My personal opinion is that unless you're going to spend all your time in museums, the Museum and Monuments Card isn't worth the money. My wife and I had bought M&M cards, but after four hours in the Louvre we went through total museum burnout and never entered another museum except the anthropology museum in the Trocadero. The simple fact is that there is so much to see and do in Paris that we simply decided we didn't want to spend our time indoors looking at paintings and statues, no matter how famous and great they were.

We also bought the Paris Visite pass. But it turned out all the goodies like museum discounts and passes were for places we just might want to see on our tenth visit to Paris, but not our first. And the transit part of the Paris Visite pass didn't look so good after we found out the other passes and discounts available. If you're going to be there from Monday thru Sunday, the best bet would be a weekly zone 1-2 Carte Orange. at EUR 15.7

The Carnet of ten tickets is also a pretty good deal, depending on your needs: you get ten tickets for EUR 10.70 while single tickets are EUR 1.40. This may be all you need if the Carte Orange isn't practical.

There is a one-day zone 1-2 Mobilis pass for EUR 5.40, but this is the equivalent of five Carnet tickets. If you're going to make just four rides a day, the Carnet is cheaper.

Don't get more than zones 1 and 2; almost everything you do is covered in these zones (but use the Metro to go to La Defense; the Metro considers La Defense in the city while the RER considers it in zone 3).

Take a look at the web pages at http://www.ratp.fr . If you can read the French all the better, but if you have to click on the English flag be aware that they don't tell us foreigners everything. For instance, they push the Paris Visite card but never mention the Carte Orange or Mobilis in the English pages. The web site has some good system maps, though.

Do stay in Paris proper; you want to wake up to that atmosphere.

Regards to all, Dave Tucson, AZ