We went for 5 days and packed in lots of sight seeing. The purpsoe of the break was to see all of the famous sights in the city: eiffel tower, notre dame, sacre couer, monmartre, louvre, pompidoo centre, seine river cruise, l'open bus tour and eurodisney. This is a good time of year to go the weather was fairly warm but did get chily in the evenings. Everything seemed to b open but the queues are not so long as to be annoying. You should make the effort to buy tickets for attractions either before you go on the internet or at information/ticket desks in stations rather then at the attractions asonce you have a ticket you can skip all the queues - definitely do this for the eiffel tower and louvre! overall a thoroughly enjoyable if not hectic break.

2 star hotel, comfortable bed, plenty of breakfast, 5 minutes walk from gard du nord. Good for getting around on metro. 10 minute walk to sacre coeur, lots of steps could take venicular, lovely little village by the church with plenty of reasonable priced restaurants and gift shops. More expensive to eat nearer the centre of paris. Excellent boat trip on the river seine. Worth booking ahead for eiffel tower as long queues, waiting time approx 2 hours, one of lifts not working. Certainly worth planning your trip beforehand if only going for a short break, plenty to see and do, easy to get around on metro, buy block of tickets it's cheaper, can use them on venicular up to sacre coeur.

Get yourself organised before you go it makes for a hassel free and relaxing holiday! Buy your metro tickets so that when you arrive in Paris you can get straight on the metro and arrive at your hotel very quickly. Invest in a museum pass, decide which days you are going to use it so that you make full use of it. At some of the attraction (lourve, musee d'orsey) you are able to skip the main queue and go straight into the attraction. This gives you lots more time to enjoy all the brilliant art work. It is easy to get out to versailles yourself and compared to the trips, this saves you quite a bit of money. The train was easy to use. Versailles was stunning and we were glad that we had the whole day to explore the palace, grounds and smaller palaces which are well worth seeing. The hotel was ideally situated for us as we were able to wander up to montmartre. You were also able to choose from 2 separate metro lines as the hotel was between 2 stations. The hotel was very quiet and clean. The staff were helpful and friendly. The breakfast each day was very well presented and you could eat as much as you wanted. All in all a superb holiday for us.

Not having been to paris in many years I was impressed with the alterations to the louvre & galleries still great. But the streets are dirty the metro is very smelly as it seems to be used as a public toilet. I know many capital cities have problems with begging and the homeless but paris seems the worst I have been in recently. The gare du nord not very user friendly and grubby, getting back to st pancras in London was a breath of fresh air!!.