Travel Essentials List: What's in our Travel Day Bag for Exploring Paris

One of the most important things to know before traveling to Parisis what to pack. Apart from clothes, shoes, and toiletries, your Paris Packing List should include a travel day bag with some travel essentials for exploring Paris.

The best day bag for Paris and what to put inside will depend on your plans in the city. Whether you are going to Paris for sightseeing, shopping or meeting friends, we give you the list of Paris essentials, what to pack in a day bag and our best tips.

Check out our collection of Paris Packing Lists

Tips for Choosing your Travel Day Bag for Paris

One of our best tips when visiting Paris is to travel light, with a few travel essentials. There is no best bag for walking around Paris, it all depends on what you are going to do in the city during your trip.

If you are visiting Paris for sightseeing, we recommend a crossbody bag. Crossbody bags are perfect sightseeing bags. They are stylish and they don’t mark you as a tourist. They are also big enough for carrying the main day trip essentials but not too bulky.

Ideally, you want a travel day bag with anti-theft features. Unfortunately, pickpockets are not uncommon in the Metro of Paris or around the main Paris tourist sights.

Our favorite models are here below. You can read more about anti-theft travel bags and find other models in this post.

If you are visiting Paris for activities like museums, shopping, exploring the arrondissements of Paris, or meeting friends, go chic and take a tote bag for walking around Paris.

I use and I recommend this vegan leather tote bag, which is also available in black and deep red. I like its casual style and there is plenty of space inside for my day trip essentials, with an inner pocket for small items.

If your Paris travel itinerary includes one or two-day trips around Paris, I would definitely think about a small backpack instead of a shoulder bag.

Day trips from Paris usually require a few extra necessities and backpacks have more capacity and ensure a better weight balance on the shoulders.

Backpacks are not necessarily a synonym of tourists as there are many great brands proposing urban, stylish backpacks. In Paris, you will see many locals, women, and men, carrying beautiful backpacks to go to work or for their daily travels.

Again, we recommend an antitheft backpack for safe travels and peace of mind, especially if you are going to take the metro of Paris. The most known brands are Travelon and Pacsafe. XD Design also has beautiful models for urban travelers.

Without antitheft features, there are two popular brands in Paris.

Fjallraven-Kanken backpacks are the latest trend in Paris. The brand is a little bit expensive but the backpack is made of top quality materials, it is dirt resistant, water-resistant and you can use it for years if you want.

I personally have the 16L model, with a separate compartment for the computer, so I can use it for going to work or for my day explorations around Paris.

Herschel is another popular backpack in Paris. Locals love the quality of its materials, its vintage touch, and beautiful colors.

Paris Travel Essentials List

Paris Sightseeing Checklist

What to pack in a day bag for exploring Paris?

In addition to normal bag contents which consist of a wallet, phone, documents, and the keys of the hotel or the apartment in Paris, I don’t go anywhere without my cameras (more about this below), sunglasses and an insulated water bottle to avoid single-use plastic bottles.

Also, it is a good idea to pack in your sightseeing bag a foldable umbrella for the rainy days in Paris, and some snacks. For example, I always have black chocolate in my bag.

In addition to the Paris travel essentials mentioned above, I always carry a small Moleskine notebook and pen to write thoughts or inspiring quotes, especially when I visit a museum or an exhibition. I have the Moleskine Classic Notebook, the same model used by Picasso or Ernest Hemingway just to name a few. There is a Moleskine City Notebook dedicated to Paris.

Day Trip Essentials Checklist

The travel essentials list for day trips around Paris is similar to the Paris sightseeing list but with some additional items.

When going on a full-day tour it is also good to add a travel coffee mug (to avoid single-use coffee cups) and some reading for the train rides. I always take my Kindle Oasis e-reader because it is light and I can store hundreds of books.

Kindle Oasis e-reader is the best of Kindl (Amazon format), with a high-resolution display (7″, 300dpi) for an optimal font presentation. This E-reader supports JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats and audible audio format (AAX), which is a plus.

In Paris in the summer I usually pack a light scarf or a light cardigan. These items are good to have if the temperature drops while you are out for the day.

Finally, it is a good idea to pack a travel power bank for your phone, e-reader, and other electronics.

Paris Photography: Our Cameras

Canon 5D MARK III

This is my main camera, a Canon 5D Mark III. The Canon EOS 5D Mark III is a professional camera, grade 22.3 megapixels, full-frame digital single-lens reflex (DSLR).

This is one of the best professional cameras on the market right now, it is like the Ferrari in the cars’ world! Canon recently launched a newer version of Canon 5D, Canon 5D Mark IV, but everybody agrees that it is not as good as the Canon 5D Mark III.

This is a very expensive camera and I only recommend it if you want to get serious about photography.

Also, it is quite heavy (1.5kg) so not everybody is ready to carry that weight for taking pictures.

This Canon is not my everyday camera. I carry this camera only for Paris day trips, weekend getaways from Paris, or when I want to enjoy Photography in Paris.

You can buy the Canon 5D Mark III separately (only the body). I bought the kit shown in the carousel, with an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM Lens.

Sometimes I also carry an EF 50mm f/1.8 STM lens, when I want to have some fun with macro photography.

If you like Canon cameras but you prefer a less expensive model, we have a couple of friends who are very happy with a Canon 70D.

Fuji X100F

Like many photographers, I always like to have a camera on me. My Canon is really too big to slip into a handbag and my phone has its limits.

I recently bought a Fuji X100T that I love. It slips everywhere, is discreet and ideal for street photography.

Warning: this is not a camera that I would recommend as your main camera in the sense that the lens is fixed (28mm equivalent 35mm) and not interchangeable.

Personally, I like the quality of the photos produced, its vintage look and it’s “old-style click” when I take pictures makes me giggle! Even if its handling is a little complicated at first, once you try it you will adopt it quite easily.

Panasonic Lumix DMC

This one was my everyday camera before buying the Fuji X100T. Norbert bought me this camera (three cameras was too much!) so you will still see pictures taken with this camera in World in Paris.

In the past, I had a Panasonic bridge and I loved its Leica lens, my pictures were always very colorful! The Leica lens was the main reason why I decided to buy another Panasonic.

I chose the Panasonic DMC for its already fantastic reputation. In regards to its predecessor, the TZ60, it has fewer pixels (12 million pixels against 18 million pixels) with the same size of the sensor. This means that the individual pixels are larger which makes it better at night.

Now you know what’s in our travel day bag for exploring Paris. What about you? What’s your Paris travel essentials list?

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Travel Essentials List: What’s in our Travel Day Bag for Exploring Paris