Are city passes worth buying on holiday?

If you want to explore a city and do some memorable things, a city pass can make it worthwhile. To get the best use of the discounts you need to plan a bit, especially for big cities.

New York has a City Pass – a book of vouchers for a choice of six attractions out of the top nine in the city including museums, tours and iconic places. It costs $122 (€110) for adults and $98 (€88) for youths, a saving of up to 42 per cent. City Pass is available in other US cities and Toronto, citypass.com.

The London Pass includes entry to more than 70 attractions, including the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, London Zoo, the Wembley Stadium Tour, museums, a hop-on hop-off bus tour and fast track entry to many places. It costs £62 (€72) adults, £44 (€51) children for one day, and £85 (€98) adults, £63 (€73) children for two days. You can buy up to 10 days, londonpass.com.

There are a number of different passes in Paris, some are just for the museums, another includes a hop-on hop-off bus and A Seine cruise, while another is for transport. Paris is a big city and you need to plan what you want to do. It may be museums and in that case the museum pass will suffice. The available passes are listed on en.parisinfo.com. Museums are free on the first Sunday of the month.

Amsterdam has the IAmsterdam card and you can buy it for one to four days. The card includes city transport and you can find yourself hopping on and off trams and buses. It includes entry for many museums, the zoo, the Nemo science centre, a canal cruise and discounts in restaurants and bars. The only thing it does not include is the Rijksmuseum. It costs from €57-€77, iamsterdam.com.

jscales@irishtimes.com