For the holidays, they chose the campsite … in the heart of Paris

German and Dutch cars share the shadow of plane trees between tents and chalets, as in many French campsites. Except that here, in Bois de Boulogne, vacationers are a few minutes from the center of Paris, the most visited capital in the world.

Ruiter’s family left at 6:30 am from Arnhem, in the east of the Netherlands. The traffic has been fluid and if the assembly of its huge khaki tent is going well, it will be in the afternoon at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. “We are going to Switzerland and Italy, but our daughter wanted to see Paris,” says the mother, Gabriëlle. “We like to camp so we looked for Google if there was a campsite in Paris. And we were really surprised to find one ”.

By reaching out the ear, the buzzing of traffic is noticeable, but the site of seven hectares, located on the banks of the Seine, in the west of the capital, bathes in a country atmosphere. Nicolas Rousseau, director of the four -star campsite, evokes a “bubble of nature” in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and “an entry point for tourists who want to visit the city”.

The Arc de Triomphe and the Trocadéro are less than five kilometers as the crow flies and a shuttle leads the campers to the Porte Maillot and line 1 of the metro, which serves a good part of the Parisian tourist attractions. Coming from the Frankfurt region, Germany, in a fitted van, Sigrid and Günter Spiegel favored the bicycle to go to the Eiffel Tower with their six-year-old grandson, Vincent.

“We prefer camping, it’s quiet and much better than the hotel with a child,” says the grandfather. “We knew this place, because we had already come there 20 years ago with our own son.” Created in the 1950s, the only Intramuros campsite in Paris was deeply renovated after the Huttopia group, which has five other urban campsites in France, notably in Lyon and Strasbourg, won the public service delegation in 2011.

Well maintained, it offers 120 wooden accommodation (chalets and trailers), more than 300 locations for tents and motorhomes, a brand new catering area, a large children’s play area … open all year round and almost complete from Easter to All Saints’ Day, the site can accommodate up to 2,500 people, mainly families.

The concerts and festivals organized at the Longchamp neighboring racecourse also attract people to the campsite, even if “many Parisians ignore his existence,” notes Nicolas Rousseau. “We represent a real economic alternative to Parisian hotels whose prices have increased a lot in recent years,” highlights the director.

According to the economic observatory for Parisian tourism, the average price of a hotel night is around 200 euros in the capital. You have to count at the Paris campsite around forty euros per night for a motorhome and between 150 and 200 euros for a chalet of four to six people.

Anne and Richard Merveilleux, a couple of Bretons, barely watched the prices of hotels and tourist furniture before coming to see the arrival of the Tour de France. “We already knew that we would not find what we were looking for in our budget. This has increased since the Olympic Games, ”notes Richard. “Camping is a good compromise.”

“It makes you smile when we say that we are going to camp in Paris,” admits Anne, sitting in front of him with a beer on the restaurant terrace. Particularly at Bois de Boulogne, known to be a high place in Parisian prostitution. A few hundred meters from the entrance to the campsite, a woman in short clothes patient in the middle of the afternoon in front of a white van. “We were told about the reputation of Bois de Boulogne, that it could be a little hot. But we are away, quite protected, ”says Anne.