After our wander round Montmartre in the morning, we were booked on a Fat Tire Tours’ night bike tour of Paris that evening, including a boat tour along the Seine part way through.

Those familiar with the blog may be aware this isn’t the first time we’ve been on a bike tour with Fat Tire Tours. We’ve previously been on bike tours in Berlin twice, London and Paris once before. Again, it was during our Interrailing trip in 2008, where we did bike tours in both Berlin and Paris.

Paris was a very different city for cycling back in 2008 and it was reflected in the bike tour we went on. There was very little in the way of protected cycling infrastructure, which meant the route had to be carefully selected to avoid some really awful roads.

Riding to Fat Tire Tours HQ

While the others took the Métro from Montmartre to the Fat Tire Tours HQ, I found myself a Vélib bike share bike and took to the road.

Fat Tire Tours are based in the Grenelle neighbourhood, on the Left Bank, in the 15th arrondissement. That’s about a 5 km from where we were in Montmartre, riding through the centre of Paris .

After initially starting on quiet streets, I crossed Place de Clichy, a roundabout featuring a kerb-protected cycle lane. Though this is not your typical Dutch-style roundabout and it didn’t feel the easiest to navigate or the safest. Still, better than nothing.

From Place de Clichy, there were some decent bidirectional cycle lanes, combined with unprotected sections and parts where I needed to mix with traffic. I soon arrived at Rue de Rivoli with its impressively wide protected cycle lanes.

As I navigated Place de la Concorde, there were sections of temporary cycle lanes, I think as part of the preparations for the Olympics. This led on to the Quai des Tuileries tunnel, on a bidirectional cycle lane with a large concrete partition, protecting cycles from a fast moving traffic.

From there, it was a short ride past the Eiffel Tower, with its temporary seating for the Olympics and on some streets around Grenelle, before arriving at the Fat Tire Tours HQ.

Fat Tire Tour of Paris

After arriving at Fat Tire Tours, we were given bikes and met our guide for the bike tour, we then set off around Paris. Thankfully, the weather had brightened up for the evening, so we had some pleasant weather to ride in.

While this bike tour would cover a lot of what we covered on our previous tour in Paris, back in 2008, it also included a boat tour along the Seine, part way through the ride. Also, when we did that tour in 2008, it was just the two of us, so it’d be a new experience for the kids.

Setting off from Fat Tire Tours HQ, we made our way past the Eiffel Tower and along the Left Bank, heading east. This took us down mainly small quiet streets, with the odd busier street, sometimes mixing with traffic, but also in protected lanes.

We then crossed the Seine onto Île de la Cité, making our way through Place Dauphine towards the Notre-Dame Cathedral, where we stopped for a moment, as our guide talked. In June 2024, the construction work on the cathedral was still very much in progress.

From there, we made our way to Pont Saint-Louis, where we stopped for a short break for ice cream, while enjoying views across the Seine. From there, it was back along the route we came, crossing the Seine again on Pont Saint-Michel.

We then followed the route of the Seine, riding along Quai des Grands Augustins, which turns into Quai de Conti, then Quai Voltaire. Along here is a really nice wide bidirectional, kerb-protected cycle lane.

There a lot of similarities with the cycle route here and London’s Embankment cycle path, both being wide, high quality bidirectional cycleways following the path of their city’s respective rivers. It was fantastic to ride along and clearly a very popular route, including all types of cycles and the off inline skater!

We crossed the river again at Pont du Carrousel and made our way to the Louvre. Here, we stopped for a little while as people had their photos taken, including us.

As it was now early evening with the sun starting to go down, it was quite pleasant to hang out here without the daytime crowds.

Leaving the Louvre, we made our way across Jardin des Tuileries and onto Quai des Tuileries, which I’d ridden along earlier to get to the Fat Tire HQ.

From there, we made our way onto Avenue des Champs-Élysées, famously the usual finishing location of the Tour de France’s final stage, though not in 2024.

The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is famous for its cobbles and I have to say they were pretty rough to ride on, even at slow speeds with our fat tyres. I’d hate to think what it’s like for a pro cyclist riding on here at significantly higher speeds, on skinny tyres!

There are big plans for the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, including better cycling facilities, so it’ll be good to see how this improves.

We crossed the river once again at Pont Alexandre III, though this time walking, due to all the Olympic preparations, then back across Pont des Invalides. We then made our way along the cycle path on Cours Albert 1er, to arrive at the mooring for our tour boat, where we parked up our bikes.

Boat trip

As I mentioned, the bike tour we’d booked came with a boat tour along the Seine part way through. So after parking our bikes up on Cours Albert 1er, we queued with many other people to board our tour boat.

Setting off on the boat, we enjoyed the views and a glass of wine as we made our way along the Seine, going as far as Pont de Bir-Hakeim in the west and Île Saint-Louis in the east. The boat was pretty busy and a struggle to find a seat with a view, but as we were stood outside, this wasn’t an issue.

Along the way, we enjoyed views of the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedral and many other sights and bridges along the Seine. The views were made all the better with the clear skies and the sun setting.

While it probably would have been nice to have been on a quieter boat, we had a really enjoyable trip along the Seine.

As the boat tour came to an end, we returned to our mooring point, just as the sun was setting.

Returning the bikes and going home

Now back on our bikes, it was time to continue what remained of the bike tour in the dark, making our way back to the beginning. This took us across Pont de l’Alma, before stopping at the Eiffel Tower, then onto Fat Tire Tours HQ.

Dropping our bikes off, we made our way back on the Métro to our Airbnb apartment, after a very enjoyable bike and boat tour.

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