City breaks
Three days in Paris without queueing for everything
A route that front-loads the timed-entry sights and leaves the walking for when the crowds arrive.
The single biggest improvement you can make to a short Paris trip is booking timed entry for anything major before you leave home. The Louvre, the Musee d Orsay, Sainte-Chapelle and the Eiffel Tower all release slots online, and the difference between a booked slot and the walk-up queue is now measured in hours rather than minutes.
Day one: start at the Louvre for the first slot of the morning, when the Denon wing is briefly quiet, then walk east along the Seine to the Ile de la Cite and Sainte-Chapelle, whose upper chapel is best in afternoon light. Finish on foot in the Marais.
Day two: the Musee d Orsay early, then cross to the Left Bank for the Luxembourg Gardens and the rue Mouffetard market.
Day three: keep it unstructured. Montmartre before nine is a genuinely different place from Montmartre at noon, and the covered passages of the 2nd arrondissement - Galerie Vivienne, Passage des Panoramas - stay quiet all day. Two practical notes. Most museums close either Monday or Tuesday, so check before building a day around one. And the Paris Museum Pass only pays for itself at roughly three major sites a day, which is a harder pace than it sounds.
