Les Pages Jaunes - Paris' Yellow Pages by BeatChick
One of the best pieces of advice I received was concerning the website, Les Pages Jaunes (the French Yellow Pages). Following is the website:www.pagesjaunes.fr
Once you're in, you'll see a tiny British flag in the upper right-hand corner, click on that to have the English version of this website. Then you can type things in by category or by name to see a photo and also a map. Once you're looking at the photo of the place, you can click on the "street" icon (to the right) with arrows to left and right to literally walk down a street. You can use that to gauge how many blocks distance is betweeen 2 sites (you can also turn corners onto other streets).
For map info before you get to Paris, if you know where you're going that 1st day (before you can manage to pick up that Plan de Paris) then I'd suggest printing out maps from here beforehand. They even have itinerary info that tells you how to get from place to another along with how long it takes to walk there, etc.. For instance, if you wanted to know how to get from your hotel to Place de la Concorde, then you'd go to that website, type in Place de la Concorde (this will be used as your destination point), click "Itinéraire" button, then type in the address for your hotel, choose your mode (Express for fastest way, Sans Péage or Piéton for pedestrian/walking time & distance). Pages Jaunes is also great for photos, too! When you're using the photo option you can use the arrows to "walk" down the streets - pretty cool function, I must say. Hope that helps you in your planning. Bonne journée!
