Paris by Motorhome, Camping de Paris

Fancy visiting Paris by motorhome, campervan, or caravan? Camping de Paris has proved a pretty great way for us to stay in this iconic city.

Located under trees alongside the Seine, on the edge of the huge Bois de Boulogne city park, €4 a person gets you into the city using a shuttle bus and the metro, or an Uber to the Eiffel Tower costs around €15. The campsite itself is €20 a night for two people and a motorhome, with the low season ACSI Camping Card, and the site is outside the Paris Crit’Air Low Emission Zone. Update 2023: this campsite is now within the Paris LEZ so you’ll need the appropriate Crit’Air sticker, or to enter and leave Paris outside the hours the restrictions apply.

Site Location

Camping de Paris’ located on the west of the city, about a five mile run/walk/cycle from the Eiffel Tower. We’re currently in the site, parked up here (N48.86949, E2.23577):

We drove our motorhome into Paris from the north, along free motorways as we got close to the city. The final route in was along the D7 which runs just to the west of the Seine, on the other side of the river to the site.

To cross the river you need to take a slip road to the right which then takes you over a bridge. We missed the slip road and just took the next bridge instead. If you arrive at the site from the south you have to turn right just before the traffic lights outside reception, which takes you around a ‘C’ shaped section of slip road, enabling you to drive into the site without blocking traffic. Apart from a section of roadworks on the outskirts, the traffic coming into the site was reasonably light. Best avoid rush hour though, where six-land roads are choc-a-bloc (Sunday morning was especially devoid of traffic). When you pull into the site there’s a parking area before the barrier for three vehicles, so you can check yourself in.

Paris Crit’Air Low Emission Zone

The site’s located outside the Paris Low Emission Zone, so you don’t need a Crit’Air vignette (windscreen sticker) to come here. You can read about the scheme, which currently covers a handful of French cities and, in exceptional circumstances, some larger areas of France (and order the vignette for about £4) at this site: www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/en/. We opted to buy the vignette anyway, and were issued a level 4 sticker for our 2001 diesel van, which allows us to drive in the Paris LEZ. There’s another website outlining the Paris LEZ, and other zones across Europe, accessible here.

Costs and Discounts

The site tarifs are listed on its website, and without any discounts in October (when we’re visiting), we’d be paying €40.10 plus taxes, so around €41 a night for two adults, a motorhome and electrical hook-up. We’re using the fantastic ACSI Camping Card though, which brings the cost down to €19 plus taxes, so just over €20 a night. As we’ll stay six nights, we’ve avoided €126 in fees, while the ACSI book only costs €19, and gives a year’s discounts across hundreds of sites across Europe. It’s well worth looking into. For some reason you can’t use the ACSI discount card when booking on the campsite’s website, so we emailed them. They replied quickly and gave us a number to call and complete the reservation all in English, which all worked well.

Getting into Paris

You can get into Paris from the campsite for just under €4 a person. The site runs a shuttle bus (a navette) every 30 mins in the morning and evening, which leaves from outside the gates. Tickets are €2 per person per ride from reception, where the staff all speak perfect English and are very helpful. The bus drops you at the Porte Maillot metro station, which is on the north-east edge of the Bois de Boulogne a few stops from the Louvre or Eiffel Tower. Here you can buy a single metro ticket for just under €2, or an all day pass for around €8. Getting from the campsite to the centre of Paris too us about an hour, but that includes waiting for the navette, which was full the first time we tried to use it. Another option is to walk to a nearby bus stop and get the bus to the metro station, but we were enjoying a catch up in the autumn sunshine, so we didn’t do that.

We also opted to pull our runners on and jog across the park and down the Avenue Georges Mandel to the Eiffel Tower, around the tower and back again. With a few wrong turns we racked up 10 miles, which would be about the same distance on a bike (the site rents out bikes and electronic bikes for up to €30 a day, but we didn’t use them).

Our mates, who stayed in one of the cabins on-site, had the Uber app on their phone which they used to get a taxi from the Palais de Chaillot, the viewpoint overlooking the Eiffel Tower, to the campsite for about €15. The Uber taxi arrived in a few minutes and took maybe 20 mins to bring us all home. They took a second Uber from the campsite to Charles de Gaulle airport, which cost around €45. The campsite reception can book you a ‘non-Uber’ taxi to the airport for €60, and to Disneyland Paris at €80.

Site Facilities

The site has a small shop which sells baguettes, croissants and pain-au-chocolat (get in early as they sell out), as well as a good range of other bits and bobs. There’s also an on-site bar and restaurant which we had take-away pizza from and enjoyed it – nice and thin and well baked.

The site reception block transmits decent-speed WiFi, but there are no access points around the campsite, so you’ll need a booster (like this one on Amazon), or you’ll need to sit in reception or the bar opposite. The cellular networks have strong signals and fast speeds, as you might expect in the centre of a city.

The toilet block’s uni-sex, almost new and kept nice and clean. The only awkward thing we found was the push-button showers, where the water turns off when you hold the button in, so it’s impossible to get an uninterrupted flow of water. The showers also filled up first thing, as they often do on busy campsites.

There are plenty of bins and at least one good-sized, easy to use service point with water on a hose reel, a waste height black water point and an easy access grey drain. Pitches also have shared water points.

Noise and Annoyances

The campsite’s in the city, so you’re bound to get some noise. The river’s behind us, so that’s pretty quiet all day and night, but there’s a busy road out front which creates some noise. A few firework shows have gone off while we’re here, and emergency services sirens blare out in the distance from time to time. Taking into account where it is, the site’s very quiet though.

The Bois de Boulonge has a reputation for ladies (and gents) of the night working their trade, and we jogged past a few of ’em one afternoon (in broad daylight). They weren’t interested in us, and didn’t bother us at all.

In terms of security the site feels pretty safe. The vehicle access gates are locked overnight (1am to 6am) and pedestrians can only get in at that time with a code. There’s nothing to stop thieves walking into the site during the day (or even being paid-up guests like us), so we’re keeping our van locked and alarmed, and chairs out of sight when we’re not about.

The pitches are all nicely delimited with fences, but are generally on a slight slope so bring ramps. Friends have reported some of the pitches becoming waterlogged in heavy rain.

And that’s about it. We’ve had a few days in one of the World’s most iconic cities for not much money thanks to this site, the judicial use of Paris’ sunny parks for picnics and by doing a lot of walking! We’d certainly recommend visiting Paris by motorhome.

One final tip: for a free view of the city head to the Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann and nip up to the roof. No need to buy anything if you don’t want to; there’s a public terrace up there and free, beautifully clean toilets the next floor down.

Side Trip to Versailles

We opted to stay on the site and take a trip to the Chateau de Versailles, by public transport. This blog post is all about our day trip and includes our top tips for visiting. 

Cheers, Jay