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If you hit Paris on a bad day (and I don't necessarily mean 'Black Saturday') you can be in traffic queues for hours.  We have been - and on a hot day,and needing a toilet stop, it's an absolute nightmare.  We 'did' Paris on all our holidays for about fifteen years, trying almost every route from the Periperiquewhich was the only option when we first used to go, to the E104 which was the last road to be built. Once we started towing a caravan the E104 was much preferred to hearing further in towards centrall Paris.  If you're going to do 'Paris' then the E104 is fine, unless you're in traffic, or there's been an accident - then it's just a slow crawl going nowhere.You can't even get off and try to go through the suburbs because in the event of major problems access and exit roads are often blocked too.

We witnessed a major accident on the Peripherique before we started towing and sat it out for ages, and after a four hour slow crawl around Paris the last time with the caravan, due to another accident, we gave up on trying it again and discovered cross-country - either to the east via Soissons, Troyes, etc if we were going to the south east, or via Rouen for the Languedoc/Dordogne/Lot/Tarn.  The hold-ups when almost always on our way home which somehow made it even worse!

We have a caravan and for us cross-country, off autoroute, doesn't slow us up - but then we're not in a particular hurry.  The worst of the roundabouts on the Rouen route are on the Dreux by-pass and can be avoided with a judicious cross-country route, even with a caravan.   Judging from the number of caravanners from Britain we see coming towards us when using that route many others feel the same about Paris!

Parisiennes will almost all be returning home this weekend - which is another reason to avoid Paris.

The Bison Fute website describes traffic conditions this weekend as 'Tres Difficile'!!