Parisnow: Just be honest. You don't have to tell her that you don't want her, but that a trip by yourself to Paris (or where ever) is something you just need to experience. If you like it, then you can tell her when you get back that you discovered you love traveling alone. If you don't like, it -- and not everybody does -- think how happy she will be to hear that!

If this person is a friend, she will not only understand, but will encourage you to go if that is what you really want. If she doesn't understand, then she isn't much of a friend.

If you think she will tag along anyway, don't tell her about your specific plans. You don't have to lie, but you don't have to tell her details either.

I went on a few trips with a friend like yours. I booked a trip to London and never mentioned it to her until she made a suggestion we attend some function or other while I was to be gone. I told her I had booked a trip to London so I wouldnt be around. I could tell she was surprised and hurt, but she never said anything and acted huffy. Well, I came back after having a great time and decided I would never travel with anyone else again (except my kids -- occasionally).

I wish I could tell you that she understood and was happy for me, but she wasn't. In fact, when I got back and suggested a few times we go to dinner or an evening out, she was always busy. I gave up trying. But guess what...I don't miss her. She wasn't a friend.

Afterall, I had other friends who never minded when I didn't invite them (before and after that London trip). They never were hurt or angry with me. Just glad that I was enjoying myself as I was when they went places without me. That's friendship.

cchottle...
to clarify, i am not saying that i think there is anything wrong with loving paris or "being drawn there". indeed, i have some of these same feelings. maybe i was just caught up too much on one or two posts like the one talking about how the dogs are better behaved than "the children at home" and how people dress up because they "respect their environment so much they don’t want to insult the sensibilities of their neighbors by looking messy" huh??? and how people smoke and don't cough and eat and don't get fat.

this all sounds very strange and unlike the paris that i know. maybe this is just a different way of traveling. when i go somewhere new, i like to learn about it as it really is and not to construct a fantasy land. as i said, this all sounds like someone sitting in the third world dreaming of the US...everyone is rich and looks like a movie star.

this might have something to do with the fact that i often move around for work and stay in one place a longer time...actually interacting with the people who live there. even when i go somewhere just for pleasure, i find myself wanting to learn what a place is really about.

I'm the one that posted some of the remarks you had a problem with so I guess I want to defend them. About the children in restaurants versus well behaved pouches. Go to most (not all) moderate to inexpensive (not super fancy) restaurants in the US, similiar to the corner cafe in Paris, and observe the majority of the children. Not particularly well behaved as a rule. I have three kids, so I am not an anti children person. But I always tried to make my children be reasonably quite and well behaved in pubic, and there are plenty of people in the US who seem to feel kids can/should be able to do what ever they want, even in public. I see a lot less of this in Europe, especially Paris. And it does amaze me how well behaved dogs are. I'm sure there are some rambuntious dogs in Paris, but you do see a lot sitting on chairs in cafes, sitting on or next to a motorcycle waiting for their owner to return - just don't see as much of it here. And that's one of the things I like about Paris. So I take offense at your trying to portray my remarks as naive.

The statement about people dressing up to go do errands or sit in a park was paraphrased from the book "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull, an Australian who moved to Paris and eight years later, wrote about the cultural differences she encountered. She explained it very well, and I agree with it. My daughter who lived in Paris for 6 months also saw the same thing (she'd had conversations with Parisian she got to know who kind of confirmed this thinking). Next time you go to the grocery store in the US look at how the majority are dressed and see if you don't think that maybe there is something to this.

Look at the fat content of the yougurt, cheese, etc in France. Now look at obesity rates/statistics. Hence the remark about people who eat fat not getting fat. Are there fat people in France - you bet, are there thin people in the US, of course. I was just remarking on generalities I have seen (which in this case are backed up by statistics).

You claim to "actually interact with the people who live there. even when i go somewhere just for pleasure, i find myself wanting to learn what a place is really about." I'm not sure you meant to (although I suspect you did) imply that I, by my remarks, and others who agree with me, are more superficial travelers than you. Don't mean to pick a fight with you, but I think in this case you are wrong so I just wanted to point out why.

Walk.. We forgive you and thanks for clarifying what you meant but...THE DOGS ARE BETTER BEHAVED! I've got two to prove it. If I were to ever take mine to Paris, the French authority would put them in a hospital for insane doggies. Yes they have attended dog school. One cheated!

cchottel--My friend will react just like yours did. There are several of us that hang out together. My other friend and her husband didn't attend a Christmas party tradition two years ago with this person and their friendship has never been the same.
Ok we have beat this topic to death. I know what I have to do. Book, stay silent and not lie if cornered.

isabel--I guess we don't go to the same restaurants. I find it's the unpleasant exception to experience a child acting up in a restaurant.

Sure it happens, but most children I've observed behave just fine--sometimes we tend to notice the "acting up" child, and not even see the ones who are doing just fine.

It's just like racial prejudice--the one in a hundred times that someone in a stereotyped group conforms to the stereotype overrides the 99/100 times that they don't.

I don't have a simple answer as to why, again and again. Whatever I say cannot explain what Paris does for me.

I fell in love with Paris back in '99. And I leave for my 9th trip in 15 days.


As others have said, Paris never disappoints. Paris fills me up with I don't know what exactly. But when I'm there, all my problems disappear, and I feel more alive, at peace, and joyful.

I can never get enough of Paris. When I have to leave all I want is more, more, more.

