A Chauffeur-Driven Weekend in Paris, Without the Traffic Arguments

Saturday morning: arrive, drop the bags, breathe

Most Paris weekends begin at Charles de Gaulle, which is further from the centre than most visitors expect — around 45 minutes to the 1st arrondissement, an hour in Friday traffic. The first sensible decision of the trip is not to solve this with a metro map and two suitcases.

With a chauffeur on an hourly booking, the car waits while you check in, then takes you where the day actually starts: a coffee on Rue de Bretagne, the Marché des Enfants Rouges, or straight to the Left Bank if the museums are the plan.

Saturday afternoon: one side of the river

Paris punishes ambitious itineraries. Pick a bank of the Seine and stay on it. The Louvre in the morning and the Musée d'Orsay after lunch is a two-bridge walk, not a taxi ride — which is exactly why a car with a driver is better used for the edges of the day than the middle of it.

Use the driver for the parts that are genuinely awkward: the climb to Montmartre, the walk back from a late dinner in the 11th, the 20 minutes it takes to cross to the Trocadéro at sunset when every road is full.

Saturday evening: the reservation you keep

Book dinner for 20:00 and ask the restaurant whether they have a drop-off point — several in the Marais sit on streets where a car cannot stop legally. Your chauffeur will know the nearest corner. This is a small thing that saves a genuinely irritating ten minutes.

Sunday: Versailles, or the airport

Versailles is 45 minutes each way and almost impossible to do comfortably by public transport on a Sunday morning. A half-day chauffeured hire covers the drive, the wait and the return, and leaves you back in Paris for a late lunch.

If you are flying home instead, the return transfer is the one part of the weekend that should be boring. Allow 90 minutes for Charles de Gaulle from the centre, two hours if your flight is long-haul and you still need to drop bags.

What to tell us before you arrive

Hotel address, flight number, the number of cases and — if you are travelling with children — their ages, because French child seat rules are strict and we would rather fit the right seat than apologise at the kerb.