Paris Weekend Break
Paris Weekend Break is designed to help you plan a weekend getaway, or short break in this internationally famous and cosmopolitan European city.
Paris is the most popular "city break" tourist destination in the world and sees over 30 million visitors annually. Many of these visitors arrive on weekend breaks and spend between two and four days in Paris taking in the sights and sounds of this iconic city.
A Paris weekend break is a great way to enjoy this amazing destination and you will be surprised at how much you can see in a relatively short period of time, especially if you plan and prepare for your visit in advance.
To make the most of your Paris weekend break, select from the menu items in the index to the left. This is an ever expanding site with lots of pages and plenty of suggestion of things to se and do whilst enjoying your weekend in Paris.
Why take a weekend break in Paris?
There are many reasons to take a Paris weekend break, but the opportunity to see its world renown landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame persuade many. A weekend break in Paris also provides a chance to enjoy the city's famous culture and cuisine as well as experiencing the hospitality of the Parisian hoteliers and restauranters. Paris really is a top weekend break destination for anyone based in Europe.
Once in Paris there are no limits placed on how you can fill a weekend, or a more extended holiday getaway.
The city is full of museums like the "Louvre” and the "Musee National d'Art Moderne”, along with monuments like the "Grand Arch” and the "Pantheon”. Famous avenues like the 2 km long "Champs Elysees” provide an opportunity to stroll and shop on possibly the most beautiful and exclusive street in the world – only New York's fifth Avenue has higher real estate values.
Disneyland Paris is one of the city's more recent attractions and it makes Paris a genuine family vacation centre with something for adults and children of all ages. The shopping, theatres, high quality restaurants, along with France's celebrated cafe bar culture, all combine to make Paris a destination that everyone should experience – at least once in a lifetime.
Planning your Paris weekend break
The aim of this trip planner is to provide you with all of the information, services and sightseeing tips necessary to make a weekend break in Paris an experience that you will want to repeat again and again. We have put this website together based on our own experience of visiting Paris, and we have tried to include all of the locations, attractions, tips and thoughts that we (and other visitors) have found beneficial in getting the most out of a city break in this amazing city – especially when your time is limited to a weekend.
In order to help you arrange and book facilities like hotels, sightseeing tours, and specific attractions, we have included "themed" advertisements which will appear in blue boxes throughout parisweekendbreak.net. Clicking on any of the themed links in these boxes will take you to a company or operator with whom you can research or organise a particular aspect of your trip, e.g. booking a hotel or checking out a sightseeing attraction.
Knowing what to see (how to get to it, how much it will cost and how long you will need to see it) is an important part of planning any weekend break and our sightseeing guide is aimed at offering you straightforward information on all of Paris's main visitor attractions.
Our main sightseeing page lists all of the city's tourist attractions and has links to full page descriptive and pictorial summaries on every one of them.
Getting to Paris
With its "Charles de Gaulle” International Airport, a short break or weekend away in Paris is only around one hour's flight from the UK and many other Western European capitals. Budget airlines service this route making economic travel available all year round. The "Charles de Gaulle” airport is also well serviced from more distant destinations with daily flights from North America and the rest of the world.
For those in the UK and Ireland looking for an alternative and less elevated means of travel, the cross channel ferry and the channel tunnel provide options that allow you to take your car on the trip. Once in Paris the city's underground train network, called the "Metro”, makes getting around quick and easy.
Using "Paris Weekend Break"
Using parisweekendbreak.net is easy. The menus appearing at both the top of the page and down and the left hand side of the page are constant throughout the site. Clicking on the "Main page” link (top left) will bring you back to this page from any other page on Paris Weekend Break.
By selecting a sub-page from the menu you will often find a number of options to choose from. In the case of the "Attractions to see in Paris" link, clicking on this link will take you to a page with a list of the main tourist sights in the city with further links to full page pictorial summaries on each of them.
We hope that Paris Weekend Break will help you plan and get the most out of a city break in Paris. Paris really is one of the great cities of the world and well worth a least one visit in anyone's lifetime.
Seeing the sights of Paris - a few tips
Whatever approach you take in making your Paris plans, ensure that you have some kind of itinerary
in mind. It is all too easy to arrive in Paris with a vague idea of what you want to see and do and then fail to see half of what you intended.
Consider putting together a sightseeing "hit list" with possible options and alternatives based on poor weather, or time running short. Make realistic allowances for visiting time, plus travel time and be flexible - your ideas and aims may change based on what you see and experience during your weekend in the city.
Do not leave flight, ferry, rail or hotel bookings too late. Paris is a year round weekend break destination and plans can easily be ruined by waiting until the last minute. The same can also be true with cruises on the Seine and other “pre-bookable excursions, so plan in advance. You can use the links in the blue boxes to get current prices, timetables and locations and of course to reserve all of the services that you are likely to require for your break.
Finally, consider pre-buying one of the Paris "Tourist Passes". Like similar passes (or tourist passports) for London, these passes save both money and
time (in queuing for tickets) and they may also prompt you to visit somewhere or something that you would otherwise have left out.