Today's strikes (Feb 16) actually don't look too bad

We bailed. Our trip to Paris, and onwards to Basque Country, was supposed to start on March 7th, but we rebooked and are going to Madrid instead. Whichever way the pension reform question is resolved by March 26th...I hope that's really is the end of it, but we'll see. Until then, we'll watch from across the border!

Thank you, Kim! Always good to have an update and an assessment from you.

Strikes won't stop me from visiting Paris in April, lol but I've built in flex time if needed for my days to Paris and leaving Paris.

The Carnavalet museum has tweeted that the permanent collections from the Revolution to the present will close (due to the strike) at 2 pm today.

The Orsay has a tweet up that says they can't guarantee they will open all the collections today, and that they definitely will not stay open for the regular Thursday evening. The museum will close at 5 pm with last entry at 4 pm.

The Louvre says on its website that it is open today, bit that some exhibition rooms will not open (it doesn't specify which ones).

My wife and I have a brief visit planned for months to Paris - arrive March 6-- depart March 8 with just one full day of touring before a departing flight to our primary destination.
News that March 7 is planned for a labor strike is not good- I have been in France on other occasions when strikes occurred over the years.

I imagine airlines wont honor changes to airfare as a result of a strike - nor hotels nor advanced reservations at places like Eiffel Tower and Orsay.

Should we just come and make do in Paris as best we can?

We are in Paris now, have been since Monday. Yesterday we went sight-seeing and had no problems with the metro. We took buses and their schedules were disrupted, but only slightly. For example, the bus that would normally go the entire route stopped at Luxembourg and we all had to get off. Ultimately we walked twice as much as anticipated but in Paris, that's okay with me!
There is plenty of police presence, though, both gendarme and military style.

@joseph.james.cleary2

I think this is truly is a very individualized decision that travelers must make for themselves. As noted above, we did decide to abandon our plans for Paris starting March 7th. (Our time and stay in the city, and then France, was much longer than just a day.) The rhetoric around the goal for the day is pretty intense: "bring the country to its knees," "We're going to block everything on March 7. Everything everywhere must stop..." Is it hyperbole? Is it accurate? We won't know until March 7th.

But for us the worry and the guessing game made our plans stop feeling like a vacation. We love Paris, but we love our travel experience more, and this had ceased to feel fun and exciting. For us -- and again, I am just sharing our personal thoughts not saying this is right for everyone -- we felt palpable relief when we swapped Paris for another European capital. We literally felt lighter, like a weight had been removed. To me, that said it all...

We were in Paris on Thursday. We had intended to visit the Pantheon in the morning, and checked the website and it said it was open. However, we arrived and it didn't open until 12:30. We were at Versailles the day before and they had posted that they expected disruptions or closure. The Arc de Triomphe was also closed on Thursday. In other words, the strikes can disrupt your sightseeing plans.

Yes, Carolyn makes a good point. Several of the museums have either not opened at all, or opened for shorter hours, or not opened all their departments. Higher up in this thread, I conveyed some of that information during the strike day — which wasn’t as heavily subscribed as the others. (I.e. with the rhetoric around March 7, there may be many more closures.

The best place to look seems to be the twitter feed of the museum, if they have one. And cross-checking with the website, although Carolyn’s experience shows that not all the museums are good about posting their info (presumably some of their communications staff is participating in the strike, and thus, the public-facing information isn’t being updated as it should be).