The Best Way to See Paris: A Bike Tour

I am not a tour group type of guy. When I was nineteen and back packing around Europe, I was the only backpacker sans the backpacker’s bible (i.e. Let’s Go Europe). I wander, ask questions and figure things out on the fly. When I went to Africa for the first time, I stepped off the plane and realized I had no idea who was picking me up from the airport nor how to reach them if they did not find me (and, we very nearly did not connect, as he called me by the wrong name when we first walked past each other).

So, I shocked my girlfriend and decided a bike tour of Paris sounded like a great idea even after we had walked almost the entire main city from the Eiffel Tour to the Louvre to Notre Dame.

And, I was right. The bike tour is simply the best way to see Paris, provided you know how to ride a bike, understand English and are unafraid of throwing yourself into traffic.

Fat Tire Bike Tours run tours around Barcelona, Paris and Berlin. The tour guides are mainly Americans, typically Texans (company was started by a Texas A&M graduate), who are either nearly finished with college or taking a break between college and entering the work force or graduate school.

Our tour guide, Taylor, is a Texas A&M student with a proficiency for stacking bikes in tight spaces, fixing flat tires while telling stories and managing to keep 24 strangers safe on a meandering 4-hour tour.

If in Paris, the tour groups meet at the south end of the Eiffel Tour. They offer tours during the day, but we chose the night tour, as we read that one of the best thing to do was to pay a taxi driver to take you to all the spots at night. We figured a bike trip was more fun than a taxi ride.

For a reasonable 28 Euros for an adult, the tour features a three-hour bike tour, an hour boat cruise, free wine, a stop for great ice cream and a tour guide with interesting tidbits, historical anecdotes, recommendations and information on where to catch the NBA Finals later that night.