River Seine
Listed under River Trips in North East France, France.
If you've only got a couple of days in Paris, a cruise on the Seine is an obvious choice. How else can you admire the Louvre at enough of a distance to take in the whole, magnificent thing, inspect the ornate Alexander III Bridge and the elegant Pont Neuf, gaze on the Gothic island glory of Notre Dame, marvel at the full railway-station length of the Musee d'Orsay, see the giant obelisk of Luxor pierce the sky above the Place de la Concorde and feel tiny beneath the tower held together by two-and-a-half million rivets in an hour? But there's so much more to it than that. Paris is full of an adaptable type of romance – for couples on their dinner cruises, yes – but also for the solitary traveller watching from the stern of a bateau mouche, or the children excited just by being on the water. How can anyone fail to find themselves in their own art-house movie, silhouetted against a sunset-soaked skyline of such beauty, surrounded by the fairground lights of passing paddle steamers? And there's always a stranger waving from the middle of at least one bridge...
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Seine
The Seine is best known for the part of it which runs slowly through Paris and has been a popular topic for many painters and artists. There are many cruises offered along the rivers route, especially through Paris, and it's a popular pathway along which to take a civilised evenings stroll and admire Paris’s architecture.
The banks of the Seine (creatively called the Left and Right Banks) were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.
Until locks were built in the 19th Century, the Seine was only a shallow creek as it came through Paris, bordered on both sides by long sand banks, however the Paris stretch of the river is now about eight metres deep.
The mouth of the Seine opens onto the English Channel near Le Havre, and the river’s source is near Dijon.