I have been reading this thread most faithfully because I am going through Paris withdrawal.

I have only been back from my 1st trip to Paris for 3 weeks and I can't stop reading the France posts here on Fodors and planning for my next trip,probably a solo one. I had thought I would start thinking about Vienna as the next trip to investigate and plan etc. I went to Rome and Florence last year and happily started thinking 'where next?' after that trip.
Have I been addicted? Will Paris ruin me for other cities?

Oh well, worse afflictions to have I suppose!!! lynda

Hi Lyndash,

Wecome to the club.

Paris won't ruin you for other cities but you'll need to get your "fix" now and then. I usually add a few days on the end of other trips to just "be" in Paris before I head home.

Traveling alone is a great experience but I don't understand how so many here who post never do with their children. My mother took me on my first trip to Paris and I was awed.

Hi tondalaya - maybe others are like me and don't have kids. However, I have taken 2 European trips with my mom. The first included Paris and she loved it - but not as much as I do. We had two great vacations and I treasure my memories (and photos) of those times.

I'm childfree. Hence no posts about taking kids to Europe.

Me too. For years and years I've wanted to go to Paris. Long ago a fiance promised to take me - that marriage never happened- so finally I decided to take myself and will be going for the first time with a girlfriend for 10 days in mid April.
We'll be staying across from the Louvre and I suspect I'll get up every morning and go over. The thought of the statues and paintings and beauty there is intriguing. I don't reqaly know why, but Paris has called to me for more than half my life.

On the other hand, years ago I was happy to go to Italy and I was especially looking forward to Venice. I was comfortable and enchanted and liked it...but one night in my sleep I sat stark upright screaming No, No, No. and my companion had to wake me. I may have been comfortable from a past life....because I was dreaming that Savanarola was after me and coming through the hotel door! (Hope the same doesn't happen to me in Paris, but you never know )

Hi Tondalaya,

I took my daughter to her first trip to Paris about five years ago, but now she has a lively four-year-old son and won't leave him. I'd love to travel with my son, but his wife has no interest in traveling to Europe and I don't know if he'll go without her. I know several couples like that -- one really wants to go and the other has no interest at all.

I enjoyed traveling with my daughter and hope we can do it again.

The following year I went to Paris with an old friend who also loves Paris but our interests were different. For example, we attended an evening concert in Ste Chapelle and she leaned over and said "We could do this cheaper at home." Kind of broke the spell for me. I've traveled solo since.

Frankly, when my children were little, I couldn't afford Paris. As a divorced mother, I couldn't afford to take them on vacations at all. Also, if you had time for a vacation you had to make the obligatory visit "back home" with family.

My daughter and I went to Paris last year. It was her first trip. We took a AZ trip a few years back. My son and I went to Montreal a few years ago. But it took, getting them educated, out of the house, and them earning their own money, for us to afford to travel.

In fact, my kids are the ONLY people I have really enjoyed traveling with and even then, there are moments when we disagree.

Luisah, I know what you mean, my husband loves France but not Paris or big cities, I love both so go alone to Paris. And as for friends, they don't always make good company. Paris has so much to offer that alone is never alone.

The question is Wht Paris? The answer is Why Not?

<<Paris has so much to offer that alone is never alone.>>

Cigalechanta, I love that!

I love Paris,but I also love other European cities too. In Spain I love Frigliana and Nerja, its all about the memories you have in your heart, that you just cant explain to anyone.

Why Paris? That was my question when my then-fiancee insisted on Paris for our honeymoon some 12 years ago, when all I wanted was a tropical beach.

But I was sold the minute we took our first jet-lagged walk from our hotel in the Marais (Pavillon de la Reine). Walking past buildings hundreds of years older than any I'd seen in my life, and looking in awe at a subterranean corner of the original foundation of the Louvre...criss-crossing the Seine, seeing the Eiffel Tower in the distance... checking out the bouquinistes and animaleries (sp? on both) on the banks of the Seine and on Quai de la Megisserie.

Watching the original Cape Fear (with Mitchum) in French that first night in our hotel room, with a Boujolais, some cheese and bread...waking to the sound of jackhammers the next morning and discovering to my amazement that my new bride slept better with jackhammers going than with silence!...and in so doing, creating our first Paris vacation ritual: my solo morning walk/pastry run (it has to be a chausson aux pomme for her(not aux pommes de terre as I blurted out one morning).

The joy of returning to Paris after a few days in the South, and entering our first Paris apartment...and having my bride cry because the apartment was fairly filthy... and then falling in love with the apartment (at the corner of rue Gregoire de Tours and rue de Buci), after a brief cleaning, flower run and opening the windows.

The Metro, the cemeteries, the constant history lesson in a working city, the slight grin of shopkeepers in response to our faltering attempts at French... my flop sweat at 3 star restaurant sommeliers suggesting a 3,000 franc bottle of wine to go with our meal (well, I remember it fondly now!)...getting lost somewhere near rue du Bac at 2:00 in the morning on our way back home from a brasserie, and not caring where we were.

I suppose it could have been so in any other city, but then again, no. Just a few reasons why Paris, and why I dream of our return (for what will be our 5th time, the last two with our kids). Thanks.

I love this thread. It's a pleasure to read so many positive comments.

Another testimonial to the charm of Paris:

<<...getting lost somewhere near rue du Bac at 2:00 in the morning on our way back home from a brasserie, and not caring where we were>>