3 Days in Paris ..what's the best Metro tix ?

Espe,how old are kids,, that will determine if they are eligible for any discount tickets on metro/rer.( children under 4-10) , children under 3 are free on metro. Secondly where exactly are you staying.. do you really need metro to get to hoho? Lastly there is a "carnet" of tickets which is simply 10 one way tickets sold at a discount to full price. Think its running at about 12 euros . I would google and look up "Paris by train" its a great site that will be able to give you all your route info, for metro and RER and fares and passes available.

For three days, the carnet is probably best. There are weekly passes but doubt if you could make it pay for three days.

The carnet will do the trick. Look at a map of the city. Montmartre, the Arc, and the ET are the furthest you'll probably go - - everything else is easily walkable. Heck, you can walk from Notre Dame to the tower in fourty-five minutes, even if you dwadle. Think real hard about a HOHO, those things go in circles, if you want to go someplace that's ninety degrees to the left, you're going to have to go the long way around if the buses go to the right - - a pretty big waste of time except maybe for an introductory pass. The bus/boat combo is probably the batobus, which is a HOHO boat, despite it's name. The tickets are good for the whole calendar day, so if you hold on to your ticket you can almost get in a night ride (sunset is around nine-thirty in May - - which is just about the time it shuts down).

The kids are twin boys of 8 years old. We are staying at a youth hostel within walking distance to Place D'Italie metro station. Since we only have 3 days in Paris, we thought why waste time finding our way around when we have no clue where everything is located. Thats why we are doing HOHO to get a taste for the city. The boys will probably enjoy riding the top deck of the bus.

Buy a ten-ticket carnet for the adults (€12.70) and share the tickets. Buy a ten-ticket carnet reduit for the twins (€6.35) and have them share the tickets. Buy more carnets as needed. Each ticket is good anywhere the metro goes (some lines end in zone 3) and on the RER in zone 1. Each ticket provides for bus transfers up to 90 minutes after boarding the first bus, but the tickets are not good for transfer between metro and bus. If your three days in Paris will include a Saturday and/or a Sunday, you could buy a one-day, zone 1-3 Ticket Jeunes pass for each boy for each day. The price is €3.55. Orly is in zone 4. You will have to buy individual tickets for all of you to get from Orly to Place d'Italie. The most direct route is to take bus 285 from the Orly Sud terminal to Villejeuf-Louis Aragon which is at the southern end of metro line 7. The bus fare is €1.90. If your plane arrives at Orly Ouest, take the Orlyval driverless shuttle train between the terminals. The ride between the terminals is free. Buy your carnets at the Villejeuf-Louis Aragon station and take metro line 7 directly to Place d'Italie. An alternate route would be to take the airport shuttle bus from either terminal to the Pont de Rungis RER station. The fare is €2.50. Take the RER C to Gare d'Austerlitz and metro line 5 from there to Place d'Italie. The fare is €4.00 for adults and €2.00 for children. For a zoomable map of the metro and RER system, go here: http://tinyurl.com/6xmvms4.

Since nobody specifically said it yet, don't bother with the day tickets. They're poor value for money in Paris compared to carnets (last I checked you needed to do at least six journeys per day for them to be cheaper).

Before buying a carnet for the adults and a carnet of demi-tarif billets for the kids, I would suggest taking a look at what you want to do and see if you will even use that many tickets, seeing as you have the HO/HO for 2 days. My parents used that as their primary transportation for their first trip to Paris and used 2 metro tickets each over the course of 3 days there - because they spent almost an entire day at the Louvre and not moving around the city. As far as HOHO + Seine cruise, are you thinking of the Batobus? That's the HOHO Boat. There's also the Paris Pass which combines HOHO + Cruise + lots of other things into one expensive pass (but if you go commando and do everything on there, it is a good value). There may be a company offering a combo on a cruise + their bus, but I'm not aware of one.

Paris L'OpenTour has four bus routes and you can add the Batobus to the package. Les Cars Rouges has one route and you cannot include the Batobus.