City Tour and Seine Cruise

Overview

Two separate experiences sold together: a ninety-minute open-top coach circuit of central Paris, and a one-hour glass-roofed Seine cruise which you take on a later day.

What to expect

• Board the coach at the stated address for the panoramic circuit.
• The Louvre, the Opéra quarter, the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe from the upper deck.
• Commentary through an app on your own phone.
• Return to the boarding point after about ninety minutes.
• The cruise on a different day, boarding at the river.
• An hour on the water beneath the glazed roof, with a terrace at the stern.

The cruise is not on the same day

This is the thing to understand before booking. The boat ticket becomes valid the day after the coach tour and stays valid for six months.

So this is not an afternoon with a boat trip at the end of it. It is a coach circuit now and a cruise another time, which suits a stay of several days and does not suit a single day in Paris. If you want both in one afternoon, a different product is the one to look for.

The green boxes on the parapets

From the water you pass beneath a run of dark green boxes bolted along the stone walls. Those are the bouquinistes, second-hand booksellers who have traded on these parapets since the sixteenth century and were formally licensed in the nineteenth.

Everything about them is regulated. Each seller holds a fixed pitch on the wall, the boxes are a standard size, and they are all painted the same carriage green so the riverfront reads as a continuous line rather than a row of competing stalls.

Together they are usually described as the largest open-air bookshop in the world, and they are part of why this stretch of riverbank has been on the UNESCO list since 1991 — the banks themselves are the listed monument, not just the buildings behind them.

What the boat does and does not give you

The trimaran is fully glazed, which matters in Paris weather: you are not choosing between the view and staying dry. There is an open terrace at the back for anyone who would rather be outside.

There is no live guide on the boat and the coach app does not cover the water, so the hour on the river is for looking rather than learning. Some people prefer it that way.

Practicalities

Bring your own earphones for the coach commentary; none are supplied and none are shared out.

Neither ticket includes travel to the boarding points, and the two are in different parts of the city — check both addresses when you book rather than on the morning.