Traveling from Saint-Denis into Paris

Try inputting your location and date/time in Google Maps. Which type of Navigo do you have? St Denis should be in zone 2, which would be covered by the Navigo Decouverte.

Thanks for your reply.
We do not have a Navigo card yet. We planned to get them at a ticket office near our hotel, which is 80 Bd Charles de Gaulle, 92390 Villeneuve-la-Garenne.
We would like to be able to travel on the RER as well as buses, but I was reading that you can't load RER passes and bus passes on the same card. This is where it gets really confusing for me, as we would ideally need to use both of these forms of transport.

If you leave your car at the hotel, you will probably have to take a bus to a RER stop or a metro stop. You can use the RATP.fr website to get an itinerary for the trip. I just did it using the address of the hotel and the suggestion was a bus (177) to Metro Line 13 followed by a connection to Metro Line 2. The alternative was a 24 minute walk to the Saint Denis stop in the Transilien system and taking a train from there to Gare du Nord where you would take Line 2 to the cemetery. I see no routing that suggests the RER. I wonder if you are confusing the RER system with the Transilien trains.

I checked as well at RATP, and the cost is 2.50 EUR, a normal Paris transit fare, even if you use the RER.

I am using Google maps and the majority of the routes use the RER.
There is an option with an 11 minute walk to get the T1 to Saint Dennis and then the RER.
I'm using Google maps and have found a route using the 137 bus and changing to the 60 bus.

Can you recommend which Navigo card for my wife and I to get, considering that after the cemetery we will be traveling all around Paris and may need to use different forms of public transport.
We arrive on Friday evening and leave Sunday midday, but would probably want to travel on all 3 days, even though we won't have much time on the Friday and the Sunday.
I'm thinking the Navigo Decouverte with a weekly pass would be the simplest option, even though it probably isn't the most economical?

The Navigo Decouverte for does not work for you since it goes from Monday morning to Sunday night and you are there over a weekend. You can load a number of transit fares onto Navigo Easy Cards and travel like that.

You are seriously confused about the Navigo Easy which loads both bus tickets and metro/RER tickets. With one 2.50 ticket you can go anywhere in the Ile de France. There are no more separate point to point RER tickets. The only place you can't go on the 2.50 metro/RER ticket is an airport. Both airports have 13 Euro separate tickets. If you have a validated metro/rer ticket you can't get a fine as the ticket is one size fits all. This is a change that occurred in January of this year.

From St. Denis stop on the metro 13 to St. Lazare and change to the metro 3 to Pere Lachaise although it is better to get off at Gambetta and enter at the top of Pere Lachaise Cemetery so you are walking down hill. Get a map ahead or have clear instructions on finding the grave -- it is not that easy to fine. If St. Denis Basilica is not our metro stop or you are not on that line then use Ratp.fr. to create a route. It is all doable on the metro. It is a fairly long way round, so maybe someone has a better routing to suggest.

It is possible that picking up the Tram at St. Ouen as you come down on the 13 from St. Denis and taking it to Bagnolet and then the metro back to Gambetta would be faster, but that would take a bus ticket for the tram and then two 2.50 metro tickets or a walk from the tram to the cemetery. If you cobbled something together like that then a 12 Euro day pass on that day would make sense allowing you to switch from buses/trams to trains and back and make as many trips as you wish.

Thanks for taking the time to help me with this.
I will get a Navigo easy card then and probably get a day pass.
I thought the bus and RER tickets couldn't be loaded onto a Navigo card at the same time....I'm sure that's what I've been reading anyway.
With just a 4 minute walk from our hotel, we can get the T1 to Saint-Denis and then the RER.

One more question, does anyone know where the nearest place is that I can buy a Navigo card and a day pass, to our hotel at 80 Boulevard Charles De Gaulle, 92390 Villeneuve-la-Garenne?
Thanks.

I guess the question is how are you getting to your hotel to begin with? Are you landing at CDG and taking a taxi? If so, you can buy the card at the airport train station.

We are traveling by car from Calais

Assuming you are coming in on the A-16, you could stop off at the Persan-Beaumont RER station and buy them.
https://www.ratp.fr/en/tickets-and-fares/points-sales

Thank you. I will look into that and make sure I am able to park there for a few minutes while I go in to get the Navigo cards.

• Among the great conveniences of the Navigo Easy card is that you can add more tickets to it using the Mobilites app on your phone

• As mentioned above, better to start on the far side of the cemetery and work your way west/downhill.

• Put the RS audio tour on your phone while you're at it (it's a duet!), but consider turning on airplane mode while in the cemetery or the RS app might keep trying to connect to the network instead of using the programs you saved to your phone already.

• Jim Morrison's grave is now surrounded by a low chain-link fence, so if you follow the rules you can't get closer than a few meters from it; people leave their chewing gum on a nearby tree trunk as a token, unless they aren't rule-followers, so there is usually some debris around his marker.

• the Mobilites app lists more transit options than Google Maps does, and I felt like the bus stop locations that google listed were not as up-to-date. Transit authorities adjust the stops forwards and backwards depending on arcane alchemical formulae, and when I went by Google it would take watching a bus or two pass by without stopping before I realized that the real stop was at the other corner...

https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/en

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/%25C3%25AEle-de-france-mobilit%25C3%25A9s/id484527651&ved=2ahUKEwjvpqKo9tGMAxUcmYkEHW8FHMMQFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3B-Ggi6mY7w5HUrl-kClyx

**Editing to add that these webpages are a little clearer:

https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/en/tickets-fares/detail/metro-train-rer-ticket

https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/en/tickets-fares/media/navigo-easy-travel-card

It seems to me that you could buy the cards at the Mairie transit station, take the T1 east across the river to St Denis, then get on the H southbound to Gare du Nord, and from there bob's your uncle.

You could get to the cemetery in under an hour. But of course you would break up the ride with a stop or two in the city for an apero and some agitation.

You have been extremely helpful. Thank you very much for taking so much time to help me with this.

Regarding the advice to get off at Gambetta for Père Lachaise cemetery: yes in general, but not for Jim Morrison's grave which is in the southern corner.

From St Denis, I would just take line 13 to Place de Clichy and Line 2 to Pere Lachaise or Philippe Auguste. The latter is a bit closer to the grave you want to visit. Line 2 is partly above ground, making it a nicer ride than line 3.