For me the anticipation and preparation (research) is part of the joy of traveling. To you Allen, part of what I call the steps of Paris: The Eiffel Tower (walk up as far as you can) and the towers of Notre Dame. I love to count the steps as I go. My husband and I found the Tomb of Napoleon to be facinating. This summer I am taking my 2 teen daughters and we will be counting steps. We are also going to the catacombs for fun. And of course you must see the museums. By the way, how old are you?

"Give a man a fish, he is fed for a day. Teach a man to fish, he is fed for life." -- Anon.

RichardAB, if you take the time to read my third paragraph I do give advice: Go back to the home page and click on paris as a destination.

Frankly, I think it is highly presumptive to start offering advice to bigal9999 of whom we know nothing more than he and his mother are going to Paris in a week and staying 8 days. I'm sorry you missed the point of my 4th paragraph.

II Corinthians 11:19 For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.

Well said, jsmith!

Hi karebear,

Trolling is the practice of dragging a baited line slowly through the water and hoping some fish rises to the bait, thus, a troll post.

jsmith, I looked thru you recent list of postings and all I see is a lot of smart mouthed remarks and comments but very little assistance.

Thank you, richardab, for reviewing my postings. Too bad you didn't read more of them. And I'm truly sorry if my attempts at humor are too caustic. By the way, I should have used presumptuous instead of presumptive.

Yes they are quite funny. I laughed for hours.

OK so this is no help to Al & his Mama, but I want to add to the "prepare or not to prepare" debate ...

It depends on your goals for a trip. Personally my greatest joys and pleasure are in things like visiting the local grocery store, church, or post office, drinking wine and people-watching in a sidewalk cafe, having a picnic in a park. This is true for me whether it is Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, Geneva, etc.

No guidebook can assist with this. You just need to step out the door of your hotel (which yes, I have made a reservation for) and take a walk/look around you!!

Well, richardab, I've gone through and checked out YOUR posts and several of them tend to be supercilious comments on the legitimate suggestions of others for several OPs to simply do a search. This is not rude, nor is it a sign of someone attempting to "police" the board. Rather, it is simply a good suggestion to someone who may not be aware that there is a search function on this board.

In this case, bigal9999 posts an almost impossibly broad question. You can't possibly answer it effectively. No one can. For one thing, as another poster pointed out, we know next to nothing about this person and his mother. Instead of guessing at what they might be interested in and just throwing random information out there willy nilly, it is, IMO, much more helpful to suggest to him that if he searches through the available information, he will probably come across something that appeals to him personally. At that point, he can come back and ask a more specific question that will, more likely than not, be answered kindly and helpfully by many knowledgable posters. How you can possibly find this very logical suggestion so rude and/or unhelpful as to make it the increasingly irritating topic of your one-man crusade is beyond me.

When I first came to this board, I had no idea there was search function and was thrilled when someone finally pointed it out to me. Now, a year or so later, I use it almost daily and it has yielded a load of invaluable information.

May I politely suggest that you get off your high horse and let people answer posts in whatever way they feel comfortable. If not, I wouldn't be surprised if you start to be accused of having a bit of "board police syndrome" yourself!

Have a nice day,
Jennie

Has anyone else noticed that the original poster has never come back with any followup comments or questions on this thread or any of his other Paris postings?

Allen emailed me for my Paris file, I sent it, and that's the last I heard.

I had a strong troll suspicion, but what the heck, nothing lost except a little time

Jennie, you will never stop people from asking a question before using the search function. Instead of going through the effort to explain that they can look it up in search, why don't you just answer the question. I often cut an paste from previous replies I made to other people.

If you are not happy with people asking the same questions you have a simple choice, just don't answer or better yet don't even open the darn file! Isn't that easy?

If you didn't notice that there was a search function at the top of the page i would like to inform you of how to buckle your seat belt on an airliner too.

The good thing about this board is that there are a lot of sincere people who come here for honest advice, the bad thing is that there are also a lot of wannabee's who park here making empty comments about anything that suits their fancy.

Let is also be noted that times are changing. A good hotel or restaurant from a few months ago may have gone bad. New museums open, new restaurants pop up, prices change and places fall under new management which not always favourable.

In the case of my recent trip to Vienna I was advised by some of the better know "Fodorites" that I had made a good hotel choice and was advised not to switch to an chain (Marriott). They were right and I am glad for their input.

On the other side everyone kept referring to a restaurant called "A Tavola" which has since changed names and management and is a "not so popular" place anymore. Lets say I did not ask about this place and simple planned to go there based on an old post? I would have never found the place and once I did I would have been the only person sitting in the empty unpopular restaurant.

I often wonder what happened to some of the original "Fodorites" who use to post here a few years ago. Now I believe that they have been turned off by those who park their a** on this board and act like they are the police. If Fodors would have wanted the board police they would have installed a moderator.

No matter what people ask I will still answer their question whether I answered it before or not.

That is called polite.

I don't think there is any way to keep information 100% current--the restaurant I went to last week could this week have burned down or changed names.
On the other hand, using the search function does bring out a preponderance of information, and one starts to see patterns--when 4 different people recommend a hotel or restaurant, when
one museum tip keeps being mentioned over and over, when one tour guide is consistently praised, that's a way of
winnowing down the information, making lists, making choices. Even official websites aren't updated daily.
If one finds out that in fact one of the restaurants
has since closed, or a museum has changed its hours, that's just part of travel, and you go with plan B.

But I would never want to discount all the past information, or not have people look at it it's too valuable, and the person with the best advice may have responded to the question last month, but is unable to do so this month. Why else have the information archived at all?

richardab, if you review your first posting you essentially gave bigal9999 a list of websites to check and books to read. I think cmeyer54 and elaine had already made the same suggestions.
Could your comments be classified as "empty" or redundant?

I will take it as a compliment that you "laughed for hours" at my postings. Or were you being facetious?

jsmith, If you noticed I recommended my 3 favorite books which were not previously mentioned. Elaine simply said, "You will need a general guidebook and a map too." UHHH DUH! Well anyone can say that. As for the other info I didn't see any "redundant" info in my post, it was MY perspective without listing hundreds of different thing that he could possibly do.

Elaine, I like fresh advice and fresh fruit. I would never rely on the guts of an old melon. I really like to see the perspectives of a lot of people to different questions.

From Fodors the Forum rules read,

"Travel Talk is a place for travelers to converse with other travelers. Ask questions, get advice, or share great stories from your trips. But please keep to the topic -- travel. All postings must be your own words (i.e., no cutting and pasting of copyrighted material). A civil tone and no advertising or commercial promotion are also requested. Representing yourself as another Travel Talk user is strictly prohibited. We reserve the right to delete any post and disqualify any screen name for any reason."

The official "rules" don't say anything about asking the same question over and over again.

But thank you for being the forum Police.

So what is the best restaurant in Paris anyway?

Another category Fodor's contributor was omitted from a recent posting here: the pompous poster!