Travel & Hotspots

PARIS TIPS

As I am writing this, I am in Paris. To be more exact: I’m sitting at my favorite café in the city, Café Charlot. By the time you read this, however,  I’ll unfortunately be back home. But let’s get back to Paris. Paris is one of those cities that makes you feel at home and you would move to in an instant without any hesitation. It appeals to every inch of your imagination and makes you so thoroughly happy, even if it’s just because of the unbelievably scrumptious bread. By now, our Amayzine team has made quite the amount of trips to this city and we’ve stocked up on quite a bit of knowledge and wisdom. Not about life per se (although I wish it could be), but about this city.

Bring cash

Paris is a metropolis, but at the same time they seem to be stuck in the middle ages. For the smokers amongst us, it’s a haven to be able to smoke everywhere, but generally speaking, it’s foolish of course. Another thing that is very middle ages is that it’s hard to get around without cash. Obviously in restaurants you can use your debit cards and credit cards, but in smaller joints they only allow you to use your cards if you’re bill is over 10 euros. Small purchases are pretty much always made with cash so make sure you’ve got plenty of it in your pockets.

Buy a stack of metro tickets

It sounds like common sense: buy a metro pass that you can use for an entire day, so you don’t have to carry around a stack of different ones. But the single tickets cost less than 3 euros, whereas a pass for the entire day costs 20. Unless you plan on checking out Paris’ entire underground metro, I would suggest buying a bunch of one-ways, they’ll last you much longer and save you money.

Keep your metro tickets

And while we’re on the topic of metro tickets, don’t throw them out until your ride is finished. As in: officially you need to be able to show people you’ve bought one. It’s so easy to dump it after swiping it but there are always police officers luring around corners checking tickets. It doesn’t happen all too often that they check but I’ve experienced it once and it cost me 50 euros cause obviously I had thrown out my ticket as soon as I got in. Never ever again.

Book G7-cars

I do practically everything by metro because it’s the best way to get around and you’re never stuck in traffic and it’s cheap. But if you ever decide to grab a cab, do it with G7. May-Britt used it while she was there and enthusiastically told me that there’s water, wifi and the chauffeur has a charger for pretty much every phone that exists. And that while you’re being chauffeured through the city. Sounds divine.

Learn a bit of the language

Obviously the French speak a bit of English, but they’d rather never eat another baguette in their lives than speak English to you. So when you order a glass of white wine in your deficient French, they’ll bombard you with an entire story in French even though the waiter knows you hardly understand him, or a sigh and an answer in English or they don’t even comment at all. But you definitely get bonus points for trying your best to speak the language and hopefully even with a simple “Je m’excuse, mais je ne parle pas le Français”, they’ll happily go fetch your glass of wine.

Have peace with people who smoke

If you have an immense hatred for the smell, then it’s best not to go to Paris. Perhaps New York will be more your thing. In the winter, the French terraces are surrounded with big plastic ‘walls’ so that all the smokers can still enjoy their drags outdoors. There was an American couple sitting next to me outside on the terrace who kept over-exagerating every time I took a puff from my cigarette. Normally I’ll keep these things in mind but hello, this is Paris. Everyone smokes here. Obviously inside everything is smoke-free, so you can always sit there, but for anyone who wants to hang out outside (and you know you want to because it’s the best place to be) better suck up and deal with it.