In France the queue is the problem. The slot is the answer.
Which Louvre ticket actually gets you through the Pyramid entrance. Whether the D-Day beaches work as a day out of Paris. What a morning in a Reims chalk cellar costs. Reviews of the tours, tickets and day trips you can book across the country.
Booked weeks ahead, all year
A first French week usually hangs off four bookings.
One museum morning, one palace, one evening on the river and one long day west. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first morningLouvre Museum Timed-Entrance TicketTake the earliest slot. By eleven the Denon wing moves at the speed of the slowest tour group in it.
02The palace dayVersailles Palace and Gardens Full Access TicketGo on a Tuesday or a Thursday. The fountains only run on show days, and the gardens are half the ticket.
03The evening on the waterParis: Evening River Cruise with MusicAn hour of the city from mid-river, after the light goes. Cheaper than dinner and better lit.
04The day westNormandy D-Day Sites & Cemetery Day Trip from Paris with LunchOmaha Beach, the American cemetery and Pointe du Hoc, out and back from Paris in a long day.
France sells the hour, not the ticket. Pick how you go in.
The Louvre, Versailles, the Orsay and half the Loire chateaux now run on reserved half-hour slots. The same building comes three ways: bare timed entry, entry with somebody who knows what you are looking at, or the reserved entrance that gets you past the courtyard. What separates them is the hour you get and who you spend it with.
Paris, then whichever France you came for.
The capital runs on timed tickets. Normandy runs on tides and memory, Provence on light, the Riviera on water, Bordeaux and Alsace on the harvest. Six bases, and the day out that justifies each one.
Paris reads differently from mid-river.
The Seine cuts past every facade the city is famous for, and the bridges are built to be seen from underneath. Add the calanque boats out of Cassis and the Riviera coves that have no road, and a good share of the country is easier reached by hull.
The tickets and tours most travellers to France take.
Every French review we have written →Eight products, no two of them the same day out, and what earns each one its place.
1
Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance Ticket
Reserve a one-day Louvre ticket for about $26 and enter through a priority access line at the Pyramid, Porte des Lions, or Carrousel entrance. Your time may shift by 30 minutes, but entry is guaranteed within that window. There is no guide or audio guide, so plan your own route through Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman sculpture, paintings, and the Mona Lisa.
From · $26
Read our review →
2
Disneyland® Paris 1-Day Ticket
from $61
3
Versailles Palace and Gardens Full Access Ticket
from $17
4
Paris: Evening River Cruise with Music
from $27
5
Eiffel Tower Entry Ticket with Optional Summit Access
from $29
6
Louvre Guided Tour with Reserved Access & Boat Cruise
from $81
7
Moulin Rouge Cabaret Show Ticket with Champagne
from $115
8
Louvre Museum Masterpieces Guided Tour with Access
from $86
Normandy and the Somme are visited, not toured.
Two coastlines and a chalk plateau hold the cemeteries, the gun batteries and the museums of two wars. Guides here are historians more often than entertainers, and the good days are long, quiet and mostly outdoors. Most run from Paris, Bayeux or Caen.
- 1Normandy D-Day Sites & Cemetery Day Trip from Paris with Lunchfrom $120
- 2Normandy D-Day Small-Group Day Trip with Omaha Beach, Cemetery & Cider Tastingfrom $320
- 3Normandy D-Day Beaches and American Cemetery Day Trip from Parisfrom $207
The price of a French day out, from ticket to charter.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. A surprising number of the best French days come in under the cost of dinner in the same city.
Monument entry, river cruises, old-town walks and the market mornings that end in a tasting.
The full days: Normandy and the Loire out of Paris, cellar visits with transport, guided museum mornings.
Private drivers, chartered boats, dinner on the river and the chateau days that run door to door.
Three French cellars that are worth the train fare on their own.
Wine regions exist everywhere. Chalk tunnels dug by Romans, a river city with a wine museum shaped like a decanter, and vineyard walls that have not moved since the fourteenth century do not.
The Reims Cellars
Under Reims and Epernay run tens of kilometres of crayeres, chalk pits first cut by Roman quarrymen and later filled with bottles because the rock holds a steady ten degrees. A visit is mostly stairs, cold air and stacked riddling racks, and it ends with the only glass poured in the place that invented the method.
- 1From Paris: Day Trip to Champagne with 8 Tastings & Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,501 reviews
- 2Reims and Champagne Tasting Full-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 610 reviews
- 3Reims afternoon tour Champagne and family growers★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 535 reviews
Bordeaux and the Medoc
Bordeaux does wine at the scale of an industry and shows it: a museum on the riverside built like a swirling decanter, and an hour north, the gravel banks of the Medoc where the classified estates line one road. Most half-days pair two chateaux, one grand and one family-run, which is the honest way to taste the difference.
- 1Cité du Vin Entry Ticket and Wine Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,885 reviews
- 2River Garonne Cruise with Glass of Wine and Canelé★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,630 reviews
- 3Afternoon Saint-Emilion Wine Tasting & snack★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,581 reviews
The Cote de Nuits
Burgundy is measured in walled parcels called climats, some of them the size of a tennis court, each with its own name and price. Beaune is the base; the vineyard road south runs through Nuits-Saint-Georges and Gevrey-Chambertin. The tastings are small, seated and slower than anywhere else in the country.
- 1Burgundy Bike Tour with Wine Tasting from Beaune★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 674 reviews
- 2La Cave du Palais Burgundy Wine Tasting Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 400 reviews
- 3Golden Stones Beaujolais Wine Tasting Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 387 reviews
Four French bookings that will not wait for your arrival.
Most of the country can be arranged over breakfast the day before. These four run on timed slots, tide tables and closing days that take no interest in when your train gets in.
- 01Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance TicketEntry is by half-hour slot with a cap on each one, and the Pyramid entrance needs the reservation. Tuesdays it is shut.
- 02Eiffel Tower Entry Ticket with Optional Summit AccessLift tickets to the summit are released on a fixed calendar and the top closes at short notice in high wind.
- 03Versailles Palace and Gardens Full Access TicketThe palace closes Mondays, and the garden fountains only run on show days, which are the days worth buying.
- 04Day Trip to Mont-Saint-Michel from ParisThe causeway crossing and the abbey hours follow the tide table. Great tides close the car park outright.
Every French museum is shut one day a week. Plan the other thing.
The Louvre closes Tuesdays, the Orsay and Versailles close Mondays, and half the smaller collections follow one or the other. It catches short trips constantly. The answer is to move the museum morning and spend the closed day on something that runs anyway: the river, a kitchen, a cellar, a market or a long walk.
Cellars in Reims, cru classe in the Medoc, a market morning in Lyon.
Wine here is regional to the point of stubbornness, and the tastings follow: chalk tunnels in Champagne, gravel banks in the Medoc, walled climats in Burgundy. Book the cellar visit before the vintage weekend, and the market walk before the heat.
By region: capital, coast and vineyard
By kind of day: monument, water, table or road
Paris, Versailles, Normandy, the Loire, then south: the route almost everybody takes first.
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