It’s your 1st day in Paris and you can’t check in ASAP because your hotel/ hostel rental is not ready yet? What about getting rid of your luggage first and enjoy the day without the hassle of carrying your bags while touring Paris? Besides, you would want to maximize your stay in the City of Love right?
There are several safe and available storage options in Paris for all sizes of bags and rates. Storing your luggage in a train station is one of the best and convenient option in my opinion. It is best to leave your luggage near your first tourist spot--in our case, we went to see The Louvre museum first so we left our luggage in Gare du Nord which is a prime spot in Paris.
Bags and Luggage Storage at Gare du Nord is located on Level -1 (sub-level 1, one flight of stairs / escalators below where the Grandes Lignes trains are parked) close to train lane #3, close to the Gare du Nord station entrance located on Rue de Maubeuge.
The automatic coin operated luggage lockers at Gare du Nord are open from 06:15 – 23:15, seven days a week, regardless of holidays. I believe the prices of each locker will depend on how big you want to rent. Since we have 1 big luggage, 1 hand-carry luggage, and 2 travel backpacks, we rented 1 big locker worth EUD 9.5 or around USD 12 total (NOTE: We've traveled to Paris last March 2018 for our honeymoon. The cost may change without prior notice. Please do check the latest updates in their official website.).
This is how we stacked our bags inside the locker. You may estimate how many locker rentals you need depending on how big and many your luggages are.
TIP: Before closing the rental lockers, make sure that all valuable items and items you need for the day are with you. Never leave important items inside the locker--i.e. money, gadgets, jewelries, passport, credit cards etc. Once you close the locker and forgot to take out something, you will have to pay another fee because it's a one time payment per opening. So, always double check your items before closing!
To pay, you will need some coins to be fed in the vending machine next to your rented locker. Take note of the locker number as you will need to encode it to pay the fee.
The lockers do not allow bills or credit card for payment. I believe you can ask assistance from the front desk to exchange your bills to coins or find the change machine. Once payment is done, keep the receipt and take a photo of it (just in case that the piece of paper will get lost). You need to encode a passcode to retrieve your luggage at the end of the day.
Now, you can explore Paris right away without the hassle of carrying/pushing your huge luggages. You can maximize your waiting time for your hotel/hostel check-in by visiting some tourist spots near your place or trying out famous restos nearby.
NOTE: Travel period was last March 2018 Pre-covid days. Costs and protocols may change without prior notice. Best to check the latest and official website of Gare du Nord Luggage Storage.
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