Paris in one week/Metro/Museums/RER?

1. For travel within central Paris, many people purchase un carnet which is 10 individual t+ tickets valid on the RER, métro, and buses. You may share these among you and simply purchase an additional carnet as your requirements dictate - 11.60€.

2. To reach Versaille, you will need to purchase a special ticket - cost is approximately 6€ each way.

3. For travel to Dijon, generally the sooner you purchase your tickets the cheaper they will be. There are nuances to ticket purchase depending upon where you are from (specifically applicable to those from the USA). Additionally, I have seen instances where 1st Class PREM tickets are available yet 2nd call PREM tickets are sold out making the only 2nd class tickets available more costly than the remaining 1st class PREMs. The only way to know what is available and at what cost is to head to the following websites and investigate:

http://www.voyages-sncf.com/ (in French only)

http://www.tgv-europe.com/ (if you are from the USA, select the UK as your home country to avoid being forwarded to the more expensive Raileurope website).

4. There is a lot of excellent information about train travel and how to purchase your tickets at the best price on this website:

http://www.seat61.com/

5. The SNCF computer servers crashed today so you may want to wait until tomorrow for information. In the mean time this Germain website will have French train schedule information:

http://www.bahn.de/

First, the good news. Paris itself is not a very big city and most of the places to visit are not very far. If you like to walk it is all in walking distance. If you don't like to walk it is all quickly reachable by metro. So you can plan your visit by theme, or by liking, it is all close enough.

Versailles is 40 kms from Paris so you need a separate ticket to go there, by local train. Try to get as early as you can to avoid some of the crowd.

Dijon is still another story as you use the national train, and you have a choice between the local train (TER) which is a 3 hrs trip and the TGV which is 1hr30 mn trip. Price differs.

I rather have been to the two goregeous cities and love them the two. yet i will take Paris over Sydney. purely by way of fact, I stay in la California and the Australian climate and way of existence are comparable to our lifestlye and climate in California. Paris and the French custom have been extra of a "massive adventure" for me. So i will % Paris.