Paris 7 Day Itinerary
7-Day Itinerary for Traveling in Paris
The Louvre now runs mandatory timed entry every day of July and August, and half the tourists who show up without a slot get turned away at the pyramid. Book everything before you land. That single habit will save more of this trip than any packing tip.
Day 1 - Arrival & Louvre Museum Land at Charles de Gaulle or Orly and skip the taxi rank unless you’re exhausted or hauling a lot of luggage. The RER B runs every 6 to 15 minutes from CDG into central Paris (Gare du Nord, roughly 35 minutes) for about 13 euros a head, versus a flat 56 euros to the Right Bank or 65 to the Left Bank by taxi for up to four people. If there are three or four of you, the taxi actually wins on value. Drop bags at a centrally located hotel, something around the Louvre, Marais, or the 7th arrondissement keeps you within walking distance of the first few days’ sights.
Book the Louvre online in advance no matter when you’re visiting. As of 2026 the museum charges 22 euros for EEA residents and 32 euros for everyone else, and every ticket now comes with a compulsory 30-minute entry window, arrive outside it and you can be refused at the door during busy periods. If your trip lands between July and August, this reservation is not optional for anyone without a membership. Inside, don’t try to see everything, the building is enormous, pick the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo circuit and one wing you actually care about, then leave before the crowds and your feet win. For dinner, Café Marly’s terrace over the Pyramid is touristy but the view earns its keep for one night.
Day 2 - Eiffel Tower & Seine River Cruise Go up the Eiffel Tower first thing, tickets are also timed and sell out days ahead in summer, so book online rather than queuing at the base. Jules Verne, the tower’s Michelin-starred restaurant on the second floor, needs a reservation weeks out and a serious budget, it’s worth it once for the view alone if you can swing it. If not, a simple crepe from a nearby stall tastes better than the wait implies.
In the afternoon, take a Seine cruise, the hour-long boats gliding past Notre-Dame and the Louvre give you a totally different read on the city’s scale than walking does. Lunch at Bouillon Chartier is the move here, it’s a genuine early-1900s brasserie near Grands Boulevards, not Montmartre, so plan your route accordingly, and mains still run under 15 euros, a rarity this central. Close the day with a walk up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. Climbing the Arc itself for sunset is underrated compared to the Eiffel Tower queues and costs a fraction of the price.
Day 3 - Montmartre & Sacré-Cœur Spend the day wandering Montmartre on foot, the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, the old Moulin de la Galette windmill, and the artists’ square at Place du Tertre. The basilica itself is free to enter, the dome costs a small separate fee and the stair climb is worth it for the skyline. Lunch at a small bistro tucked off the main tourist drag rather than the cafes directly facing the basilica, prices there run 30 to 40 percent higher for the same steak-frites you’ll get two streets over. My opinion after watching this play out: the neighborhood’s nightlife reputation is mostly nostalgia now, most of the old cabarets from decades past have closed or changed hands, so treat the evening as a photography and wine-bar outing rather than expecting a Moulin Rouge-era scene.
Watch your bag on the funicular and the steps up to the basilica specifically, it’s one of the most-worked pickpocket zones in the city, along with anyone offering to tie a “friendship bracelet” on you unprompted, walk past, don’t engage.
Day 4 - Palace of Versailles Versailles is a full day, not a half-day add-on, budget for it. Passport tickets covering the palace, gardens, and Trianon estate run 25 euros in low season and 35 in high season for non-EEA visitors, 22/32 for EEA residents, and a timed slot is now mandatory, walk-up queues without a booking can run 60 to 90 minutes. Book directly through the Château de Versailles website rather than a reseller, it’s the same ticket for less money.
Skip trying to eat inside the Petit Trianon, it’s a historic building open for viewing, not a restaurant, grab a sandwich from one of the estate’s own cafes near the gardens instead and picnic on the grounds if the weather holds, that’s genuinely one of the better lunches in the whole itinerary. Back in Paris that evening, Aux Lyonnais, a Lyonnaise bistro operating since 1924, is the right kind of tired-feet dinner, unfussy and rich.
Day 5 - Musée d’Orsay & Saint-Germain-des-Prés Morning at the Musée d’Orsay, the old Beaux-Arts train station turned Impressionist museum is smaller and easier to digest in a morning than the Louvre, and the top-floor terrace clock gives you one of the best skyline photo spots in the city for free. Afternoon, walk into Saint-Germain-des-Prés, its Romanesque abbey church is one of the oldest in Paris, and the surrounding streets are full of independent bookshops and cafes worth ducking into rather than power-walking past. Book dinner in the neighborhood, it rewards slower evenings more than any other quarter on this list.
Day 6 - Palais Garnier & Grands Boulevards Take a break from museums and see the Palais Garnier, the 19th-century opera house that partly inspired The Phantom of the Opera, self-guided tours run most days when there’s no matinee performance, check the schedule before you go since it does close for rehearsals. Wander the Grands Boulevards afterward for shopping that isn’t the Champs-Élysées markup. In the afternoon, the Tuileries Garden is free and a good place to sit down after two days of heavy walking, bring something from a bakery and use one of the metal chairs by the fountain, it’s a small pleasure that costs nothing.
Day 7 - Farewell Paris Use the morning for whatever you missed, a bookshop, a bakery, a last coffee on a corner, rather than cramming in a new neighborhood. Head back to the airport via RER B if you’re departing from CDG, budgeting the same roughly 13-euro fare and 35 to 45 minutes it took coming in, and add buffer time, the line can be slow at peak travel hours and French rail strikes are common enough that checking RATP’s status page the night before is a genuinely useful five minutes. Keep your ticket until you’re through the gates at both ends, RER B does spot inspections and a lost ticket becomes an on-the-spot fine.