Your Great 5-Day Trip to Paris

By Carolee Duckworth and Brian Lane

Are you ready to take that trip to Paris you've always dreamed of?

...But you want to avoid the bus and the tour group so you can actually experience Paris and its delights?

Do you wish you had the confidence to travel to Paris independently? But you know you don't know enough. And you don't want to waste your time there trying to figure out what to do. And, besides, you don't speak French?

Do you wonder how much your trip will cost? And how you will come up with the money?

Whether you are an experienced traveler or an aspiring one, this book will be your silent guide. Like a good friend who has taken you under his wing to make sure your trip experience is rich and remarkable.

You will know what to do and why, how to do it and when. Your trip will go smoothly every step of the way since you already will have the detailed trip logistics and smart travel tips you'll need, while preserving your independence and freedom to explore. And you will know some of the captivating stories that make what you are seeing all the more interesting.

Traveling free from the bus and group will leave you open to immerse yourself in the celebrated art, awe-inspiring architecture, intriguing history, stunning gardens, lively cafés , colorful outdoor markets and enchanting music...

You will be at liberty to dine in the Eiffel Tower, have your portrait drawn in Montmartre, listen to music at a piano bar or a boat bar on the Left Bank and vintage shop your way through the Marais. You will experience first-hand the famous "joie de vivre"—the joyous French way of life.

This will be the best of all ways for you to travel to Paris. You will be forever happy that you did. Bon Voyage!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carolee Duckworth
• Release date: Jan 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393518983

Book preview

Have the Full Experience

Start now to experience your trip in your mind’s eye. Anticipation is a significant part of the pleasure of Great Trip travel. Well before you board the plane, imagine yourself on your way.

As you arrange your places to stay and book your planes... As you read and revise your Day Pages (full plans for each day) and adjust them to the particulars of your own trip plan... Throughout this process, let the experience begin in your imagination.

When you actually do set off on your trip, be prepared to take an active role. Seize the day, and otherwise reap the full experience.

Seek out experiences that excite you and your interests.

Activate your senses.

Shift your habits to increase your range of experience.

Seek Out Experiences that Excite You

Take charge of your own trip to ensure it will be a full and enjoyable experience. Adapt your trip to your own unique interests and enthusiasms. If you are a music lover, plan for more music... Organ concerts in cathedrals. Jazz groups on boat bars. Singers sitting atop pianos in piano bars belting out love songs.

If you are a history enthusiast, learn as much as you can in advance of your trip, as well as during it. Explore the historical significance of what you are seeing—the towns, the châteaux, the monuments, the historical figures. Stories abound.

So too, if you love architecture... Or art... Or sculpture... Or shopping... Or wine... Or all of the above...

Activate Your Senses. Look Up, Look Down

You will be surrounded throughout your trip with a feast for the senses. Promise yourself, and each other, that you will NOT walk around with your eyes glazed over and your mind on other things, or glued to your Facebook feed. Make an active effort to notice your surroundings. Be where you are.

You will have no need to rush. Everything you do throughout your trip will count as part of it, including the coming and going. You will be surrounded by what you came to see. Even as you ride the river to the Louvre, or walk from Sainte-Chapelle to Notre Dame, you will be passing through the living museum of Paris itself at every turn.

Look up to the tops of the buildings to spot the decorative carvings and gargoyles. Look into the shop windows at the stylish displays. Look at the medieval buildings themselves in which these shops are housed. Pause to notice both the natural and the man-made—the people and the things. Watch the children riding the carousel. Observe the couples talking intently in the cafés, while sipping wine and attacking an oyster feast served on a three-tiered tower of ice. Perch on a bench to people-watch. Stand on a bridge as boats glide beneath you.

Peek into the bakeries in the morning, taking in the smell of fresh bread, crusty and tempting, spilling from the shelves. Look in again late in the day to see those same shelves now stripped bare. Spot the flowers. The fountains. The curiosities. The unexpected.

In a word, give yourself permission to slow down or even to STOP! Treat your trip as a stroll, not a race! Your only task right now is to BE here. With so much to be seen, there is also much to be missed. Make it your plan, and your objective, to take it all in.

Shift Your Habits to Increase Your Range of Experience

You are comfortable with your own established habits, so you may be tempted to cling to these habits throughout your trip. But this will decrease significantly the fullness of your experience and you will emerge untouched and unchanged in the end.

Make every effort to reach beyond your habits. If you are only going to do what you’ve always done, traveling is a very expensive way to do that. Break free from former habits. And have some fun in the process.

