My husband and I will be spending 5 days in London and 5 in Paris. I'm hoping to get a ball park figure for the cost of transportation wheile we're there. There seem to be so many options and in trying to figure it all out I feel like a dog chasing it's tail. In London, we will be arriving at Heathrow and plan to take the tube to our hotel, which is in the Greenland Dock area..zone 2. We'll be making trips into London each day. On day 6 we are taking the Eurostar to Paris. (already paid for) In Paris we'll need to go from the eurostar station to our appartment which is in the 19th arr. We plan to spend 5 days including a trip to Versailles and to the airport. Any help would be greatly appreciated! This is our first trip to Europe and coming from a rather rural area, we're not used to public transportation.
Posted by
Kansas
1175 posts
We're also from a rural area and we did lots of research before spending 5-6 days each in London and then Paris. We got an oyster card for the tube in London and a metro pass for Paris that includes Versailles. Both the tube and the metro are easy to figure out and you can travel with ease all around both cities. When we arrive in Paris on the Eurostar, we always take a cab to where we are staying. We prefer hotels. The great advantage of a taxi is that you are delivered to the front door with your luggage and not trying to wrestle your suitcases thru turnstiles, onto crowded trains, and up very long flights of stairs in the metro. A taxi to the 19 eme should be around 20 Euros. If you prefer, you can purchase two carnets (packets of 10 tickets) of metro tickets at the Eurostar departure lounge in London or even on the Eurostar in the snack bar car, avoiding a long line at Gare du Nord to buy them. You will be surprised at how easy it is to get around both cities using low cost public transportation.
Posted by
Berkeley
14 posts
We were in london just when the oyster cards were beginning to be used by visitors. You can buy the card when you get to london. You figure out how much money you will load the card with. Then You just hold them up to the sensor when you go in and out of the system and money is taken off the card. Here is a web page that discusses them for visitors and helps you figure out about how much you might need. http://visitorshop.tfl.gov.uk/oystercard/product/oyster-card.html You can add more money to it later on. We now have a similar system in the san francisco bay area and it is so easy to use. In paris, there is a transit card you can get called Navigo Decouverte. It works well if you will be there during weekdays as it startsmup on a Monday and ends on Sunday. If this schedule works for you, In order to receive one you need a Passport size photo of yourself that gets affixed to the card. The kmcard costs about 5 Euros. Then you can buy the unlimited travel for the week in central paris for 19.50 Euro. Or youcan go with a packet of 10 tickets called a carnet ("car-NAY"). You use one every time you go into the metro. One ride on a single ticket is about 1.70 Euros. One carnet of ten tickets is about 12.70 Euros Check out these web sites for paris transit. http://www.ratp.fr/en/ratp/c_21879/tourists/ And http://europeforvisitors.com/paris/articles/paris-metro-tickets.htm
We used the buses in paris, too and met nice people on them, perhaps cuz our kids were coversation pieces then!