The first time I went to Paris, I was a terrible traveler.

It was about 11 or 12 years ago, and I was in London for work. Memorial Day weekend happened to fall over a bank holiday, so I got on the train and went to Paris.

It was my first international trip. Ever.

I didn’t speak French. I had heard my entire life that French people were rude. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and I was completely out of my depth.

So naturally, I went to Starbucks.

I ate tourist bullshit. I stayed close to the things I recognized. I remember going over near the Eiffel Tower and stopping at one of the food stands, where this incredibly jovial guy—who clearly wasn’t originally from France—was basically the human equivalent of HELLO! BEAUTIFUL DAY! He was delightful.

Other people were not.

Some people were fucking rude.

And because I was inexperienced, already intimidated and expecting French people to be rude, every one of those interactions confirmed exactly what I’d been told about Paris.

Then I went to the Louvre.

And stayed for eight hours.

Open to close.

I could finally breathe because I understood museums. I didn’t need to know how to order something or whether I was standing in the wrong place or if someone was annoyed with me. I could just wander around looking at art.

I didn’t know it then, but that trip started everything.

Paris was the first place I ever traveled internationally. Now I’ve been to more than 40 countries, built an entire travel brand around art, history, culture and the weird shit I become obsessed with along the way—and I still keep going back to Paris.

The difference is that I no longer need Paris to be the Paris I imagined before I got there.

Mostly.

Because here’s the ridiculous part:

I still romanticize the hell out of it.

Are Parisians Actually Rude?

Sometimes.

There. Mystery solved.

I’ve encountered some rude fucking people in Paris. I’ve also encountered rude people in Chicago. There are assholes everywhere, and I’m not going to explain away every shitty interaction as a fascinating cultural misunderstanding.

But after multiple trips to Paris, I also think Americans frequently misread what they’re experiencing.

We perform friendliness constantly.

We ask, “How are you?” without necessarily wanting an honest accounting of someone’s day. We smile at strangers. We fill silence. We have entire regional traditions built around being incredibly pleasant while privately thinking someone is an asshole.

I’m looking at you, “bless your heart.”

Paris doesn’t operate that way.

Or at least, that’s not how I’ve experienced it.

The more I’ve gone back, the more I’ve realized that what I originally interpreted as coldness often feels more like an absence of performance.

And frankly, I understand that a hell of a lot better now than I did on my first trip.

Bonjour Is Not Optional

If you remember nothing else from this Paris travel guide, remember this:

Say bonjour.

Bonjour is the operating system.

Walk into a store and immediately launch into Excuse me, do you have this in a medium? without first acknowledging the human being standing in front of you, and you have already started the interaction badly.

Say bonjour, madame. Say bonjour, monsieur.

Try.

I still don’t fucking speak French.

I can say bonjour. I can say merci. I can throw around an oui when necessary. I’m certainly not having a philosophical discussion in French anytime soon.

But I try.

You don’t need to perform an entire Duolingo lesson at the cash register. You just need to remember that you’re entering someone else’s space in someone else’s country and perhaps don’t begin the interaction by charging toward them in English like they’re an information kiosk.

That tiny adjustment changed Paris for me.

French Food: We Need to Talk

I know I’m risking deportation from a country I don’t actually live in by saying this, but here we go:

I have eaten some incredibly bland food in Paris.

And I don’t mean I wandered into the first restaurant next to a souvenir shop and ordered a cheeseburger.

I’ve had the soufflé. I’ve had beef bourguignon. I’ve eaten at highly reviewed restaurants. I’ve done expensive experiential tasting menus with enough courses that somewhere around course nine you start wondering whether you’ve accidentally joined a cult.

And I’ve repeatedly thought:

That’s it?

Somewhere along the line, someone described the word “spice” to a French chef and apparently described it as the color beige.

I live in Chicago. That’s admittedly an unfair baseline because Chicago is an extraordinary food city. I can eat my way across the world without leaving home.

But Paris has spent decades being presented as though simply eating there should be a minor religious experience.

That has not been my experience.

I’ve had perfectly good food in Paris.

I’ve had beautiful food in Paris.

I’ve had food that arrived looking like it had recently completed a graduate degree in aesthetics.

