I have been running food and wine groups through France for twelve years, and before that I cooked a stage in Lyon under a chef who terrified me and taught me more in six months than culinary school did in two years. France is the country I come back to most.
It is also where I watch the most preventable disappointments unfold. Most people who come home a little flat from France did not have a bad trip. They had a trip that ran into ten small things that nobody warned them about.
Here is the conversation I would have with you before you got on the plane.
1. Where You Sleep Decides Almost Everything
In Paris, the arrondissement matters more than the hotel. The city has twenty of them, numbered in a spiral from the center, and they are not interchangeable. The 1st, 4th, 6th, and 7th put you in walking distance of almost everything you came to see, with the Métro at the corner. The 3rd and the Marais run a close second and the food is better. The 2nd works.
Stay outside that core to save money and you will pay it back in commute time by day four. Avoid the streets directly around Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est unless you are catching a 6am train. Useful for departures. Grim for everything else.
In Lyon, sleep in Vieux-Lyon or the Presqu’île. In Bordeaux, inside the historic center. In Provence, a village rental beats a hotel every time. More on that below.
2. Pack Light. France Has Pharmacies and Washing Machines.
Monoprix is in every city center. Pharmacies are on every third corner. Anything you forget gets replaced in twenty minutes. Most rentals and hotels have laundry. Pack for five days and wash mid-trip. Done.
Two things people underpack. Layers, because evenings in Paris are cool in June and Normandy is weather of its own choosing. And shoes that handle pavés, the irregular stone streets of Montmartre, the Marais, and Saint-Germain. The pavés are romantic in photos and brutal on a roller bag.
One more thing. The Métro is deep, the corridors are long, and a lot of stations have no escalator. You will carry your bag up stairs. Plan accordingly. Carry-on and a day bag is the move.
3. The Things to Book Before You Leave Home
Versailles runs on timed entry. Book on chateauversailles.fr and you walk in. Skip it and you queue ninety minutes in the sun before the door.
The Eiffel Tower summit sells out weeks ahead in season. Book on toureiffel.paris.
The Louvre takes timed entry now. Book it.
The Loire châteaux, Chambord, Chenonceau, and Villandry, are fine without reservations in shoulder season but the summer queue is real.
Restaurants matter more in France than they do almost anywhere. Anywhere with a Michelin star books out four to six weeks ahead. A place with a serious neighborhood reputation books out one to two. Use La Fourchette or the restaurant’s own site. Book the table the same day you book the flight.
4. Plan Where You Will Eat Lunch Too
The French do not really do sad tourist lunches, but you will eat one if you wing it. The brasserie on the corner of the Louvre with the laminated menu in five languages is not where you want to be sitting at 1pm. Ten minutes the night before keeps that from happening.
Restaurant, brasserie, bistro. Worth knowing the difference. A restaurant runs proper service hours and a full menu. A brasserie serves continuously and is your friend at 3pm when the kitchens are closed. A bistro sits between them, usually relaxed, often the best value in town.
The trick that still works after twenty years. Walk two streets back from the cathedral or the museum. The place with the chalkboard menu, three regulars at the bar, no English signage. That is the lunch.
5. Order the Formule
Most French restaurants offer a fixed-price lunch menu, the formule or menu du jour, for 16 to 25 euros. Starter and main, or main and dessert. Same kitchen as dinner, same ingredients, half the price. The French eat this way on weekdays. So should you.
A few terms worth recognizing on the chalkboard. Maison means made in house. Fait maison is the same thing, now legally regulated. Ardoise means specials on a chalkboard, which usually means seasonal. Selon arrivage means whatever came from the market that morning, which is a good sign and a prompt to ask the price before you commit.
Ask your hotel or your gîte host where they eat. Not where they send the guests. Where they go on their day off. That answer almost always lands you somewhere worth your time.
6. Skip the Car in Paris. Take It Everywhere Else.
In Paris, do not rent a car. The traffic is dense, parking is impossible, and the Périphérique has a learning curve that does not reward visitors. The Métro is one of the great urban transit systems in the world and Paris is fundamentally a walking city.
Between cities, take the train. France has the best high-speed rail in Europe. Paris to Lyon is two hours. Paris to Bordeaux is just over two. Paris to Marseille is three and a quarter. Book on sncf-connect.com and book early. The TGV is comfortable, scenic, and cheaper than flying once you add the airport time.
In the countryside, rent a car. Provence, the Dordogne, Burgundy, the Loire. These places either cannot be reached by public transport or punish you for trying. A car is what turns the rural part of a French trip into the rural part of a French trip.
You stop at the vineyard with the open gate. You take the small road because the light is doing something. You buy a melon from the woman selling them out of the back of a Peugeot.
