Paris and French Riviera - Recommendations?

I'm going with my wife to visit Paris (5 days) and the French Riviera (3 days). We are driving throughout. Any recommendations as to "do not miss" places, cities, landmarks, etc...? I'm bringing my 17-55 2.8 and 70-200 F4 IS (with my T1i). Thanks!

I'd highly reccomend the palace of versailles, if I remember correctly it's about a half hour outside of Paris, but man is it beautiful.

This will be one of those "so much to shoot, so little time" kind of trips. Paris and Provence have SO much to photograph and experience. You'll be planning your next trip there before this one is over.

I have a number of shots from both areas on my website if you want to take a look.

Paris is gorgeous under lights - early morning or evening. There are photo-ops all up and down the river - each bridge is unique and beautiful. I spent a couple mornings and evenings at Pont Alexandre III.

As mentioned Versailles is amazing - especially in the spring. The gardens are incredible - don't miss Jardin de Tuilleries, as well as Jadin Luxumburg. Louvre, d'Orsay are great museums, Notre Dame and Concierge are cool too. Sacre Coeur and the whole Montmatre district are nice.

The French Riviera is pretty. You going to Nice? Monte Carlo? St. Tropez? If you can find time, Provence has some cool hilltop towns - St. Paul de Vence, and Eze to name a couple near Nice. One of my favorite things is the lavender fields - so intoxicating (but that's in July - not sure when you'll be going).

Hope you have a great trip!!

Thanks so much. I will have to research these locations!

Definitely go up to the Sacre Coeur, you have a view of most of paris from there, and its a nice little area.

If you have any interest in medieval villages, you might consider the following locations. Not quite on the way to St. Tropez from Paris, but worth going a little out of the way:

Sarlet-la-Canéda
Beynac et-Cazenac
Castlenaud-la-Chapelle
Rocamadour

All these are relatively close together and can be done in a day or so. If it were it me, I would shave a day from Paris or the French Riviera to include these.

Near Cannes, I would visit Grasse – only about 21 km

Paris is great, there is so much to see and do there. The Bastille area at nice is a great area to have dinner and not over pay. But the city as a whole is very photogenic. The Louvre, Notre Dame, are all great for photography.

PS

Bring comfortable walking shoes, it is a large walking city.

Thanks alot for the suggestions guys and gals!

Go to the super market and bring your own water or soda for walking around, the popular tourist area over charge badly.

I agree with one of the above posters - shave a day off of Paris and use it to make your way slowly down to the Riviera. Driving in the French countryside (and strategically choosing a few villages to visit) is very rewarding travel. One idea that falls along one of the routes from Paris to the south is the town of Avallon and then part of the Bourgogne wine route. One long road takes you through miles and miles of famous, scenic vineyards.

In Paris...I dunno. I go to Paris fairly often in small chunks, so I usually find it tough to tell people what to do. I tend to think that it's usually best to do at most three things per day, as trying to cram much more than that in really detracts from the whole experience of actually being in Paris. So, here's my list:

• The Louvre, obviously. You may want to plan ahead as to what you want to see, because one could easily spend an entire day wandering around. You should see the biggies (Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, etc), but there are plenty of paintings and a TON of antiquities. My personal favorite piece in the whole museum is the Capital of Apadana, which is the enormous top of what was once an even-more-enormous column in a Persian palace.

• Sacre Coeur/Montmartre. The views are great and the area is nifty (though make sure to push past the African guys trying to make you bracelets). The interior of Sacre Coeur is interesting, but be prepared to be verbally assaulted by "chaperones" if you talk or try to take a picture.

• The Eiffel Tower. I've never actually been up the thing, but being near it is pretty darned cool. I don't honestly know if going to the top is worth taking up so much time waiting in line. I hear that you can buy tickets ahead of time, but I don't know how much time that'll end up saving you...surely more than NOT doing that will!

• Bateaux-Mouches cruise. These are cheap and quite nice. Try to time it just before sunset.

• I suggest making one of your dinners a picnic on the Pont des Arts, which is a pedestrian bridge near the Louvre with a ridiculous sunset view, depending on the weather.

• Walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, via the Champs-Elysées. This can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a day, depending on how you do it. Either way, it's worth your while.

• Notre Dame. I honestly don't think it's necessary to go inside, especially if the line is ridiculous (though it tends to move relatively fast). The stained glass is the main attraction. I DO suggest climbing the tower, if you're up for it. In fact, I'd wager it's a much cooler experience than climbing the Eiffel tower.

After those things, a lot of paris really has to do with what you want to see. If you're a military history fan, go check out the Invalides (which is a military history paradise). If you're a general history fan, take a side trip to Versailles. For art that's a bit newer than that in the Louvre, go to the Musée D'Orsay. For modern art, go to the Pompidou Center (for me the only worthwhile thing there is Duchamps's "Fountain," but as a teacher I get free admission to most of these places). If you want to spend a bunch of money on a night out, go to one of the theaters (Moulin Rouge, etc) in Montmartre. There's also the Pantheon, and the Madeleine, and countless others. Another contender is Pere Lachaise, which apart from the several famous graves (Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, etc) is a very, very cool cemetery that in many ways is its own small city.

