parisbynumbers.com

Whether you’re British, American, Canadian or Australian, you won’t need a visa to visit Paris as a tourist. Your passport is perfectly sufficient to gain entry to France, allowing you to stay in the country for up to ninety days within a six month period.

Brits, of course, can stay much longer than anyone else. Residents of the European Union now have free movement of travel within the EU’s borders, meaning they can reside within any member country for as long as they choose, and are equally free to work as they desire. It’s still sensible to apply for a carte de sejour residency permit if you’re staying for any length of time - it’s no longer a legal requirement for EU citizens, but it’s a very useful document to have. Click here for more info…

The situation for American, Candian and Australian citizens desiring residency in Paris is slightly more complex. If you intend to stay longer than three months, or you’re visiting for a reason that isn’t purely touristic (ie work), you’ll need permission granted before you travel, and the appropriate visa must be found inside your passport when you land in France.

Normally this is a long stay visa (visa de long séjour), and you’ll need to apply to your local French Consulate from within your home country for this permission. Then, once you arrive in France, you’ll need to apply within eight days for a carte de sejour - the French residency permit that confirms the permissions already temporarily granted by your visa. Note that you can’t enter France as a tourist and then apply for a long stay visa / carte de sejour - you’ll usually be required to return home to make your visa application.

Please note that rules regarding residency and employment are relatively complex, and change regularly. There are all manner of exceptions, and special programmes that might assist your visa application - especially if you’re a student, or retired, or even in some cases planning a working holiday. Follow the links below for more detailed information:

French Government Guide to Visas

US Citizens:
Guide to Residency - US Embassy in Paris (pdf)

Australian Citizens
French Embassy in Canberra

Canadian Citizens
French Embassy in Ottawa

Cycling is a great way to see more of Paris - and since July 2007 the ambitious ‘Velib‘ scheme allows anyone to hire a bike straight off the city’s street corners.

The scheme has made some 20,000 bicycles available for general hire from more than a thousand road-side bike stations, which are located as little as 300 metres apart on streets throughout Paris’ twenty arrondissements. Velib, which takes it’s name from the French words Velo (for ‘bike’) and liberte (for ‘ freedom’) has been a huge success, and is as good excuse as any to swap the darkness of the metro with the fresh air of the boulevards.

To use the system you first need to pay a small subscription fee. It costs 1 euro to sign up for the day, and 5 euros for the week, and you can register with a credit card at the terminal found at all of the bike stations. Alternatively, you can register online for an annual membership costing 29 euros - and receive a prepaid card allowing you the freedom to grab a bike from one of the pickup points whenever you feel inclined.

Once subscribed, you’re charged additionally for each journey you make - there’s no fee for the first 30 minutes of each hire period, meaning quick trips across the city are all included in your subscription. If you want to keep possession of your bike for a little longer, your card will be charged on a sliding scale - 1 euro if you keep it for an hour, 3 euros for an hour and a half, and an additional 4 euros for every half hour after that. This pricing scale means you’d be cheaper to rent from a bike shop if it’s a long, leisurely days cycling you’re after - but with bike stations now situated on almost every street corner, there’s no reason why you’ll need to hang on to the same bike for very long if you’re just using it to hop between the sights.

French law doesn’t require you to wear a cycling helmet (and they aren’t provided at the velib stations) but it’s always a good idea to bring your own if you can. Of course to keep the system running smoothly there are also fines - fail to return your bike to one of the terminals within a 24 hour period and you’ll become liable for a 150 euro charge, which will be deducted from whatever method you used to subscribe.

Paris boasts around 200 miles of cycle paths for you to enjoy - and cycling on a Sunday is particuarly enjoyable, when the city centre’s main riverside boulevards, normally fast and busy highways, become pedestrian roads and cycle paths (part of the Paris Respire initiative). Check out the official Velib website if you’d like to know more…

The Paris Metro is cheap, fast and practical - all in all, it’s by far the best way to get around the city. 14 metro lines connect more than 380 stations, scattered across Paris’ twenty arrondissements. The stations are very densely packed throughout the city - some barely a few hundred metres apart - ensuring that only very rarely will you come across a location not within easy reach of the metro system.

It isn’t the most modern subway in the world (the first line opened in 1900), but it runs quickly and efficiently. Indeed, it has a certain antiquated charm - white tiled station walls, advertising boards framed with green porcelain borders, even wooden floors in some of the oldest carriages. Particularly famous are the art nouveau station entrances - red lamps and twisted green railings still hang over the staircases of some of the older stations.