And then I’ve eaten it and thought, Well. That’s nice…..

Meanwhile, some of the best food I’ve had in Paris hasn’t been traditionally French at all.

My Favorite Coffee in Paris Is Vietnamese

I will cross Paris for Hanoi 1988 Flowers & Archive.

Literally.

It’s a Vietnamese coffee shop and flower shop, and now I go every time I’m in Paris. I’ve also had fantastic Vietnamese food in the city—some of the best I’ve had outside Vietnam.

And this isn’t some strange anomaly in an otherwise completely French culinary city. Paris has substantial Asian communities and a long immigration history, particularly in the 13th arrondissement, where the city’s Asian quarter grew substantially through migration from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The official Paris tourism office describes the 13th as one of the city’s most cosmopolitan districts. Read more about Paris’s 13th arrondissement and its Asian quarter.

My favorite coffee experiences in Paris have repeatedly come from places like this rather than the romantic little French café everyone imagines themselves sitting in while wearing a trench coat and contemplating their life.

French café coffee is frequently a triumph of presentation over flavor.

It looks right.

The little cup is right.

The table is right.

The street is right.

Your entire life briefly looks like a movie.

And the coffee is…fine.

Give me the Vietnamese coffee.

Bacha Coffee? Also fantastic.

Moroccan.

Paris is a deeply multicultural city, and some of my favorite things about eating and drinking there have happened when I’ve stopped expecting Paris to feed me some imaginary version of “French food” and started paying attention to what the city actually contains.

If Vietnam is what brought you here in the first place, I’ve also written about what it’s actually like traveling through Vietnam and whether Vietnam is safe for solo female travelers.

But French Butter Can Have Whatever It Wants

Now we need to discuss butter.

French butter is fucking spectacular.

No notes.

I come home with an unreasonable amount of it. The fact that I can walk into a grocery store, buy vacuum-packed French butter and put it in my suitcase feels like something civilization should be significantly more excited about.

If someone tells you French butter isn’t better, that person cannot be trusted with important decisions.

The pastries can stay too.

I really like The French Bastards. The pastries are fantastic.

Baguettes, however?

I don’t get it. I’m sorry.

It’s hard crusty bread. I feel like I’m going to break a tooth.

France can keep the baguette. I’ll take the butter and pastries.

I understand this arrangement may affect my future entry into the country.

Paris Fashion Is Very Bold in Beige

Paris is one of the fashion capitals of the world.

I also rarely come home from Paris with much clothing.

I’m not particularly interested in labels for the sake of labels. Louis Vuitton exists in Chicago. So do plenty of other international luxury brands. Flying across the Atlantic to buy something I can get at home doesn’t excite me.

I like independent designers. I like strange jewelry. I like things I haven’t already seen everywhere else.

And Parisian style, while undeniably polished, is often much more restrained than mine.

There are beautifully dressed women everywhere.

There are statement pieces. There is creativity.

But sometimes it’s bold in beige.

I don’t mean that as an insult. It’s just not necessarily my version of fashion.

The funny thing is that Paris itself isn’t beige at all.

Look up.

There’s architecture everywhere. Sculpture. Details on buildings. Street art. Gardens. Monuments. Something weird tucked around another corner.

That’s the Paris I shop for.

I just don’t usually get to bring it home.

If You Love Art, Paris Is Absolutely That Good

This is where I stop arguing with the mythology.

Paris is extraordinary for art.

Full stop.

The Louvre was the beginning for me, but I’ve returned to Paris enough times now that going to museums has become part of how I understand the city.

The Musée d’Orsay is one of my favorite museums in the world.

And yes, you can absolutely reach the point where you’ve gone to your 14th museum in two days and think, Maybe I should see daylight.

I usually go to another museum.

This is what Paris gives me that very few places can match: art, history and culture stacked on top of one another until you can barely walk down a street without running into another story.

That’s my thing.

And there’s almost always someone protesting something.

I love that too.

Not because I necessarily know enough about whatever issue I’ve just walked into to have an opinion on it, but because I love traveling somewhere and seeing democracy happening in public. People marching. Signs in the air. Someone with a megaphone. Streets shut down because a group of people has decided that whatever they’re pissed off about is important enough to make everybody else hear about it.

