I would have given this review 5 stars excellent experience; however: 1) the printed instructions provided by the folks in London was not accurate as to where we would board the Open Top Bus once we arrived in Paris (stated bus stop #53 when in fact there was no #53). Luckily we saw a man selling tickets for the Open Top Bus and he confirmed the correct bus stop was #23 or #26 (I forget which one); 2) This was no fault of GoldenTours, but a criticism of Eurostar. We missed our train from Paris back to London as we were delayed due to some demonstrations in Paris and we got to the check in after the check in time. Instead of the Eurostar folks transferring our ticket to the later train, we had to pay for a oneway ticket back to London. Apart from the two experiences mentioned earlier, I highly recommend this day trip to Paris. We enjoyed the independence of visiting the attractions that we wanted to see at our convenience. The package provided by GoldenTours was extremely useful.

Although the trip to Paris was wonderful, we were disappointed in that the representative at the St. Pancras train station arrived late to give us instructions and since the security line was long. we all missed out on the complimentary water or coffee. The other problem was that the Hop On Hop Off ticket we were given was not accepted by the bus driver in Paris. Luckily he allowed us on the bus until he got us to Open Top office. The rest of the trip was excellent, but we felt in the end that we could have booked the trip on our own since we did not get a guide. Like the rep at St. Pancras stated, "You are on your own from here." We could have easily booked a trip to Paris on Eurostar and bought tickets for the Hop On Hop Off bus when we got there. We did not get much for whatever the extra cost was for having a middle man who talked to us for a minute.

Do not book this "tour". The drivers were awful. One of them left us in the middle of nowhere because his shift ended, and another blew past a stop. The whole day was wasted trying to figure out where the stops were because the map they provide is as clear as mud. Ugh. Just awful. It would have been better to get a pass for all the museums and a French metro card.