April 9, 2026
Paris is a cliché. I’m writing this from Paris, which I guess, makes me one too.
Michelle Pfeiffer is everywhere right now because of her new Paramount+ series The Madison. But she’s also the reason I’ve been thinking about a different role, her character Frances Price in French Exit, a 2020 film about a New York socialite who cashes out everything she has, books a one-way ticket to Paris, and essentially dares the city to absorb her. At one point, sitting on a bench with a friend, Frances says something that landed differently on a second watch: she knows she’s becoming a cliché. She just doesn’t care.
I understand that impulse completely. And I think most people who are drawn to Paris do too — even if they’d never say it out loud.
The Cliché Exists for a Reason
Paris has been drawing people in for centuries. Writers, painters, exiles, newlyweds, retirees finally taking the trip they promised themselves decades ago. The city keeps showing up in films, in books, in conversations about where someone would go if they could go anywhere. That doesn’t happen by accident.
A cliché, at its core, is something that became overused because it was true. The Seine at dusk. Café crème at a sidewalk table. A baguette tucked under someone’s arm on the way home. These images are clichés precisely because they’re real and because they keep delivering.
I’ve almost lost count of how many times I’ve been to Paris. The clichés still hold.
Where Most People Get Stuck
The problem isn’t going to Paris. The problem is staying at the surface of it.
A lot of first-timers arrive with a list: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre-Dame, a Seine cruise. Those things are on the list because they’re worth doing. But if that’s all a trip is, Paris stays a postcard. You see the outline of the city without ever getting inside it.
The version of Paris that makes people want to go back, the one that turns a first trip into a decades-long relationship, lives in the smaller details. The neighborhood you’re staying in and how it feels to walk out of your hotel every morning. The boulangerie two blocks away where the line moves fast and the croissants are still warm. The afternoon you didn’t plan for anything and ended up sitting somewhere for two hours because there was no reason to leave.
That version of Paris doesn’t show up on a checklist.
The Cliché Is the Starting Point, Not the Destination
This is what I try to help my clients understand before they go. Yes, you should see the Eiffel Tower. Yes, you should walk along the Seine. Yes, you should eat at a proper Parisian bistro and order the thing you’re not sure about. Do all of it. None of it is less meaningful because other people have done it too.
But the trip that stays with you, the one you’re still talking about five years from now, is built around more than that. It’s built around the right hotel in the right neighborhood for how you actually travel. A pace that lets you absorb the city instead of racing through it. Meals chosen because they’re good, not because they’re famous. Moments that weren’t engineered or filtered for Instagram.
Frances Price in French Exit went to Paris with nothing left to lose and found something anyway. Most of my clients arrive with considerably better circumstances and they still find something they weren’t expecting. That’s what Paris does when you give it room.
What Makes the Difference
I’m here, as I am every few months, because staying current is part of my job. I walk the neighborhoods I recommend. I eat in the restaurants I suggest to clients. I check in on the hotels I’ve been sending people to for years to make sure they’re still delivering.
What I’ve learned after 30 years of coming here is that the people who get the most out of Paris are the ones who arrive with the iconic experiences on their list and space for everything else. They’re not trying to see Paris in four days. They’re not skipping lunch to fit in one more museum. They’re here to be here.
The cliché brought them. The city does the rest.
If Paris is on your list and you want to make sure the trip is more than a postcard version of itself, I can help with that. A well-planned Paris trip doesn’t look like everyone else’s — it looks like yours.
Ready to start planning? Book a planning call here and let’s talk through what makes sense for you.
About the Author
Hello, I’m Jennifer Verville, founder of French Escapes Travel. I’ve been traveling to France for more than 30 years and visit a minimum of four times a year to stay current for my clients. I specialize in France, French Polynesia, and European travel, with deep expertise in Paris, river cruising, and food-forward itineraries.
