Paris on Demand helps you make the most of your trip to Paris. By suggesting workshops and designing custom-tailored itineraries according to your wishes and needs, it enables you to visit Paris with complete peace of mind. Here’s a guest post by the wonderful, Pierre, who runs the joint and offers tours on Vayable! 

Thinking about your long-time dream trip to Paris? In order to avoid a strong cultural shock, here are some tips you may find helpful… When packing, some essential rules must be kept in mind in order to make your stay as pleasant as possible. To the astonishment of many tourists, Paris is a very small city compared to its European counterparts. It is about 8 times smaller than Berlin or 3.5 times smaller than London. Paris is thus a city made for walking. Don’t forget then to take sneakers you’re comfortable in as you may end up walking through Paris all the way down from Montmartre, its Northern boundary, to the Eiffel Tower with a stop at the Champs Elysees.

However, your sneakers won’t make you feel at ease in restaurants or any other places frequented by Parisians. Indeed, Parisians like fashion and style. Even though most of the designers at the helm of the top French-fashion institutions are no longer French, Paris remains the capital of fashion. Parisians like to be well-dressed and to make an impression wherever they go. High-heels are not mandatory but some elegant shoes may help you feel better. You may indeed get some dirty looks from “Parisiennes” who will take great pleasure in looking coldly and haughtily at you…

As you may have understood, Parisians will be an essential part of your Parisian experience… Dubbed as deeply arrogant and self-centered, a reputation that generally proves to be quite accurate, you may easily avoid them (unless it is the contrary…) but if you want to get in touch with them, it is better to learn the few essential words to make things easier… Parisians will indeed be happily surprised and feel compelled to answer you if you address them in French, even with a strong accent or grammatical mistakes. On the contrary, you will most certainly be ignored if your opening line is in English…

However, once you get used to Parisians’ lack of conviviality, you may actually find it fun to observe them. Their behavior seems to be an infinite source of inspiration for authors as they are the subject of an incredibly high number of books. Here is a selection of my favorite picks:

• Stuff Parisians Like by Olivier Magny
• Paris Revealed by Stephen Clarke
• Talk to the Snail by Stephen Clarke