Paris doesn't really have any "hidden gems" anymore, but here are a few interesting places that aren't quite so overwhelmed with visitors:

• The Baslique Saint-Denis. This is a large church in one of the Paris Suburbs (a ways out but still on the regular metro system) that houses the tombs of pretty much every French king and queen since before the French language even existed. This includes Clovis, Charles Martel, Louis the 14th, Catherine de Medici, etc. Really cool if you have a serious interest in French history.

• The Rodin Museum.

• Um...well frankly I can't think of many more.

Yeesh, I sound like a travel agent. Keep in mind when you read all of this that I've NEVER been to Paris with a lot of money in my bank account...so your mileage may vary!

Some web sites worth checking out:

http://www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/en

http://www.gordes-village.com …llages2.html#An​chor-33635

http://www.francethisw​ay.com/most-beautiful-villages.php

Google is your friend

You guys are a wealth of info! Thanks so much. This thread will be helpful to many I'm sure.

By the way, when are you going? Sadly, a lot of those "plus beaux villages de france" are much, much less "beau" between November and April. I've been to, I think, three of them - Pesmes, Baume-les-Messieurs, and Chateauneuf. Pesmes is alright, Chateauneuf is very pretty (if quite small), but Baume-les-Messieurs is spectacular. The landscape surrounding the town is stunning, and there's a waterfall and some caves right on the outskirts.

I know this is an old thread, but these are great recommendations. I will be visiting Paris in four weeks, and thought about renting a motorcycle and visiting Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy and the Cliffs of Étretat. But I think those locations will have to wait for my next trip.

Sirrith wrote in post #11928248
Definitely go up to the Sacre Coeur, you have a view of most of paris from there, and its a nice little area.

And go to Sacre Coeur shortly before 5pm, and then stay for the beatiful sounds of the resident nuns who sing their nightly Vespers vigil at 5pm...one has to wonder if the nuns have to audition singing before they are accepted! Incredibly beautiful ceremony.

Do NOT try to drive in Paris, the traffic and parking in Paris are both attrocious. And driving in Paris at night is made so challenging by the fact that street names change suddenly and frequently, and street names are only posted on corners of buildings not well lit Far better to take train in from Charles de Gaulle airport Terminal 2 and get around Paris via Metro, then wait to rent a car when you are ready to depart outside of Paris. I drove in Paris for a week in the 1980's, but I would not attempt to do so now!

In Paris, the Paris night boat cruise (last one 10pm) takes you around to many Paris landmarks when they are illuminated so beautifully. You do not need to buy expensive (Euro 75-120 ea) 'tour' tickets for champagne/dinner cruise, just walk up to the Bateaux Parisiens boat pier and buy tickets from the machine (Euro 15 ea). After dark the Eiffel Tower 'twinkles' once each hour on the hour, and this is so memorable when seen from the boat, which docks near the base of the Eiffel.

Visit Le Marché Bastille (Bastille Market) at Place de la Bastaille, on Boulevard Richard Lenoir. Incredible displays of flowers, and wide selection of foods both for home preparation and walkaway eating. One of the biggest markets in Paris, the Marché Bastille's food stalls sprawl up the Boulevard Richard Lenoir twice a week, with more produce than most hypermarkets – it's a particularly great source of local cheeses, free range chicken and excellent fish. The atmospheric and beautiful piles of fruit, veg, saucisses, olives and so on are interspersed with stalls offering African batiks, cheap jewellery and bags. Thursday, 7am-2.30pm; Sunday, 7am-3pm.

The self-guided recorded tour of the Louvres is absolutely a waste of money...of all the self-guided tours which we have purchased it was the ONLY one we found to be of little value! The Louvre is of interest to 'the antiquities'. Of greater interest to those liking art from a couple hundred years ago are the Musee d'Orsay or Musée de l'Orangerie, an art gallery of impressionist (Monet) and post-impressionist paintings located in the west corner of the Tuileries Gardens next to the Place de la Concorde.

Drive southwest of Paris about 1 hour to Chartres, and see the classic 12th century cathedral with so much stained glass, which was the inspiration for the construction of so many other cathedrals in France. If in Chartres around April-December there is a light show using sides of buildings (including the Cathedral) called Chartres en Lumiere (Chartres in Lights), which is worth being in town at night. Chartres also serves as the start of the famous Loire Valley with its many chateaux. The self-guided tour of Chambord is excellently done. And BTW, the palace of Versailles is on the way from Pairs to Chartres, and is well worth a half day or more.

While in Provence go to St. Paul de Vence, and incredible well preserved town in the hills northwest of Nice.
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