VELTRA tours & activities, fun things to do

The frequency of bus is excellent. very friendly bus driver and can speak English very well.

With the four lines, it is not one bus.You have to connect to the other routes via different buses if you wish to see Paris. Very good tour.

Mthe Paris hop on hop off bus was great. The boat ride was even nicer. We got to see about all there was to see in Paris. One problem, on the second day, the driver left us stranded near the Bastille, then compounded the insult by telling us another bus was on it's way.......the second bus never showed. We had to catch a subway back to our main station.

We had a wonderful time in Paris and the bus tour was great as we managed to see all tourist sights we wanted at our own pace.Wonderful

Great way to see Paris! A must do!
Only negative is that the bus waited at some of the stops far too long!

It was great experience, the open top bus tours are very good as well as convinient...good frequency and space management...we could find plan inside or on open top as needed most of the times...

Five stars, or even six, for after-sales customer service. :-). In my last review, I moaned about an apparent excess charge of just under five dollars- but within three hours, City Discovery had written back to me to offer a five-dollar credit to my account. And it wasn't even their fault (it was my stingy old bank). Thanks indeed!!

Paris A La Carte was an excellent value. We had 3 days of Hop On Hop Off on the L'Open bus, and it was great ! We saw so much of Paris. There were lots of busses so we did not have to wait long. Also, we were able to go an unlimited number of times on the Batobus which stops at 5 spots on the Seine River. Altogether, the tour was really good and i highly recommend it !

The tour was quite extensive and the recorded commentary was high quality, informative and entertaining, at least in English and Russian. You really need at least two days to take advantage of the hop-on-hop-off. We tried to do it in just one and a half days and mainly just rode the bus, not getting off. But it was a warm, sunny May afternoon (wear sun protection!), and our feet were tired from the previous day in museums, so enjoyable. I have three complaints. First, the stops were damn hard to find. The map we were given (and not given until we managed to find the first stop) was not accurate so it took quite a while of searching around on foot and local people don't know where these are when asked. Second and third complaints are related: our driver often seemed to take long breaks (or driver changes) at various stops, once long enough that the bus, 25 minutes behind us, passed us. This also meant that the buses were not evenly spaced and you often had to wait longer than expected for a bus - very frustrating when you want to see a lot of things! I got the impression the drivers like to stick together in groups of two buses which is not at all convenient for those waiting to be picked up!

very good service to look Paris.

Thoroughly enjoyed the tours and being able to hop on and off. Ideal when you have limited time on your holiday and want to try to see as much as possible.

Some of the bus stops were a little hard to find, but overall it was good. We had a little trouble with one the drivers not wanting to accept our online ticket, but we just stayed on the bus anyway. Although I liked the fact that this tour had the 4 different routes, there was not enough time to do them all, even with a 3-day ticket. You definitely need to plan your routes carefully. We ran out of time and never got to use the boat portion of our tour.

Everything was ok, just a music on a headphones.... a little bit of variety would be necessary.

It seemed like the bus took very long between buses. While it was low season but still a long wait. On the other hand we saw the red tour buses very frequently.

We liked it..and would recommend it. It helped see Paris quickly. I had only two issues.
1. The tour was cancelled 1 day due to bad weather. It was cold ,but there was barely a snow dusting on the sidewalks and nothing on the street.
2.when we first got on the driver told us that that receipt was for the red tour...then the red tour said no ...it's the green...other than those things I would do it again

During winter time when using the open deck is not really an option we recommend that there should be a curtain or door to stop the cold air from coming inside. The bus was very cold and uncomfortable when we did the tour last week. Otherwise it would have been a wonderful experience.

Went to all the major sights. Best way to see Paris in a short amount of time. Definitely recommend it.

I love this tour company, was efficient and frequent enough, I went in the end of November with a friend, and we bought the 2 day pass. I definitely recommend as the metro can be confusing sometimes, plus this takes straight to the attractions. only thing that i would recommend is that even in winter it should finish later than 6.30 because if you go for just a weekend you will end up having to return home by public transports.

This was a good service with adequate frequency and a good audio commentary. The only drawback was that in bad weather, there is no covered portion of the upper deck. Other double deckers I have seen offer at least some covered areas on the upper deck.

The whole set up with the different routes is very easy to use & it takes no time learning it. You will know where the bus goes by the colour box on the front of the bus. You must be patient as not only yourself is waiting for the bus, although there are so many buses on the same route, you are always guaranteed a seat. If you need to get somewhere earlier then I would take the metro, or else you may be arriving too late. If only L'Open Tour buses would start at 8am it would be perfect.

Excellent value - four routes is immense (but so is Paris) and unless you love sitting on buses and don't really want to hop on and off (which we did - often!), you'd be hard pressed to cover all in 2 days.
My two meagre criticisms are that the audio commentary can get very wearing- not the commentary itself so much as the music played in between (James Brown's It's a Man's, Man's, Man's, Man's World sung French 'chanson' st<x>yle loses its novelty very quickly...) and that the last bus seems terribly early, particularly as Paris is a city that shines in the evening.
But really these are annoyances. Loved the Paris L'Open Tour - love Paris!

This is a thorough tour of Paris, and also a convenient way to get around the city. My only wish was that the buses drove a little more slowly to allow for photography for those who would like to remain on the bus and actually tour Paris. Paris A La Carte seemed to function more as transportation to each attraction.

The recorded commentary was good and the bus takes you to most places of interest, but we felt we spent too much time waiting for the bus at connection points, and once the bus was overcrowded with hardly any STANDING room left. We had a three-day ticket and this happened only once, but overall we felt we spent too much time in traffic jams, at stops (drivers sell tickets as opposed to say London where it's done by reps at stops) and at connection points waiting for a bus to come.

We were able to take three lines in the two days. The green line was the most important one for the short term stayer in Paris.

We booked this tour for our second trip to Paris (used Les Cars Rouges during our first trip). While the open top seems appealing, the buses are always very crowded and you spend a lot of time standing around at a bus stop waiting for the next bus to come only to find that there is no room on the top. You are forced to ride around the city inside the bus where you can't see a thing. The four different routes also sound appealing, but the bus stops are in very odd and inconvenient locations. When you get off the bus, you are forced to walk forever to get to any attraction that you care to see. It may be best to just stay on the bus and take pictures from there, but even with this you will not get close enough to several things you would like to see. Overall, we kept saying that the bus was more of an inconvenience than just walking or taking the metro. The batobus (river shuttle) was a complete inconvenience and very boring. We waited in line for an hour and a half just to get on the Batobus at the Eiffel Tower. After this excruciating wait, we decided the hop on, hop off aspect of the river shuttle was not very convenient and just decided to ride the entire route. A long, boring waste of time! Overall, we would not recommend this tour. The stops on Les Cars Rouges seem to make more sense even though the routes are not as extensive as L'Open Tour.

Was disappointed that we could not collect tickets from the Batobus but had to walk to Bus stop. Apart from that the ease of seeing the sights with both means of transport was terrific.

Great way to see the sites. Easy on and off. Pleasant and competent drivers. Lots of opportunity for really great pics. Audio was good even for someone (me) hard of hearing.

Sadly the weather was not kind and we had to dodge the showers in Paris during the tour. This made the downstairs very crowded and standing room only.
In hindsight I should have booked the open top for our first day in Paris not our 3rd day as we had already visited a lot of the main sites by the time we got on the bus.

after 2days travel on teh hop on bus as well as the bato bus boat, you feel like real parisian

It's the best way to see Paris and learn about its history for the first time visitors.