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Le Havre to Paris Private or Semi-Private Tours


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We are three people arriving in Le Havre and looking for a private tour to Paris for the day or possibly a semi-private tour. Many hours searching has provided little information. Any suggestions and/or recommendations for companies would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!

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  • 1 month later...
We are three people arriving in Le Havre and looking for a private tour to Paris for the day or possibly a semi-private tour. Many hours searching has provided little information. Any suggestions and/or recommendations for companies would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Every thing I see tells me not to do it. Not enough time in port. I will wait to see if the ship will offer it, as they have to wait for us to return. :rolleyes:

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Perhaps we can help shed some light on the port. Your ship is scheduled to be docked for 14 hours. RCI will offer several excursions to Paris including some that are structured (with guides) as well as an independent tour where they will take you to Paris on a bus and bring you back to the ship...but your time in Paris is on your own. You can also get to Paris on the train from Le Havre as there is about 1 train per hour. The trains take about 2:20 each way which is actually a little faster then the buses. But you would need a taxi to get from the port to the Le Havre train station (unless you want to do a fast 45 min walk).

 

What all this will get you is about 6-7 hours in Paris which is better then nothing for those who have never been to this fabulous city. Personally we would recommend renting an apartment for a few weeks in Paris :) I cannot help you with private tour companies (we do our own thing in Europe) but private tours in France tend to be quite expensive. And remember, you are talking about 5 hours of driving just to get to and from Paris.

 

Hank

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We are three people arriving in Le Havre and looking for a private tour to Paris for the day or possibly a semi-private tour. Many hours searching has provided little information. Any suggestions and/or recommendations for companies would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Hello ! From Le Havre you can get a Taxi to go to Paris, the taxi will be privatised to you. I think that it is 450€ for the car, even if you are 1 or 4 people. You can even go with the train but there are strikes in France so it is not really recommanded for cruisers.

 

You can also enjoy Le Havre, it is such a nice place to see !

 

Have a nice day ! :)

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Use the cruise line, Paris on your own tour, which is a bus and you get dropped off at Place de Concorde. It usually takes the bus about 2 1/2 hours each way. You can plan from there what you want to see on your own or you can get a tour guide to meet you where the bus drops you off to show you around. This is what we did and it worked perfectly. We had a whirlwind of a day but saw most majors sites although we did not enter any of them(Notre dame or Louvre). We also had the tour guide get a van to take us around since one of our party has mobility issues.

 

I found the tour guide on Tours by Locals and she was great. She scheduled the van to get us around.

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We did the "Paris on Your Own" option from the ship. Taking a train wasn't a good option because of the scheduled train strikes in April and May.

 

Was it a good idea? I'm still undecided. It was quite expensive, but we had never been to Paris and likely would never schedule a trip there on our own, so this was probably our only chance to say we had at least been there. That was ultimately the only positive point.

 

Here were the downsides:

 

NCL has a pretty awful way of getting THEIR OWN excursions off the ship. Every tour is assigned a slightly different time to be in the theatre. Here you listen to the same instructions over and over until they are absolutely sure each called excursion has all of its passengers.

 

The end result is that as time goes by, the groups get delayed past their scheduled departure time, so we started out late. Our excursion had no traffic issues, but the end result was only three hours to do Paris. We grabbed a taxi (not that easy, even with our guide assisting us) and went to Notre Dame. Then, we walked along the Seine to return to our pick up location. Good thing the weather was nice, but I was totally uninspired by Paris.

I'm well aware that I missed most of the great things. We saw the Eiffel Tower, but there was a police action with at least a dozen police cars going to a smoke bomb protest.

 

To be honest, we have been to many of the great cities of Europe, and so it takes a lot to wow us. If this was our first time in Europe, I would likely have loved Paris more. I thought much more humble Krakow was amazing in comparison. The "lovely French countryside" we saw on our bus trip was lovely but so is a trip through most regions of Europe and the USA.

 

If you can swing the expense, a private tour to Paris would be much more efficient and enjoyable than a "do it yourself." The ship granted us a mere extra 15 minutes compensation because of our delay in the morning. I'm glad I did it, but would never repeat that experience. Also, this excursion is not for anyone with a physical limitation.

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Use the cruise line, Paris on your own tour, which is a bus and you get dropped off at Place de Concorde. It usually takes the bus about 2 1/2 hours each way. You can plan from there what you want to see on your own or you can get a tour guide to meet you where the bus drops you off to show you around. This is what we did and it worked perfectly. We had a whirlwind of a day but saw most majors sites although we did not enter any of them(Notre dame or Louvre). We also had the tour guide get a van to take us around since one of our party has mobility issues.

 

I found the tour guide on Tours by Locals and she was great. She scheduled the van to get us around.

 

My traveling companion has a handicap scooter, will that fit on the bus?

 

Joe

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...

 

The end result is that as time goes by, the groups get delayed past their scheduled departure time, so we started out late. Our excursion had no traffic issues, but the end result was only three hours to do Paris. We grabbed a taxi (not that easy, even with our guide assisting us) and went to Notre Dame. Then, we walked along the Seine to return to our pick up location. Good thing the weather was nice, but I was totally uninspired by Paris.

I'm well aware that I missed most of the great things. We saw the Eiffel Tower, but there was a police action with at least a dozen police cars going to a smoke bomb protest.

 

To be honest, we have been to many of the great cities of Europe, and so it takes a lot to wow us. If this was our first time in Europe, I would likely have loved Paris more. I thought much more humble Krakow was amazing in comparison. The "lovely French countryside" we saw on our bus trip was lovely but so is a trip through most regions of Europe and the USA.

 

...

 

 

I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience with this tour. It's perhaps one reason many folks on here don't recommend trying to cram a visit to Paris in on a port call to Le Havre; you have so little time there. Paris is a beautiful, extraordinary city. I'm sorry you did not get to experience it properly, and I hope no one is deterred by your comments from visiting this city and giving it the time it deserves.

 

But heck, Paris doesn't need me or anyone else to promote it. :D

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