Must Have Tips for First Time Visitors To Paris!

welcome to another just traveling through video I'm Celeste and I'm Perry and today we're here to talk about tips for travel to Paris for first-time visitors so Paris is one of our favorite cities yeah we have absolutely no problem with going there time and time again it's a beautiful city and we really enjoy it there's tons of Art in Paris the food is fabulous the wine the bread the cheese it's a very walkable City you can walk all around Paris along the river we've had quite a bit of good food there and and enjoyed various restaurants and some of the best crepes we've had in the world foreign [Music] Paris they don't like the attitude of the people there or that service isn't the same as you get here and I think one of our first tip don't go to Paris or France or anywhere else in Europe and expect it to be like the United States friends are very proud of their country and proud of Paris I'll take a little time to understand their culture and what they're all about and it'll make your trip that much better [Music] so take a little time to learn some of the local language there's a number of tools out there that can help you do that today it's not just phrase books but today you have access to things like Duolingo and Dabble I actually have a story we were in Paris once and we were sitting at a cafe we had just arrived the waiter there was not the most friendly at first speaking rapid French and then I asked him to speak more slowly in French and right away his whole demeanor changed he brightened up he winked at me and he spoke more slowly it made the biggest difference just by me making an effort to try to speak French [Music] is getting to Paris from the airport when you land yeah okay so here you are you've just landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport which by the way is quite a few miles from downtown Paris and you're faced with how do we get to our hotel if you are staying at a hotel that offers a courtesy shuttle and you should double check to see if that's available because basically it's free if you're not staying somewhere that has a shuttle you can take a taxi from the airport which is very easy to do you just get in the taxi line and it's about 50 to 60 dollars and Uber is about the same amount of money so there's no advantage in ubering over taking a taxi from the airport the other option you have is to take an rer train from CDG into downtown Paris it's 11 Euros one way from the metro station in Paris you can take a taxi to your hotel or you can walk if you're close enough the final transformation option you have is to take a bus from Charles de Gaulle Airport it goes downtown to the Paris Opera House only it's approximately 13 euros per person the next tip is about credit cards so even though we have chips in our cards these days mostly they won't always work everywhere you go because in Europe they usually require a pin as well and we don't always have pin on our credit cards in the United States now they will work at some places some vendors will know how to deal with that but not all so we like to always make sure we have cash with us as well as multiple credit cards and don't forget to tell your credit card company you're taking your credit card on a trip otherwise they may flag your card for fraud fraud yeah and they might might not work for that as well so it's a good idea to let them know you're going to be on a trip and by the way the best place to get cash is either at the airport before you go at the exchange just to have some just to make sure you have it when you get there but once you're in Paris going to ATMs is really where you're going to get your best exchange rate and it'll be the most convenient yeah you really want to have some euro coins in your pocket because you're going to find other situations where coins are going to be valuable the next tip is about where to stay and accommodations in general hotels in Paris can be very expensive if you have the money and you just want to make it easy and stay in a hotel that's fine and reasonable but you can save quite a bit of money if you look for vrbos if you look for some that are maybe a little bit outside the city center or Airbnb there that gives you the flexibility if you select correctly to have a fridge in your room which is kind of useful yet we've stayed one time we stayed near the LA defense area which was I don't know maybe 15 minutes outside of the city but right next to it right next to the Metro it was a cute place it had you could walk downstairs and there was a grocery and somewhere to get wine and there were restaurants and we could just hop on the Metro and get into town we were half a block away from the laundry for breakfast saved us a bunch of money at one time we stayed in the Malay area of Paris and we stayed in this really tiny verbo but it was great you know we didn't need that much space it had what we needed and you can see in the pictures above how tiny it was but it was in a great location and again it saved us a lot of money and one thing to be aware of as well as some of these places have extremely tiny elevators so even if they say elevator there sometimes so tiny you can't even fit your luggage so it's just a heads up [Music] and the next tip is about cell phones I think a lot of people know this right but when you go over there if you don't have a cell phone plan you're going to get charged huge roaming fees and luckily over the years this has gotten a little bit better but check with your cell phone provider on whether or not they have some kind of a day pass yeah the use of a cell phone mapping application is just drop dead gotta have in Paris like anywhere I mean I think we're all attached to our phones now and