Paris bus routes #69, #63 and #73

We were in Paris in February and used buses as much as possible. There were delays due to the strike activity but in general we preferred them to metro. I am now sold on using buses. I didn't care about traffic delays since we were not in a hurry. We walked alot, too, using CityMapper as a guide. Walking is my favorite but sometimes I just want to sit and ride......

I don't think these bus routes are good for anything tourist-related other than getting you from point A to point B. They are mass transit and IMO they are not designed for sightseeing. I've been on these buses and with people in the aisles you can't see anything on the side of the bus opposite where you are sitting and if you are in the aisles, that is not conducive to sight seeing. And the design of the windows is fine for riding the bus and seeing outside but are not on the scale of the hop-on-hop-off bu. The regular city buses do have access to bus lanes so traffic could be less of an issue but, I do not know if hop-on-hop-off buses have access to bus lanes. IMO, the hop-on-hop-pff buses are a terrible option for transportation and the bus routes are a terrible option for sightseeing. What do you mean by getting oriented to Paris? For me, that means getting a sense of the street layout and where areas are relative to each other and I do that in any new city that I go by going to an observation point in the city and looking at the city below and that gives me the sense of scale and where sights are relative to each other. I don't think you can get that from any of the bus routes you mention.

We recently noticed the start of the 69 route at Champ du Mars when we were just walking in the area and decided to take it to Bastille and then catch the metro to our lodging. We got on at the start and so had seats towards the back. It is a scenic ride but if you don't know the city you are not going to know it from a bus with no commentary.. We ended up using it twice recently once to work around metros closed by demonstrations.

I'll disagree with a previous poster. I love the buses and use them for my primary transportation while in Paris. They get you where you want to go in a vacation-like pace, and they avoid going up and down stairs and escalators to the urine-soaked metro where you miss all the sights while tunneling underground. I personally like to actually see the city when I am going through it. I have used bus #69 and remember liking it. As I recall, it practically goes end-to-end in Paris from Père LaChaise to the Champ de Mars. In so doing, it goes right by the Louvre, Rue de Rivoli, Musée d'Orsay (in one direction) and Les Invalides (in the other). Each direction also follows the river for a short spell. Bus #63 spends more time on the left bank before heading across the river to the Trocadéro.

I also like to take the bus when in Paris. It is true that you cannot get lquite the view that you would get from a hop-on hop-off bus, but you also are not stuck with a lot of otherl tourists, and you get to see what the locals are like. I have taken the 59 bus many times and always enjoyed the ride. I agree that you should avoid rush hour bus trips (or metro trips for that matter). also the Paris bus is much cheaper than the HOHO bus, if that is a consideration. Peter