#00 Paris à la Carte

About the Paris à la Carte Tour

If the following thoughts speak to you, the Paris à la Carte tour is made for you!

Clichés Are Tenacious

Major cities are often difficult to comprehend from a foreign point of view. Most of the times, when visiting them, one picks an aspect, a neighborhood or a moment and tend to generalize from this.

Paris is no different. This visitor will enter the overwhelming Louvre and might decide that Paris is a big old museum. That visitor will stick to the surroundings of the Eiffel Tower and could be prompt to conclude that Paris and Parisian look well-dressed… but quite homogeneously! Yet another one will stay in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and is likely to picture the typical Parisian as a Caucasian person smoking and drinking wine.

There are Many Paris

My take is that Paris is diverse, Paris is a city of contrasts, Paris has many faces and they all equally deserve to be discovered!

Many outer arrondissements in the current layout were not part of Paris before 1859 and their forced inclusion under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. They were already established towns with their own architecture, lifestyle, communities, artistic or political views and since kept their own identity.

Some even claim that Belleville or Montmartre hold the essence of the real Paris. On the other hand, for the past ten years or so, Paris has open up a lot to the international, and invested in its future, taking its destiny in hands in terms of public transport, habitat, sustainability, social innovation and inclusiveness. Batignolles or la Petite Ceinture — among other neighborhoods — feature wonderful examples of that dynamism.

Cherry on top — for those who needed proof that miracles do exist — locals started to speak English!

The Paris à la Carte Tour

The idea of this tour is to create a customized itinerary in terms of duration, neighborhoods and aspects of the city to really soak it all in. Let’s try to get a feel on what makes the city a ground for cultural experimentation, just through exploration!

Of course, one golden rule remains, the raison d’être of Paris B-sides: wander off the beaten track!