Vacation ideas

The City

Paris is the capital of France and the country’s largest city. It is situated in Northern France on the river Seine. The city of Paris has an estimated population of 2,167,994 (January 2006) but the Paris metropolitan area has a population of over 11 million.

Paris is today one of the world’s leading business and cultural centers, and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world’s major global cities. The city is home to a varied population, a genuine cultural wealth with a high proportion of students, young workers and elderly people, many tourists and a large number of foreign residents.

Paris is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with 45 million tourists every year in the Paris Region, 60% of whom are foreign visitors. The city’s many attractions include numerous iconic landmarks, world-famous institutions and popular parks.

The Climate

Paris sees extremely high or low temperatures due to its oceanic climate, affected by the North Atlantic Current. Rain falls throughout the year, and although Paris is not a very rainy city, it is known for sudden showers. Light rainfall is fairly distributed throughout the year with an average annual precipitation is 642mm. Snowfall is rare, but the city sometimes sees light snow or flurries without accumulation. The highest recorded temperature is 40.4 °C on 28 July 1948, and the lowest is a −23.9 °C on 10 December 1879.

Summers
Paris has warm and pleasant summers with average high temperatures of 25 °C and low of 15 °C. 

Winters
Paris has chilly winters but temperatures rarely falls below freezing point with average temperatures of around 3°C  to 8 °C. 

Spring and Autumn
Paris’s spring and autumn months are known for its mild and occasionally warmer days and cool evenings.

Landmarks and Monuments

The three most famous landmarks of Paris are surely the Notre Dame de Paris, a twelfth-century cathedral, the Napoleonic Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower of the nineteenth-century. The Eiffel Tower is now an enduring symbol of Paris, but was originally a “temporary” construction by Gustave Eiffel for the Universal Ezposition in 1889 and was never dismantled. Buildings, monuments and thoroughfares run in a roughly straight line from the city-center, called the Historical axis. It begins with the Louvre and goes through the Tuileries Gardens, the Champs- Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe, centered in the  Place de l’Étoile circus.The line was prolonged even further west to the La Défens business district from the 1960s, dominated by square-shaped triumphal Grande Arche of its own (this district hosts most of the tallest skyscrapers in the Paris urban area).

Getting to Paris

South African visitors van book their flights to Paris at bestflights.co.za

Tourism in Paris

Since the early 11th century Paris was a popular destination for students, traders and religious pilgrimages. Among Paris’ first mass attractions drawing international interest were Paris’ many monuments, especially the Eiffel Tower from 1889. Paris welcomed some 27 million visitors in 2006.

Music

Paris is known for its several annual festivals taking place, such as the Rock en Seine.
Paris’ houses 2 of the largest opera houses, the Opéra Garnier (historical Paris Opéra) and modern Opéra Bastille. The major theaters of Paris include the  Bobino, Théâtre Mogador, and the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse.

Museums

The highest-esteemed attractions of Paris are its museums and monuments. The Louvre is the city’s most prized museum and welcomes more than 8 million visitors annually, making it the world’s most-visited  museum by far.Another main attraction of the city is the city’s cathedrals. Its Notre Dame de Paris and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur receive 12 million and eight million visitors, respectively. Paris’ most famous monument, the Eiffel Tower averages over 6 million annual visitors and more than 200 million visitors since it has been constructed. Another major tourist attraction of Paris is the Disneyland Resort Paris that attracts visitors from all over Europe and attracted 14.5 million visitors in 2007 alone.

Transportation
Paris has been building its transportation system throughout history and keeps on renovating it today.

Rails
Paris’ most important transportation system is The Metro.The system, with 300 stations, connects 214 km of rails. The city is also served by a tramway, a light rail network of four lines. Six new light rail lines are currently in various stages of development.

Bikes
Paris also offers a bike sharing system called Vélib’ with more than 20,000 public bicycles distributed at 1,450 parking stations, which can be rented for short and medium distances including one way trips.

Ferry (Voguéo)
Pairs inaugurated a new ferry service in June 2008, called the Voguéo, on the Seine and Marne rivers.

Airports
Paris is served by two major airports. The Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport is known as one of the busiest airports in the world and the Orly Airport is situated in the south of Paris. The Beauvais Tillé Airport is only used by charter and low-cost ailines. The fourth airport, Le Bourget nowadays only hosts business jets, air trade shows and the aerospace museum.

Motorway Network
The city is also the most important hub of France’s motorway network, and is surrounded by three orbital freeways. Paris has an extensive road network with over 2,000 km of highways and motorways.By road, Brussels can be reached in three hours, Frankfurt in six hours and Barcelona in 12 hours.