With so many travel resources out there, it can often be hard to get to the information you want without becoming distracted or losing your trail. We do our best here at My Parisian Tours to give you all the basic information you need but there will always be things we haven’t covered. For the times when we don’t have what you’re looking for it’s good to know where to go. The following is a list of the five online Paris resources that we find most helpful.

Mairie de Paris – www.paris.fr

Hands-down the best place to find out about what’s going on in Paris, this website is run by the Mairie de Paris – the city authorities. It has listings of upcoming events, reviews of events passed and general news about what’s going on in the city. It’s constantly updated with news, images and videos as well as having essential practical information on most of the city’s attractions. The bad news? It’s in French. The website does have an English section but not much of the most current content makes it over there and to be honest, that’s probably why you're visiting. The good news is that you can install a translate function into most browsers that will automatically translate foreign languages or you can do it the long way – if you see something that looks like it could taking place during your trip copy it and paste it into Google Translate.

If it’s event updates you’re after, follow us on Twitter @myparisiantour. Most of the best and most relevant events on Mairie de Paris make it onto our Twitter feed.

Go Go Paris is great for young visitors

Go Go Paris – www.gogoparis.com

Go Go Paris is a great resource for anyone travelling to Paris and wanting to be part of the scene. This English-language website has details about concerts, exhibitions, restaurants, launches and shopping all in a pretty-in-pink layout. It’s regularly updated and informative. Perfect for young people about town and expats looking to mingle.

Paris by mouth – www.parisbymouth.com

Paris by Mouth is a great collaborative blog with contributors that range from professional food critics to chefs, cookbook authors, bloggers and foodies. As well as having great food-related blogs (like coverage of the Paris Chocolate Festival), they review restaurants, wine bars, bakeries, pastry shops and ice cream shops in Paris and sort them neatly into categories for you to browse. The search tool allows you to search restaurants by day, price, cuisine style, location and rating (listed by editor’s choice or Michelin stars) and they also have a very handy interactive map with their reviews tagged to it for when you want good food but you’re too tired to stray far from the hotel .

Air BnB – www.airbnb.com

Air BnB is great for accommodation

Paris accommodation can be expensive, cramped and very far out of the city. If you’d like something cheaper, or if you would just prefer to do Paris as a local, then I would recommend Air BnB. The relatively new venture hooks homeowners or renters up with travellers. It’s a simple recipe – a person who lives in Paris wants to rent out a spare room from time to time or their entire apartment while they travel on a casual basis. So they go to Air BnB and stick up an ad. You or I then see that ad (on last count they had around 3,000 Paris accommodations) use the calendar to check availability and book.

Sure the required security deposits are a bit of a pain but you’ll get that back and for that small extra hassle you’ll save money and have a chance to see Paris from a local’s perspective – live where they live and eat what they eat. Accommodation options range vastly from cheap-and-cheerful studios to luxurious four bed houses and most of the properties have been verified with photos taken by an Air BnB photographer (look out for the badge). The website has reveiws and website owners offer guarantees to both guests and accommodation owners so risks are minimal.

Lonely Planet gives a good overview

Lonely Planet – www.lonelyplanet.com

If you haven’t bought your guidebook yet, if your visit is too short to merit a guidebook or even if you aren’t a big guidebook fan, the Lonely Planet website is a really good resource. Although it doesn’t have all the specific content that the books have such as restaurant, accommodation and entertainment reviews, it does have everything you need to come up with a loose itinerary for your first trip. It also has a newish tool ‘Favourite Blogs’ which appears in the left-hand column under the top picks. These are hand-picked blogs with posts about Paris organised by publication date – the perfect fodder for hours of enjoyable procrastination and day dreaming.