7. Priorité à Droite Will Catch You
The rule the rental companies mention once and never again. At unmarked intersections in French villages, vehicles coming from your right have priority over you, even if you appear to be on the main road and they are emerging from an alley behind a hedge. No stop sign. No yield. You give way to the right unless a sign tells you otherwise.
This contradicts the instinct of drivers from countries where road size decides right of way. On the autoroute it does not apply. The moment you turn off into a Provençal village or a Burgundian market town, it does. The locals know it. They will drive into the intersection assuming you know it too.
Roundabouts. Cars already on the roundabout have priority. Yield before you enter.
Speed cameras are everywhere. The tolerance is narrow, around 5 km/h. Fines follow you home through the rental company. Stay at 130 on the motorway and 50 in towns and you will not have a problem.
8. August Is Complicated
France goes on vacation in August. Parisians leave Paris. Family restaurants close for three weeks with Fermé pour congés annuels handwritten on the door. The tourists arrive in force the same week, which gives August in Paris a hollow quality. The buildings are still there. The city that fills them is not.
The south is the inverse. Provence, the Côte d’Azur, the Dordogne are alive in August. Packed, expensive, alive. If you are going there in summer, book everything months ahead and accept the crowds.
July 14th is Bastille Day and is worth planning around, not avoiding. Fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, parades on the Champs-Élysées, free concerts. The country shows up for it.
The best months for most of France are late April through June and September through October. The light in September is the one I would choose if I could only pick one month a year. The vendemmia is happening in Burgundy and Champagne, the tourist volume drops, and the temperature is exactly right.
9. Sundays Catch More People Than August Does
August is the thing everyone warns about. Sundays are the thing that actually trips people up, because they happen every week.
On Sundays in France, most supermarkets close by noon or do not open. Bakeries shut after the morning rush. A lot of the neighborhood restaurants you wanted to try are dark. In smaller towns across Provence, Burgundy, and the Loire, Sunday afternoon is quiet in a way that surprises people who were not expecting it.
Saturday is your logistics day. Buy what you need, including wine. Then approach Sunday the way the French do. The morning market that packs up by 1pm. The long lunch that goes until 4. The walk afterward with nowhere to be. Done right, Sunday is the best day of the trip.
10. Say Bonjour Before You Say Anything Else
The single highest-leverage move in France costs nothing.
Walk into a shop, a café, a pharmacy, a boulangerie. Make eye contact with whoever is behind the counter. Say bonjour. After 6pm or so, bonsoir. Then ask your question.
In French culture, walking up to someone and immediately asking for something without greeting them first is rude. Not slightly informal, not a quirk. Rude. The American habit of opening with “Hi, do you have…” reads to a French shopkeeper the way it would read to you if a stranger walked up and asked for your phone without greeting you first.
Once you understand that, the “the French are cold” reputation collapses. The travelers who report unfriendly France almost always skipped the bonjour. The ones who report the warmest country of their lives always remembered it.
Add merci on the way out, s’il vous plaît when you ask for something, and excusez-moi before you interrupt anyone. Four words. They will open every door in the country.
11. The Kitchen Closes. The Kitchen Means It.
French kitchens serve lunch from 12 to 14 and dinner from 19:30 to about 22. The stops are hard. Arrive at 14:20 and the kitchen is closed. The server will be polite about it. From their point of view you simply came at the wrong time.
Plan the day around the meal, not the other way around. If your watch hits 13:30 in a museum, wrap up and go eat. Do not tell yourself you will grab something later. Later is a granola bar on a stone bench.
Brasseries serve continuously through the afternoon. That is most of why they exist. A brasserie at 3pm is a normal and pleasant place to be.
Smaller-town restaurants often close all day Sunday evening and sometimes Monday and Tuesday too. Look before you walk twenty minutes to find a locked door.
12. Entrée Is the Starter, Not the Main
This catches new visitors at the table. In a French menu the order is entrée, plat, fromage, dessert, café. Entrée is the starter. Plat is the main. Say yes to the cheese course when offered. The fromage at a real French meal is the meal.
The formule covers entrée and plat or plat and dessert for the price I mentioned earlier. Order it without hesitation.
13. Tipping Is Not What You Think
Service is included in every French restaurant bill by law. Your server is paid a real wage. The price on the menu is the price you pay.
Leaving a few coins after a coffee is fine. After a casual lunch, one or two euros per person in cash is generous. After a good dinner where the service mattered, 5 to 10 percent in cash is exceptional. At a special-occasion restaurant, 10 percent is remembered.
Tipping by card is not really a thing here and a lot of card machines have no clean way to do it. Leave the cash on the table. And do not feel guilty about not running the percentage. That is not how restaurant culture works.
