Bateaux-Mouches

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This is one of the famous Bateaux-Mouches /bato muʃ/, large excursion boats that have been providing visitors to Paris with tours of the city along the Seine River for some 40 years. There are other excursion-boat companies in Paris today (such as the Bateaux Parisiens and the Vedettes du Pont-Neuf), but the Compagnie des Bateaux-Mouches is still the largest and best-known.

In the foreground is one of the boats moving downstream towards the Eiffel Tower. All of the boats are large and apparently each is one-of-a-kind (at least they all look different and seem to be custom-built). A text display and audio announcement system on each boat is synchronized with the boat’s movement and provides information on the passing sights on either bank of the river in several different languages. It is a very pleasant and relaxing tour in nice weather, and offers a great way to see many famous parts of Paris in a single one-hour tour—certainly worth the modest price that you pay for a ticket. At peak periods in high season, the boats are filled to capacity. In the evening, most of the boats are equipped with huge floodlights that illuminate the riverside monuments and landmarks so that they can be clearly seen even in the evening—these lights are so bright that the glow from them is visible throughout the city on cloudy or foggy nights.

There are special dinner boats that offer dinner on the river, but I haven’t tried them myself.

You are looking east in this photograph. In the background you can see the home base of the Bateaux-Mouches, on the Right Bank, with many boats waiting for passengers (boats depart every 30 minutes in high season), and many tour buses parked in the parking lot. The grayish dome-like roof in the distance beyond the trees is the Grand Palais, near the lower end of the avenue des Champs-Élysées. The bridge in the background on the left is the Alexander III Bridge, the prettiest bridge in Paris. Way in the background on the left, the squarish dark building is actually two office towers in the suburb of Montreuil, and the semi-circular ring-like object is a Ferris wheel at a temporary fair in the Tuileries gardens.

The smaller boat in the background on the left is a competitor to the Bateaux-Mouches, the Vedettes du Pont Neuf. At times there are so many excursion boats on the river that traffic jams occur (I’ve seen it), although that is rare.

Photographed on August 22, 1999.