A good way to see the City of Lights at night
Review wrote the 19 Mar 2018
by CamAndPhoebsDad
All in all, this is a good way to take a Seine River cruise in the evening while enjoying a good dinner.
The vast majority of patrons were couples, although it was my wife, teenage son, and myself for our part, and there was another large group of Americans as well.
I have to say the customer service is a bit above average from what I had come to expect from the French; this appeared when we first arrived on board and had to show our ticket. Unbeknownst to me, my voucher hadn’t printed correctly. The manager was excellent, simply taking a picture of the voucher on my phone and then seated us. (One curious thing was that they didn’t have our names on the manifest–I think it might have been because we purchased through a third party.)
Once we were seated, our server took our drink order and returned, and explained the menu options. It’s three courses but you have a choice of only the entree–the night we went, it was a beef dish, chicken dish, or a fish dish. The appetizer and the desserts were each a sampling. The food was pretty good and generally better than I had expected.
The views are outstanding–night time on the Seine cannot be beat, although if you’re not a couple you’ll be seated in the center of the boat rather than along the windows. This just means you have to plan your camera shots rather than leaving them up to chance. In general, everyone on the boat seemed to have a good time and good attitude.
There are photographers who take pictures, and then offer to sell them back. My wife and were pretty pleased with the way all of ours came back–but the price put us off as it was 20 Euros for a single photograph, or 50 for 3.
One other thing: normally on the vedettes or bateau mouches there’s an ongoing commentary about what’s on either side of the Seine (in multiple languages). That doesn’t happen on this cruise (nor should it), so if that’s what you’re looking for you should probably look at a different cruise.