It’s also a very safe underground system, in general. Certainly the central stations are sufficiently busy at all times of day to ensure that problems are very rare - if you receive any hassle at all it’s likely to be in the outer districts, late in the evening. As with all subway systems, simple rules apply: don’t hang around on empty platforms, and if you’re travelling late (and alone) it’s sensible to ride in the first carriage.

Mind you, begging on the network does remain a significant nuisance. Beggars regularly tour carriages with tales of hard luck, and it’s not hard to spot vagrants snoozing on the platforms - both minor inconveniences on a network generally free from both graffiti and vandalism.

Paris Metro - Tickets and Fares

A one way ticket on the metro now costs €1.50, allowing for one journey to any point on the network (and including any necessary connections). A better option is to buy in bulk - ask for a carnet (pronounced ‘car-nay’) and you’ll receive ten tickets at a discounted rate of €11.10. The tickets don’t become active until stamped at the turnstile on your way to the platforms - so it’s perfectly sensible to carry a few spare with you as you hop around the city.

You can also use the ticket on Paris’ buses, provided you remember to validate it in the stamping machine on board - your ticket is now valid for an hour and a half after you first get on, allowing you to hop between buses as required to reach your destination, though you can’t connect between metro and bus on the same ticket.

Single tickets and carnets are sufficient for most visitors to the city - but if you really intend to use the metro heavily during your visit the Paris transport authority (the RATP) also offers a range of travel cards. The Paris Visite card is aimed at tourists, and will allow unlimited travel on the metro and bus system for 1-5 days, depending on the length of ticket you buy. It’s fairly pricey, and you’d need to use the system an awful lot to get full value from the price, but you might consider it worthwhile for the freedom to move around the city as and when you please.

If you’re on the tightest budgets, there are cheaper options than the Paris Visite tickets - the mobilis ticket, in particular, offers a whole day’s transport for a few euros less than the equivalent Paris Visite. The only significant difference is that it’s marketed at Parisians, not foreign tourists, and indeed you wont find any mention of it on the English-language pages of the Metro website.

If you’re staying longer than a week (or moving to Paris long term) you’d be wise to get a Carte Orange - which offer unlimited travel on a weekly or monthly basis, and which start at €15 for a week’s travel within the central zones. Carte Orange fares operate over a calendar month, or indeed on a monday to sunday basis - if you buy it on a thursday, then, it will still expire late on Sunday night. You’ll need to hand over a passport photo for the travel card. You can get all the details on the RATP website.

La Defense is a major business district located on the north west edge of Paris. With the single exceptions of the Eiffel Tower and the shiny black Tour Montparnasse (which is almost universally detested by Parisians) buildings over a very modest height are prohibited within the Paris city limits - hence the small forest of skyscrapers which have grown up at La Defense, and which cluster just the wrong side of the city border on top of the peripherique.

Its curious name is actually a historical reference - la Defense commemorates the soldiers killed during the legendary ‘defense of Paris’ during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 - which nonetheless resulted in the capture of the city by German forces, some seventy years before Hitler’s famous march under the Arc de Triomphe during the Second World War.

Development first began on the Defense district in the fifties, but it wasn’t until the seventies and eighties that construction continued at pace. There are now some forty office towers in the area, and another 15 slated for construction in the next few years. Perhaps the most impressive construction of the last decade has been the monumental Grande Arche De La Defense - a giant square archway, clad in white stone, which lines up perfectly with both the Arc de Triomphe and, several kilometres further on, the smaller carousel arch at the entrance to the Louvre - thus linking this outer district with the very heart of historic Paris.

The authorities responsible for La Defense have been very keen to offset it’s concrete plazas and cold tower blocks with installation art - indeed, the district boasts more than sixty cutting edge (and often very quirky) examples of urban sculpture. You can take a virtual tour of the art collection by visiting the official government website, but it’s worth going to look youself, and most good guidebooks will be able to pinpoint the highlights as you walk around.

Despite these efforts, much of La Defense feels slightly jaded - it certainly isn’t as modern a financial district as London’s bold and swiftly regenerating Dockland’s district, though perhaps ongoing construction work will bring the area a new lease of life. Paris’ largest shopping centre sits on the main concourse, just by the grande arche, and will sell pretty much anything you require, and La Defense also boasts a number of large chain hotels, mostly serving the business community but becoming increasingly popular amongst the tourist trade - the very swift metro line 1 connects La Defense to the city centre in only 15 minutes.