We stayed at an Airbnb just past Porte Saint Denis in 2015 and tended to walk into the center of Paris along Rue Saint Denis. Certainly it still had it’s fair share of sex shops and hookers then. Not unsafe, just not the Paris vision of men in striped shirts eating baguettes, wearing berets, and smoking Gauloises 
Be polite. Learn hello, good-bye, please, and thank you in French. Few restaurants and food markets are open on Sundays. I learned that from experience. You can buy Eiffel Tower tickets on line in advance which I recommend. Yes, you have to go all the way up. You can also go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe which is very cool. The worst meal I had in Paris was at a restaurant famous for duck. I don’t like duck but I went because my travel mates wanted to go. Meaning–there isn’t bad food in Paris. Buy a packet of carnets for the Metro. Individual tickets in a pack of 10 I think.
There is so much to do in Paris. We spent 2 weeks there and found a wonderful bistro in our neighborhood and went almost every day to drink wine, sit outside, and people watch. Be sure to have a macaron, and an almond croissant for me.
One more thing - many restaurants aren’t open all day the way they tend to be in the US. If you want to stop for lunch, do it between, say, noon and 2 or so. I think it’s better in Paris proper. but we got burned a few times trying to eat lunch after the “normal” lunch hours.
And on the flip side - a lot of non-food-places close down during the lunch hour. I recall driving up to a WW1 museum we’d been looking forward to seeing, but we got there during the lunch hour. We didn’t have the time to wait until after lunch for them to reopen, so we missed that one.
Do they still have the metro cars with the doors you had to unlatch manually when getting out? Once unlatched, they would spring open, and they closed by themselves. It took a bit of getting used to; I had to watch other people closely the first few times I exited those cars.
This. Big time.
This past summer on the Metro, a group of gypsy women got on at the stop after ours. A young woman (age 14-15) got in my face and stared up at me with big cow eyes, forcing me to look at her. Part of my brain couldn’t quit looking back but because I’ve had dealings with them before (here in the US), the rest of my brain was screaming ALERT! GYPSY! ALERT!. But for a few seconds, my mouth wouldn’t operate and I didn’t know what to say as my French isn’t very good and my companion’s is only slightly better. Finally I broke eye contact and said loudly, “Hands. Hands! Watch their hands.” Boom. The ladies who had just boarded, turned towards the doors and headed out at the next stop. As they left, causing more room to move about, a change purse dropped to the floor. It belonged to my travel companion.
Normal precautions, if they need repeating, would be
- try to look alert to your surroundings: don’t drift along with your head in your phone or guidebook
- don’t have obvious valuables on obvious display and easily accessible when you’re in a crowd
- don’t have wallets and valuables in back trouser pockets
- make sure bags aren’t left hanging half open, and maybe keep your hand on or over it
- don’t leave a bag unattended, or you might cause a security alert and waste a lot of people’s time: check you have everything whenever you get up to leave a café or whatever.
And don’t be surprised to see soldiers with machine guns patrolling stations, airports and similar places. There is still a state of high alert.
But don’t panic. I’ve lived in London all my life and visit Paris at least once a year and never been pickpocketed or caught up in any sort of crime, let alone terrorism.
A week is a good amount of time.
- I second the D ‘Orsay over the Louvre. Also the Rodin museum, which is close to the D’ Orsay
- Notre Dame is great (and crowded), but I’d also recommend visiting St. Chappelle (just a few blocks away). AMAZING stained glass panels.
- I highly recommend visiting Montmartre. Cool village with tons of artists, also great views of the city (on a clear day). Really cool Dali museum up there as well.
- The Metro is your friend, but also WALK. You’ll find not only that a lot of stuff is reasonably close by to walk to, but you will also come across the nicest surprizes just by walking around. And there are Metro stations all over, so when you get tired of walking, you just jump on the Metro and make your way back to your hotel.
- Forum Des Halles is a big walking mall (closed off to cars).
- Pretty much everything on the Champs-Elysees (sp ?) is going to be more expensive. But it’s fun to walk through. I preferred to find, smaller, mom & pop restaurants for dinners. If you do stroll the Champs-Elysees, you can actually get to the top of the Arc. Great views down the Champs (especially at night), and also great views of the Eiffel tower (again, better at night when they light it up).
- You need to take a (short) train out there, but I think part of your French Revolution background would include visiting Versailles. That is, to see how that “1%” lived, while others were scraping by. The palace is so over the top (gorgeous), it really gave perspective as to why the rest of the populace was so upset.
