France outside the box - visits, excursions, events...

Proposals for private visitors & professional tour- or event-organizers

The main difference between our proposals and most others is that the latter are packaged and ours aren't. One reason: opening doors that only long-standing personal contacts allow. These "privileged entries" give travel a human dimension, which classic tourism rarely provides.

Other reasons for the difference: Please scroll down.

www.parisinfo.com

: Member, Office of Tourism

We go beyond postcard images...

•Version française : voir haut de page

•Special service:Interpreters - or troubleshooters?

: The Automobile Centenary

...presenting legendary Paris with imagination...

...and revealing the little-known

: Guidebooks mention this poetic place, omitting to state that one needs an entry code to go in. We have it - and have promised to guard it as jealously as the inhabitants do.

"Privileged Entries into France" (or PEF) is a non-profit organization dedicated

to showing French culture's depth, dynamism and (often) fraternity

We provide insiders' access to its legendary aspects: the worlds of elegance, cuisine and wines, art history, châteaux and landscaping. We give fresh views of Paris's famous monuments and explore celebrated neighborhoods - as well as places that guidebooks don't know. Our excursions combine the publicized and the private. Reflecting our roots as an artists' association, we obtain visits to galleries, private collections and artists' studios and produce soirées of most kinds of music, plus original shows through which performers look back to their heritage and renew it.

In another departure from classic tourism we delve into Paris as the starting-point of a series of revolutions, and explore the contributions of religious, ethnic and national minorities. We dispell the tendency to see France as a kind of museum, and present a country that is dynamic and infinitely diverse.

"Privileged entries" cannot be purchased

•The artist

: Private concert in a Parisian salon, lent because we have known the hosts for years.

Our members, who are often at the top of their professions, are motivated less by commerce than by sharing their knowledge or culture with a public with which they feel in harmony.

Another strength is presenting France's planet-shaking history...

: Nine Parisian revolutions suceeded in seizing power, and riots have been innumerable.

...reflecting the background of PEF's founder and coordinator, Catherine Loveland Aubin (Vassar BA, Harvard MA, Columbia PhD, all degrees in history). You will "take home" a grasp of the great themes and, perhaps, an awareness of how to decode the past as might a detective.

The excellent cost-quality ratio comes from our origins and experience

: One of our members drew this recollection.

Founded in 2002, PEF is the offspring or an earlier association. Beginning in 1985, we organized for our Parisian members and foreign visitors more than 800 visits, excursions, weekends and musical soirées, in Paris and elsewhere in France.

PEF reaches out to a wider public through a selection of these events, shown here. Our Parisians, they remain members, as these pages show...

We update our suggestions...

by following our artists, musicians and specialists, by seeking new talent and by continuing to explore a city where opening one door leads to discovering others.

To zoom into what's most practical, here are useful pages

•For more on our approach, please click here.

•If you organize for groups, here.

(Aside from performances, most activities work for private visitors and groups both.)

•The choice of bewing non-profit and our origins are described here ...

•How we differ from agencies (and work with them), here...

•Our network, here, here and here...

•Our fees here, with price examples here (Franco-Americans, we're well aware of the low dollar.)

Please take your time ...

The packaged does not require depth - going beyond it does. To let you know what to expect we have photographed and described several hundred suggestions (click on those that interest you).

Explaining our choices means describing France, a country that despite colossal pressures toward standardization is keeping its soul. We hope you will explore this mythical, vibrant and finally little-known culture - first of all, via this site.