28th. Where’s the hotel? How do we get there from the airport? Do we take a cab? Metro? Do they have metro passes? Do they have tourist passes? What are we going to do once we get there? This and a whole lot of other questions had to be answered, and I only had 2 days.
So I started just figuring out the basics, and it all came together in the end. I found out about the Museum Pass, an awesome pass that allows you entry to over 60 museums and monuments (including the Louvre), and it cuts you to the front of the line (very useful!), We also decided to buy a Paris Visite card, for unlimited use of Metro, Bus, and RER (train), so we could hop on and off without having to buy a ticket first. In retrospect, a couple of 10-tickets packs would have been enough and cheaper, but this worked too.
The other great find was a collection for Audioguides from Rick Steves’ website. They are downloadable (free!) and it’s like having a personal tour guide in the streets of Paris. There are other mini-guides on the internet, so I got a bunch, but most were just short descriptions of some monuments and stuff. Having an iPod would have made things easier (on the screen you get a picture of what the guide is describing, and you can view maps that way too), but just a regular mp3 player worked ok.
So armed with a couple of maps Gera printed, and some printouts from internet guidebooks we were on our way to paris (bright and early, as usual).