Yes. You may normally eat cereal with a banana for breakfast and a single piece of dry toast. And yes, your go-to lunch may be a ham and cheese sandwich, or maybe a salad. Generally, you may view shopping as a chore and try to get it out of the way as quickly as possible, striding past anything unrelated to your mission. It may be your habit to take the shortest route to where you are going, the better to get home sooner. And at the end of the day, you ordinarily may watch TV, or do a little reading, then take a quick shower and get to bed early.

So now here you are in Paris and you can’t seem to find your favorite cereal anywhere. Let this go and you will discover something much better—a typical French breakfast of croissants and cheese, salami and yogurt, café crème and fruit. Even McDonald’s, called McDo (pronounced Mac Dough) in France, offers a proper French breakfast, with startlingly good coffee and three pastries—one fruit filled, plus a croissant and a chocolate croissant.

If you are partial to a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, discover the French version, the deliciously-toasted croque monsieur (translation: a crunchy for the master). Yummm!!! This may be one French experience that you choose to take home with you so you can recreate it yourself after your trip.

Croque monsieur.jpg

And please, at least temporarily, alter your attitude toward shopping. View it as an opportunity to explore, not as a chore to cross off your list as quickly as possible. Even when there’s nothing in particular that you need or want to purchase, wander the shops with curiosity and enthusiasm. These too are living museums, where the exhibits just happen to be for sale.

Spot the unusual. Admire the handwork—the tapestries and embroidery, the lacework and carvings. Study the old maps to understand where the medieval city once lay, encircled by defensive walls. Peruse the local booklets to find perspectives different from your own. Page through and perhaps purchase, a few illustrated children’s books that depict legends and stories that are unfamiliar to you. And if, during this discovery process, you should happen upon a treasure you wish to take home, that’s all the better.

Rethink how you spend your evenings. If your general evening habit is to stay in and go to bed early, break free of this for now and expend the energy to venture back out after dark. If need be, take an afternoon rest or power nap to prepare yourself to stay up with the grown-ups.

As evening falls, you will enter an all new and illuminated world. Bridges will be aglow. Locals will be out, strolling along the river. Cafés will come alive. Music will drift out into the streets. Promise yourself, and each other, that you will make the effort to catch a glimpse of this night world. These will be memories that will last you for life!

Keep Your Trip Relaxed & Fun

To make your vacation unforgettable, find ways to protect your fun and enjoyment and to avoid falling unwittingly into energy-sapping traps. By observing a few simple keys to being a more balanced traveler, you will have better experiences and more fun. These keys include:

Maintain a comfortable pace.

Travel against the crowds.

Design in your creature comforts.

Go easy on yourself.

Balance your activities.

Maintain a Comfortable Pace

Often travelers try to pack in as much as they possibly can, thinking that by doing so they will get more for their money. While this may seem to make sense intellectually, it can be a recipe for disaster. Trying to do everything can leave you feeling rushed and exhausted and suck the enjoyment out of your trip.

Group trips are notorious for these errors of trying to pack too much into a limited amount of time. Racing from place to place, herded about by travel guides who have seen all this dozens of times before, your trip flashes by so quickly it becomes one big blur. If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium.

Since you will be traveling independently, you will be able to take full control of your pace. When you need more time, take it. Give yourself permission to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n. Recharge your batteries by taking power pauses. Stop to experience things that pop up along the way. Sometimes less is more.

Lounge on the steps outside d’Orsay when you happen upon the oddity of a pianist playing a full-sized piano on the sidewalk. Hang out to watch a street artist beside Pompidou Center as he completes his masterpiece of a chalk drawing. Find yourself a chair beside the octagonal pond in Tuileries Gardens, with its vibrant colors and striking sculptures, joining the Parisians gathered there basking in the sun. Stop in the shop along the river that sells cloth creations that will turn a bunk bed into a medieval fort or a fairy castle.

When you spot something marvelous, stop and enjoy it.

If you have a yen to linger over your café crème or glass of wine in an outdoor café... If you feel that you’re at the end of your rope and need to sit awhile on a park bench to regain your energies, while watching the parade of people pass by... If you’ve just had enough for the day... Set your own pace.

Remember, this is your vacation, to be spent as you like. You do not need to set any records. Travel is not about seeing everything on a list. It’s about noticing and absorbing, relaxing and unwinding, engaging and having great experiences.

Travel Against the Crowds, Skip the Line & Book Ahead

By traveling independently, you will be free to enter crowd-avoidance mode, moving against the crowds, not with them. When a tour group swarms in, traveling in its crowd bubble, use your flexibility to go somewhere else for now. Then return later when the crowds thin out.