14. The Reseller Tickets Are a Tax on Not Reading the URL
Google “Eiffel Tower tickets” or “Louvre tickets” and the first results are resellers. They outrank the real site because they spend more on ads. They sell the same timed-entry ticket the official site sells for double or triple the price.
Real prices versus what the resellers charge.
- Eiffel Tower summit, around 32 euros. Resellers want 55 to 80.
- Versailles, 21 euros. Resellers want 45 to 65.
- The Louvre, 22 euros. Resellers want 40 to 60.
- Giverny, 12 euros. Resellers want 25 to 40.
The “skip the line priority access” they sell is the exact same timed-entry slot the real site sells. There is no separate lane. Book direct. Toureiffel.paris, chateauversailles.fr, louvre.fr, fondation-monet.com. If a site is charging more than double face value, close the tab.
15. Pickpockets in Paris Are Organized, Not Random
Paris is a safe city. Most trips pass with nothing happening. There are also professional pickpocket crews working the major tourist sites who are good enough that most people do not notice until two hours later. Awareness costs nothing.
The high-risk zones are predictable. Métro Line 1, which runs straight through every monument from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. The steps of Sacré-Cœur. The Champs-Élysées. The area immediately under the Eiffel Tower. The arrivals hall at Gare du Nord.
The methods are consistent. Engineered crowd crush on escalators. The clipboard petition where someone pushes the board into your chest while a partner reaches into your bag. Grab and run on a Métro platform right as the doors close. The bracelet scam outside Sacré-Cœur where someone ties a string on your wrist and demands money.
What actually works. Front pocket for your phone, never back. Never leave it on a café table. Crossbody bag worn across the front in busy areas, not over the shoulder with the zip facing behind you. One card and emergency cash kept separate from your main wallet, ideally in an inside pocket. Eyes up when someone bumps you or creates any kind of distraction.
Do those things and you are a hard target. Then relax. Paris is enormous and full of people who will help you when you need it.
16. The Pharmacy Is Your First Stop for Anything Minor
The illuminated green cross on every other corner. French pharmacists complete six years of university training and are legally authorized to assess minor conditions and recommend treatments. In tourist areas the English is usually good enough for a real conversation.
A stomach bug, a UTI, a skin reaction, a sprained ankle, a stubborn headache, a bad sunburn. The pharmacy is the first stop. They look at you, recommend the product, you are back out the door in fifteen minutes. No appointment, no fee for the consultation, no insurance form to find.
Also worth knowing. French pharmacies stock products that cost three times as much at home. Avène and La Roche-Posay are pharmacy brands here, priced at half the American number. Homéoplasmine, the cult French lip balm and skin salve, runs about 4 euros and is worth buying enough for the next three years.
Embryolisse Lait-Crème Concentré is the moisturizer the makeup artists use backstage at Paris Fashion Week and costs 18 euros. One pharmacy in each neighborhood stays open on a rotating basis for Sundays and nights. The closed pharmacy nearest you posts the address of the open one in its window.
17. The Drives That Are Worth Renting a Car For
The Gorges du Verdon in Provence. A canyon with a road along the rim that gives you the kind of view people drive the Amalfi Coast hoping for, with manageable roads, room to pass, and no tour buses on the wrong side of the line.
The Route des Grands Crus in Burgundy. The wine road that runs from Dijon down through Gevrey-Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaune, Pommard, and Volnay. Some of the most expensive dirt on earth, walls of stone separating one Grand Cru from another, and tasting rooms in towns smaller than the parking lot of a Costco.
Visit Domaine Faiveley or Bouchard Père & Fils if they will take you. Lunch at Ma Cuisine in Beaune.
The villages of the Luberon in Provence. Gordes, Ménerbes, Roussillon, Lacoste, Bonnieux, Lourmarin. A car gets you a different one every morning and a long lunch under a plane tree in whichever piazza appears first.
The Dordogne. The river, the cliff villages, Sarlat on a Saturday morning when the market fills the medieval streets and the duck producers set up the stalls. Eat foie gras and confit at a producer’s farm restaurant. Drink Cahors with it.
18. The Part That Matters
France has a reputation for being hard to crack. Some of that is earned. The language, the customs, the quiet expectation that you will meet the country halfway and not the other way around.
The country opens up when you show up curious and a little prepared. Learn the four words. Walk into the shop and greet the person behind the counter first. Thank the waiter. Order the formule. Linger over the meal because in France the table is yours until you ask for the check. Nobody is turning it for the next seating.
Do those things and something shifts. The service warms up. Strangers help you. The country shows you more of itself than it shows the people who never bothered.
The best trip to France is not the one with the longest itinerary. It is the one where you planned enough that you could slow down. The bread, the light at 6pm, the particular pleasure of a country that takes its own culture seriously and does not apologize for it.
Go.
