City Tour and Eiffel Tower 2nd Floor with Reserved Access

Overview

A ninety-minute open-top coach circuit of central Paris combined with a reserved-access lift ticket to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, with time of your own once you are up there.

What to expect

• Meet the host and board the coach at the stated address.
• The circuit past the Opéra, the Champs-Élysées, the Orsay, the Louvre and Notre-Dame.
• Commentary through an app on your own phone.
• Transfer to the Tower and the security screening at the base.
• The lift up on a reserved-access ticket.
• Free time on the second floor before coming down.

The second floor is the better view, and this is why

The instinct is that higher must be better. On the Eiffel Tower it is not, and this is worth knowing before anyone feels short-changed by not going to the top.

The second floor sits about a hundred and fifteen metres up. That is high enough to see the shape of the city — the river bending, the boulevards radiating, the pale roofs running to the horizon — and still low enough that Paris stays legible. You can pick out individual buildings, follow a particular street, see cars and people moving.

The summit is at roughly two hundred and seventy-six metres. From there the city flattens into a map: impressive, and further away. Photographers overwhelmingly prefer the second floor, and so, quietly, do most people who have done both.

Reserved access is not a fast pass for everything

This is the part that surprises people. The reserved ticket covers your lift, so you are not queuing to buy or waiting for the general lift line.

You still pass through the security screening at the base of the Tower, along with everyone else who is going up. That queue exists for all visitors regardless of what they hold, and at busy times it takes a while. Arriving with your ticket does not mean walking straight into a lift.

The summit is not part of this

The ticket goes to the second floor. Access to the top is a separate arrangement and is not included here, so if the summit is what you specifically want, this is the wrong version to book.

It is also worth knowing the top can close at short notice in high wind while the lower floors stay open, which is a further reason the second floor is the more dependable choice.

Practicalities

The coach deck is open, the Tower is exposed and it is windier at height than at ground level — take a layer even on a warm day.

Bring your own earphones for the coach commentary; none are handed out. There is a host with the group for boarding and logistics, but the narration is recorded.