Use the magic of the Paris Museum Pass to skip past the lines at the museums. Book ahead for Eiffel Tower tickets so you will be able to walk past the daunting lines and enter the elevator smoothly. Make restaurant reservations in advance so you will be certain to have an excellent table, outside or beside a window.

Design in Your Creature Comforts

Traveling abroad doesn’t mean you have to rough it. This is not a backpacking trip in the mountains! Think through what comforts of home you could bring to help soften the impact of travel. What small items make your life at home a little bit easier that you can take along with you?

Some items to add to your comfort list include:

refillable water bottle

small umbrella or rain jacket

sweater or light wrap

a second pair of reliably comfortable shoes

cross-body shoulder bag or daypack

sunhat and sunglasses

medical kit (Band-Aids, anti-diarrheal, antihistamine, painkillers, antibacterial creams and cough drops)

tissues, lotion and sun block

collapsible shopping bag

nightlight

Go Easy on Yourself

When you venture off on a trip, you are stepping out of your comfort zone. Things that are normally a simple matter of routine can trip you up and cause you problems. So cut yourself some slack. Resolve that you will not let yourself be bothered by unforeseen challenges. There’s no reason to get upset. Stay calm and carry on.

If you do not speak the language and are not familiar with the French system, even a stop at the restroom can be a challenge when you discover that you must have a €1 coin in hand in order to gain entry. The food is different from what you are used to. Asking simple questions can feel daunting and embarrassing—a return to childhood, of sorts, when you didn’t have the words to get what you wanted. A visit to the pharmacy to buy toothpaste, Advil and cough drops can become a mystifying ordeal, with unfamiliar brands and everything labeled in French and priced in Euros.

Give yourself permission to flounder. And get over any initial shyness you may have about asking for help when you need it. You will be pleasantly surprised at how ready the French people are to assist you once you overcome your hesitations and ask (politely!) for help. But begin every request with a gracious greeting. And always remember to say s’il vous plait and merci (please and thank you). And say these in French! Your question that follows may be a mangled mash up of English, French, pointing and arm waving, so long as you make a clear effort to show good manners and at least make an attempt to use a few words of the language of your hosts.

Balance Your Activities

Since this is your trip, you are free to decide for yourself where you will focus your attention. However, as a general rule, try to maintain variety in what you do. Too much of anything, no matter how wonderful, can get tiring. More does not necessarily mean better, even for activities that initially interest you.

The Day Pages for your trip in Chapters 2–6 will provide you a balanced framework of activities that will keep your daily adventures fresh and exciting. Use these Day Pages as your starting point to ensure that you won’t get burned out on any one type of activity. But adapt your trip based on your own particular interests, adding more of the types of activities you know you particularly will enjoy.

Keep your travel partner’s interests firmly in mind too, perhaps by taking turns deciding what comes next for the day. Occasionally head off in different directions when your interests diverge. And, after splitting off for a few hours, meet up again at an appointed café to share the stories and discoveries from your time apart.

Connect with the Locals

To have memorable experiences and encounters during your trip, take the time to be where you are and connect with the locals. Pay attention to your surroundings and learn your way around your own neighborhood. Your connections with people will become some of your most cherished memories. Think of the intriguing uniqueness of the French personality, culture and lifestyle as a prime element of the adventure of your trip. This will turn what otherwise may seem like daunting hurdles into part of the fun. And you will make memorable connections with the French along the way.

Relax on a boat bar docked along the Seine and stay when the music starts. Linger at a piano bar in the Latin Quarter, where the singer is perched atop the piano and her boyfriend is sitting at the table next to yours. Pause to watch a sidewalk artist as he sketches a caricature in Montmartre. Find a perch at the edge of Stravinsky Fountain while break dancers perform impossible tricks.

Ask the outdoor market vendor about her jewelry and admire her handiwork. After the concert in Sainte-Chapelle, tell the musicians how you were transported by their exquisite performances. When you particularly enjoy a café or restaurant, become a regular and return there multiple times. For the moment, pretend to yourself that you live here.

To experience and connect with the locals while you are in Paris:

Immerse yourself in the cultural milieu.

Optimize encounters.

Interact, question, process and relate.

Speak at least some French.

Be flawlessly polite.

Immerse Yourself in the Cultural Milieu

France preserves a way of life that embraces history and a renowned joie de vivre (joy of life). As you stroll through this living museum of streets, cafés, markets and monuments, notice and experience for yourself the French approach to life.

France is a country where it is mandatory that the work week stop after 35 hours and the standard vacation break is 6 weeks a year. In France, friends and lovers meet at day’s end at the outdoor cafés