Parisian walking tours

Check out 'Paris Walks'. I took two of their walks when I was in Paris (Montmartre and Marais) and they were both wonderful. I'm sure their walks of Latin Quarter and Notre Dame would be good also.

We didn't use any of the guided tours in Paris so I can't help there - but the Kindle versions of Rick's various Paris 'walking tours' worked well for us. I loaded several of them onto a small Android tablet and it felt like we had a personal guide. Best $1.99 (each actually) I spent on the trip.

Another vote for Paris Walks. Wonderful chocolate tour.

Paris Walks, http://www.paris-walks.com. Their May calendar might not be posted until March. But you can look at the next two months and get an idea of what and when the offer their tours. The chocolate tour is limited for each month.

Paris Greeters is a free service providing guided tours by volunteers who love sharing Paris with visitors. You book online, indicating your interests and they match you with a volunteer who contacts you directly to set up the meeting place and time. The volunteers do not accept tips, but a donation can be made at time of booking - I donated 10€. I enjoyed a three hour walking tour of le Marais with my guide who spoke excellent English and pointed out many things I wouldn't have seen on my own.

Another vote for Paris Walks.

another vote for Paris Walks.

Thanks everyone! I looked at the website and the tours look quite nice. Has anyone had experience with a company called localers? My husband found the website through Trip Advisers and it also looks interesting.

I liked Paris Walks for outdoor tours, history, architecture, culture. Not sure I would do the Louvre with them. We used Paris Muse and had a private just-the-two-of-us almost 3-hour to9ur. Fabulous!

We've used Localers twice - for food oriented tours....the first tour we took was great....wine and cheese tasting in the Les Halles area....we booked another one - food tour around the 7th - based on the recommendation of some friends.....we had a different guide than they had - it was OK....but we probably won't book with them again....we really, REALLY like Paris Walks - yes - the chocolate tour is fantastic. We'll be in Paris too in May and have booked a private Louvre tour through Viator...after reading a number of reviews of specific guides - we booked with one who gets rave reviews (Oxana) and are looking forward to meeting her.

You'll have a wonderful time!

Just realize that with tour companies, it's all about the guide you happen to get. Not the company. Luck of the draw and all that.

Rick goes into great detail about how to maximize your time in the Louvre if you want to DIY. You still haven't bought his book have you?

I've had mixed experiences with Paris Walks. I loved the Chocolate tour with Iris, who developed the tour. But sometimes there's a substitute. There's one guide, I had her several years ago when she was new and completely disorganized. I had her again on a tour last year and she was a lot better and dealt very professionally with some upsetting events, but still not the greatest as a tour guide. I also planned to take a tour that they only offer once or twice a month, that began in a relatively remote location in the city. The guide didn't show up and some people tried to contact the owners but they were unreachable. After waiting 45 minutes or more, we all disbursed. It was later explained that the guide thought he was doing a different tour and went to the wrong place, but the owners' reasons for being incommunicado were not satisfactory and obviously they didn't make a practice of confirming schedules with their guides. On the other hand, I happened to meet a group just as they were beginning a Paris Walk and they were very excited to have the same terrific guide they'd had earlier in the week.

I've done 3 Paris Walks. Two were great. One was a dud.

Did the Chocolate tour and loved it. Did Montemarte. It was wonderful and introduced me to an entire area I really had not explored. My dud was a tour themed to the resistance in Paris during WWII. Should have been fun, but the guide seemed bored and just kind of read of facts. (I later learned he was one of the owners).

I still recommend them.

I also did a Paris by Mouth. Great wine walk, but I am not sure it's still on the schedule.

As phred said, it depends more on the guide than the company, which is true. It also depends on how well a company vets the guides it hires as many are freelancers working for many companies. So based on company reputation: Louvre, try Context Tours. Latin Quarter/Notre Dame --Paris Walks? Or for a private tour of either, here is Iris Amice's contact info, the guide Chani mentioned. She's absolutely top notch, but booked quite a bit when not doing Paris Walks: dayinsummer@yahoo.com.
You can see her on a Paris episode of the PBS show Globe Trekker.

Everyone I know that has done a Paris Greeter has had a great experience. It is free, it is only you and your local Parisian showing you their neighborhood. We had a retired guy take us on a tour of a bakery ( hundreds of years old) wine shop, cheese shop, street markets, etc. then we ended up in a park with a picnic. In each shop we talked with the shop keeper and they explained their shop/food while our greeter interpreted. We were in a neighborhood far from tourists. We spent most of the day with our local guy asking about French culture, his life etc. it couldn't be more personal. Fabulous!!

I think I may need to try them all. How about a group called City Wonders? They have a tour for the Louvre at night - I did one like that for the Vatican and loved it. I tried to book these guys through their website, which crashed but then they reached out to me in the morning to give us a discount for our troubles if we called back and made the reservation. They look like a big outfit in a number of countries, much like Walks of Italy, which I loved. Anyone ever hear of these folks?

have done 5 or 6 walks over the years with Paris Walks. All have been superb. Incidentally on one of them, Monmartre, we happened to get one of the company owners and he was quite good. Another poster mentioned having a bad experience with him (company is owned by a husband-and-wife, so it must be the same guy); maybe we were lucky, or he had an off day.

I have Used the same company In London (London Walks) and Paris (Paris Walks) and would recommend them to anyone. The journey to the meeting point is fun for me, meeting other travelers, the small group. We did the Maris Circuit 1 and loved it, so many details we would have missed. If you do take a "free tour" it would be normal to pay a tip, which for me would be about the same cost as the Paris Walks tour. I always pick a few walks and land up only taking one or two, always wishing I had done more...oh well, next time!

I think Paris Walks it is for Montmartre and Le Marais. Has anyone done a tour of Versailles? In reading the book, it seems as if there is a huge walk from the train to the Palace, is it that long, really? Are there good private or semi-private tours ? I feel like a guide would be a good thing.

The walk to the palace depends on which train station you arrive at. The one station (that I arrived at) is only a couple of blocks from the entrance and the palace. There is another station and that may be a longer walk. Someone else will know about that.

You want to take the RER-C to Versailles – Château Rive Gauche (RG). Head out of the station, take a Left to the signal. Take a Right, crossing the street onto Avenue de Sceaux and follow it to the end. You will walk right into the Chateaux parking lot.
Enjoy.

At Versailles we got off the train and followed the crowd. The walk was about 10 min, maybe 1/2 a mile. You will pass a few souvenir shops. Not a long walk at all.

well, we wimped out and booked a tour through Viator with a pick-up in Paris. We still end up training to Versailles but I thought maybe it would be fun to have the guides with us on the train portion as well. So we will see how it goes. AND it turned out that the tour, although booked through Viator is actually run by City Wonders, the ones we booked the Louvre tour with. We're going to use Walks of Paris, which don't need reservations for neighborhood tours of either Montmartre or the Marais. I'm interested in anything anyone can tell us about the history in either place.