I know at T has like a 10 a day pass and we use that when we go over there frequently but you can also buy a Sim when you get to town or at the airport sometimes they have those Sim providers so you could always pop out your sim and then plug in a local one the important thing is to plan ahead in this regard the next one is to consider getting the Paris pass yeah these passes are a a bargain if you go to just a handful of things like the Eiffel Tower the Louvre you take a boat ride go to the Arctic triomes like right away you've paid for the cast so they come in two three four six day and just look at your stay if it's your first time we highly recommend this because you're going to want to see those first few things right if you if you come back again later you may not want to do it because you've seen certain certain number of things and you're going to want to focus on a certain area but these are very worth it now keep in mind if you do want to visit certain places and museums you may have to go in and advance and reserve your time even though you have the Paris pass yeah all the museums are doing uh pacing entries so everybody who buys a ticket gets a date and a Time to enter so the a pass a Paris pass for example is not going to guarantee you entry you still have to go through the mechanics of getting a date and time from the museum itself so the next item is really about using the Paris Metro System yeah or maybe we should say getting around Paris Paris is a big city things are spread out and the Paris Metro system is one of the largest if not the largest metro system in the entire world it goes everywhere and anywhere they are frequent fast and reasonably comfortable there are multi-day Metro System passes that you can buy you have to get those at a Metro ticket office found in the larger Metro stations if you buy single day tickets every day it's more expensive and by the way keep your pass or your single day ticket handy because frequently the ferris police will wander through the station and ask to see your ticket thank you and overall the Metro is just the best way to get around [Music] now our last item on the list is a series of items to have you be careful for pickpockets and other scams that happen in the city yeah you've you've no doubt heard people talk about or read about pickpockets in Paris and yes they are a reality but the fact of the matter is the pickpockets tend to hang around places where there are crowds so you're going to find them at the more famous spots like the Louvre or the or Notre Dame or El deceit or Eiffel Tower Etc anywhere on the Metro any Metro station they're going to be there there are basic things you can do to keep yourself safe one thing is if you wear cargo pants Terry tends to wear cargo pants when we travel because they're very convenient but if you go in the Paris Metro with cargo pants you're going to find that pickpockets are attracted to those and they're going to sit next to you and try to try to open that pocket so just be extra cautious make sure you have your hands on your valuables a lot of places recommend wearing a money belt for example rather than keeping your valuables and your money in a wallet and a pocket and cargo pants you may as well wave a red flag in front of the pickpocket artist the other thing you're going to find is that there's a thing called the petition signing scam in Paris and this is where groups of teenagers will have a petition and they'll ask very nicely if you'll sign the petition what that really is in most cases is a way to distract you while the pickpocket walks behind you and grabs your important you know information or data or money out of your back pocket let's say if you're not a voter in France signing petition is useless so avoid that another one we ran into was trying to use the machine and the metro to get tickets so we were confused when we were looking at it it was all in French a man came up and was under the guise of trying to help us was in the end trying to take our money one of the Metro workers came out and saw them working with us and started yelling at him to shoot him away and then until this never do that never talk to anybody when you're getting tickets always get them at the ticket window so you can't always get your tickets at the ticket window because some some stations only have the machines but just don't take help from somebody like that and don't give anybody cash yeah all the larger stations you're going to find ticket offices so that's where you want to go the next tip is about visiting museums and other points of interest their hours vary from what we would consider to be normal here in the U.S for example we found the music D'Orsay to be closed on Monday was it or Tuesday which seemed unusual to us we didn't count on that we thought they might have been closed on Sunday but we just happened to be there on the day that they were closed and it kind of messed up our schedule yeah so you want to plan ahead and be cognizant of what their hours their operating hours are yeah and even though you might want to just have a free vacation and wander around you know free meeting not planning it's good to actually look up at least the most basic information right is it open can I go that day on the day that you want to go especially for the things that you really really want to see so that's all we have for you today um Paris one of our favorite places ever to visit she's still Celeste and I'm still Terry thanks for listening if you have any feedback please let us know if you go to Paris enjoy thanks a lot bye-bye thank you

Channel: Just Traveling Thru

Views: 8,450

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Id: y8f5eGeDNhA

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022