aucho53, are you sure you are troubled by french men or titillated by them? The manner of your post appears to suggest otherwise. just go with the flow because someday you will not be able to.

Well, how come I've never been propositioned by a Frenchman? Now I'm feeling ugly and rejected.

Okay, SeaUrchin: how do you say, "hi sailor, new in town?" in French.

Leburta: exactly!

I was once propositioned at the Trevi Fountain by an English guy with the worst false teeth I've ever seen in my life. But handsome men, and French? Never. What the heck is wrong with me? Oh wait, I'm old. But shouldn't that mean that old French guys would want to hit on me? Sigh... what a loser.

Well I live in San Francisco so I know all about flirty cab drivers, and I know how to handle them. The French lawyer sounds about my type. So any arrondissement will work or any in particular?

Thank you Patrick London for the blog recs.

"bonjour matelot, sont vous nouveau en ville?"

This is what I said, I don't know if it is correct, but it opened up the conversation!

SeaUrchin= that is a fantastic line. Just have to practice some pronunciation skills and pack some Chanel red, and I'll be set.

In France, the sexes speak to each other spontaneously only if they take a sexual interest in each other, in the standard Latin tradition. Thus, if any French man speaks to you at all without an obvious reason for doing so, he has sex on his mind. Men and woman are generally incapable of forming platonic relationships in France.

Thus, if you are looking for company from French men, just smiling or talking to any of them will get it.

Conversely, French women assume that any approach from any man unmotivated by some obvious reason is a sign of sexual interest.

Most American, English, and Australian women I know hate this, some to the point that it drives them to leave France, if they were formerly planning on an extended stay. But if you _want_ attention of this kind, you'll definitely be in the right place.

Rather than "sont vous", the correct French conjugation is "êtes vous". :) (sont does mean are, but only as in "they are")

Even better would be :

"salut, le mataf, tu viens de débarquer?" (mataf is slang for matelot)

I've had great luck meeting cuties 10 years or more younger than moi at Relais Odeon.

And yeah, what others have said, you will have no worries about meeting men. Vive la France!

It is a known fact that french men think about sex every four seconds, for at least 15 seconds... AnthonyGA's opinion is, generally speaking, not that far away from the truth...

Savannah, it would be interesting to see how chic and cute you are... :-;
But then, I am not french... is a neighbouring frenchspeaking country fair enough? :-)))

My ears were burning!

My advice for meeting any people, girls or guys, is to start a blog :)

I've never done it, but know a lot of (relatively normal) people who have found hook-ups or relationships on Meetic.

And hanging out at La Perle always works :)

Go get 'em, tiger.

Meg
(Le Blagueur à Paris)

I know people who have been subjected to substantial scams on Meetic, too.

I've never been chatted up abroad either :-(

The closest I came was on Crete, where I thought a waiter was flirting with me. He even pulled up a chair to our table and sat down. Then it became horribly clear it was actually my 12 year old son he was interested in ... to my horror and my son's extreme embarrasment. We left.

I just want to be a little more prepared. The last time I was in London, I met anything but British guys when I went out. So I would like Paris and France to be more about the "local" experience. My trip isn't for 2 more months so I have some time to work out the strategy!

I've come across a draguer or two in Paris, but when I was there with my red-headed sister it was AMAZING the amount of attention she received!
I guess that sort of coloring is a novelty in France.

(This might only work if you're a natural redhead, but who knows!)

Hi Marcy:
I'm not a "natural" redhead, and it still does work. Sadly most of the men were quite a bit shorter than me (I'm 5'7") and may or may not have had a full set of teeth. I did end up meeting a very hot-looking young man at the end. It was fun for a couple days but he was extremely selfish. We would definitely not have hit it off under normal circumstances. But what the hey, it's vacation!
For some reason my experience has been that European men are more attentive (I'm from US). I'm not saying they are better or nicer or not. Maybe they think "tourist - holiday - no-strings sex." At home even though I'm way better turned out I feel invisible a lot of the time.

From what I've been told by some European men, American women do have a reputation for being easy, shall we say. And tourists even more so. It's not surprising as a lot of them do allow themselves to be picked up by guys on the street, etc., when on vacation. You read posts on Fodors about it a lot, about women who are flattered by guys on the street trying to pick them up on vacation or catcalling or making public comments about them (like in Italy). Decent men generally don't do that, anywhere. What would you think of a guy who went around trying to pick up foreign tourists on the streets or at tourist attractions where you lived? You think he would be a great guy with a lot going for him? Guys who try to pick women up in parks are the same, generally. Some of the guys doing that in Paris are pandhandling, though, I think -- there are some really cruddy looking old men doing that in some of the parks, and I won't speak to them and just ignore them (and they don't always speak French that well), so I'm not sure what they are up to. A friend of mine who was living in Paris a while told me she noticed that also, and she's very fluent in French, and she isn't quite sure what they are up to, either.

most women are easy given the right circumstances. so are all men.