Smiling Parisians Show You Their City, For Free
I really really like this concept! Local volunteers show visitors around their city for free. It’s an effort by the city of Paris to show visitors that Parisians are not really rude and uncaring. They want to help visitors find the true Paris, not just the most visited tourist sites. I have always said that if I ever went to France, I didn’t want to go to Paris. I wanted to go into the countryside where the true heart of France and everything about it lives. I want to experience what local life is like for the people of the country outside of a big city like Paris. That is how I get to know the heart of an area. I think that’s why big cities have never interested me much because it’s only a portion of how a country’s residents live. Culture can be very different in a tourist mecca city like Paris versus other areas of France like Nice for instance.
Once the dollar is strong enough for us to afford being able to go to France, I would immediately sign up to take advantage of this Paris volunteer service.