It always seemed to be appreciated to use “bonjour” and “merci” when appropriate.
Unfortunately, the only Viking era stuff I think I’ve come across in Paris are in one of the archaeology galleries in the Carnavalet, which has already been noted as currently shut.
The big museum you’ll be literally around the corner from is Arts et Métiers, which is devoted to the history of crafts, science and technology (mainly pre-20th century). Not necessarily one I’d recommend on a first visit to the city for someone without a specialist interest, but it is one of the world’s finest in that line. (If you’re familiar with Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, that’s the setting for the climax.)
Many thanks for the advice. How much cash do I need to carry? Do most places take credit cards? Where is the best place to get Euros?
In most western European countries you can pay with credit card almost everywhere. The only time you really need cash is when you’re buying a metro ticket at an unmanned metro station. And I’ve long quit buying euros at home, since ATMs that accept foreign credit cards are ubiquitous. You’ll find them already in the arrival area at CDG.
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The crypt museum under Notre Dame has a bit about the siege under Hrólfrgangr, in addition to a lot of Roman displays.
Confirmed – just give your bank/ATM card issuer and your credit card issuer the heads-up that you will be traveling when and where. Used my PR-issued debit card at Paris ATMs with no trouble. The one possible hiccup may be with credit cards at kiosk type points of sale, since the EU has been operating on chip-and-PIN for a lot longer than the US and some US credit cards are not PIN-enabled even if they are chipped (ask your issuer).
Me, I tend to always walk around with a little over a hundred in cash “just in case” so I did the same for Euros. Using credit cards or a Bank ATM upon arrival gets you favorable rates.
When my wife and I went a few years ago, we were constantly accosted by panhandlers who, I believe, had been taught one English phrase “Do you speak English?” If you said “yes” they’d hand you some piece of paper describing their plight in English, begging for money.
After a couple times, I started answering “Nein!” figuring they’d leave Germans alone. I was prepared with a Nyet! too.
Also, we had no troubles with communicating with my limited French since most people in service or tourist industry spoke English, except for the night we stayed out late for a show and the Metro had stopped running. Our taxi driver didn’t speak much English and wasn’t familiar with the name of our Hotel. We got close enough by knowing our Arrondissement, though and walked from there.
One thing to be cognizant of - most credit cards add a 2% “foreign transaction fee” to everything purchased in non-US Dollars. If you look around, you can get a card without that fee. Here’s one list I found with just a few seconds Googling.
One of the best travel advice I ever read was to always grab the hotel business card, that way you can always jump into a taxi and get back. Back before the smart phone era, I used to also use it to write my room number down.
IMO the best piece of advice I got before I went for a week in Paris was to get a phrasebook and learn some basic stuff; I was told specifically to start every conversation in French, even if I started out apologizing for how bad my French was.
Nearly every conversation stared with a quick “oh, I speak English” and we would continue.
But once I saw someone try and initiate with a waiter in English, and she was ignored for quite a while.
Seems that if you make the effort, the French people are so appreciative that they will happily welcome the chance to show you that they speak more languages than you, if only to prevent us from murdering their beautiful native tongue. 
Like Disneyland, the queue at the Eiffel Tower is much shorter at 9AM on a cold spring morning than it is at 11 on Bastile Day.
Also, the queue for stairs is shorter than the queue for the elevator…
Closed today because the river is high!
I’ve got this theory that Paris taxi’s are for local business men, because the foreign tourists all take the metro…
If you’re physically active, do a bycycle or segway tour on your first day, to look around and to get moving after the flight.
Regarding the Vikings, the Île de la Cité is still there 
but all the bridges (and the Roman road) are long since replaced. I don’t think there is much, even in Normanby.
Regarding the revolution, it’s everywhere in Paris, which also means it’s not just one place. If you go to Versailles, plan to arrive at dawn on a non-holiday weekday, and /or get the museum pass. (The Versailles market is pretty damn good too. Check the days)
Uber is available throughout the city (or at least it was a year ago) and much easier than taxis or the metro. We used it exclusively while we were there.
People are crazy to suggest the D’Orsay over the Louvre. The Louvre is incredible. The Apollo room alone is better, IMHO, than the entire D’Orsay.
If you’re into history, the army museum at Les Invalides is a can’t miss. It’s mostly Medieval til the 1700s, but the stuff there is fantastic.
If it was me going to Paris, I’d be sure to check out this recreational activity, apparently somewhere quite near Paris.
But that’s just me.