Paris does not strike me as a city particularly afraid of speaking its mind.

Maybe that’s another reason I’ve grown to understand it better.

Neither am I.

It has always been my thing.

I can walk around Paris and look up at a building and want to know who lived there. I can find street art around a corner and stop. I can spend an entire day in a museum. I can walk through a garden in the morning, smell everything blooming, end up along the Seine and sit there watching birds with Notre-Dame in the distance.

None of this is particularly groundbreaking.

Millions of people have done exactly the same thing.

I don’t care.

It’s still fucking wonderful.

And if you want another example of what happens when I get fixated on the history of a place instead of just photographing it, read my Mont Saint-Michel guide or my essay on whether Mont Saint-Michel is actually overrated.

The Paris Métro Is Not That Scary

I also need everyone to calm down about getting around Paris.

I live in Chicago.

The Paris Métro does not scare me.

Yes, there are a lot of lines. Yes, you need to pay attention to which direction you’re traveling. Yes, the ticket system requires you to understand what you’re actually buying.

But this is not an escape room.

Look at your map. Follow the line. Pay attention.

You’ll be fine.

For the part that actually changes—tickets, passes and current transportation rules—use the official RATP visitor information rather than trusting a random travel blog written three fare changes ago.

That’s also a general rule around here: I’ll tell you what actually happened to me. For the thing that can change next Tuesday, I’ll send you to the people running it.

Passage Choiseul: The Paris I Keep Coming Back For

The last two times I’ve been to Paris, I’ve stayed in the Passage Choiseul.

This may be the best explanation I have for why I keep coming back.

Passage Choiseul opened in 1827 and stretches 190 meters through Paris’s 2nd arrondissement, making it one of the city’s longest covered passages. Its history is tied heavily to theater and literature; the first publisher of Paul Verlaine had a bookshop there, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline lived there as a child. The City of Paris has the history of Passage Choiseul and the city’s other covered passages here.

During the day, people are moving through it. Shops are open. Restaurants are operating. It’s alive.

At night, everything changes.

The shops close. The people disappear. The upper floors are residential, so eventually it becomes basically you and the people who actually live above the passage.

I fucking love it.

You walk through this nearly 200-year-old glass-covered passage in the middle of Paris and it feels like someone accidentally forgot to tell everyone else that you have the place to yourself.

It feels like your own personal little secret.

It isn’t, obviously.

It’s been there since 1827. People have lived there. Shopped there. Gone to the theaters around it. Writers have passed through it. France’s Ministry of Culture now lists Passage Choiseul and Passage Sainte-Anne as protected historic architecture. You can read the official heritage record here.

There’s nothing secret about it.

But at night, when everything is closed and you’re walking back to where you’re staying?

It feels like there is.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to explain about Paris this entire time.

The Postcard Isn’t Fake

I used to think becoming a more experienced traveler meant learning not to romanticize places.

I’ve changed my mind.

You just need to know when you’re doing it.

Paris is romanticized beyond all reasonable proportion. Movies have done it. Fashion has done it. Tourism marketing has done it. Emily in Paris has certainly done its part.

Paris is not an endless parade of perfect meals, perfect clothes, perfect cafés and charming French people waiting to improve your life.

The food might be bland.

The coffee might disappoint you.

Someone might be rude.

You might discover that your personal relationship with French fashion is mostly wondering whether taupe comes in another color.

And then you’ll walk along the Seine early in the morning.

You’ll smell the gardens.

You’ll look up and see Notre-Dame.

You’ll turn a corner and find another piece of art.

You’ll spend eight hours in the Louvre because apparently you have no sense of moderation.

You’ll say bonjour with an accent that probably isn’t fooling anyone.

You’ll cross the city for Vietnamese coffee.

You’ll stuff an irresponsible quantity of butter into your suitcase.

And at night, you might walk through a nearly empty nineteenth-century passage that, for a few minutes, feels like it belongs entirely to you.

I’ve traveled a hell of a lot since that first terrified trip to Paris.

I’m a completely different traveler now.

Paris was the first place that made me want to see more of the world.

Maybe that’s why it still gets away with so much shit.

I know the postcard isn’t the whole story.

I just still see it.