Paris, je t'aime
Falling in love with Paris is easy. Legions of starry-eyed tourists return from the city on the Seine every year with dozens of photos, suitcases full of souvenirs and rapturous tales of sipping kir royales in sidewalk cafés. Yet few people are so thoroughly smitten after their first visit that they come home and announce to friends and family they’re quitting their jobs, packing up and moving there.
Meet Karen Henrich.
I was one of many who tried valiantly but vainly to talk Henrich out of her life-altering decision in the fall of 2004. She and I knew each other professionally — she ran her own PR firm and I was a reporter for the Vancouver Sun — but I was one of the first people she called after her fateful first trip because she knew I had lived and worked in Paris. If she was looking for reassurance that she was doing the right thing, though, she called the wrong person.
Frankly, I thought she was crazy. Over lunch, Henrich sketched out her idea for a Paris tour company geared to female travellers. She even had a name, Nuit Blanche Tours, taken from the French expression for an evening of revelry that turns into a “white night,” meaning it lasts so long that you get home as the sun comes up. I was even less encouraged when I learned this brainstorm took place after she and her female travelling companion had spent just such a night in Paris.
I tried every argument I could think of to dissuade Henrich. Her rusty high school French was an obvious hurdle, but I also warned her about the evils of French bureaucracy, the high cost of living, the minuscule size of most Paris apartments and the prevalence of dog poo on the sidewalks. Surely, a smart woman like Henrich would come to her senses.
Making the move to Paris
That just goes to show how little I knew her back then. Within six months, she’d shut down her PR business, rented out her Vancouver apartment and landed back in Paris, ready to turn her revelation into reality. And four years later, my 49-year-old friend is still there, worrying not about how she’s going to make ends meet but about how to keep all her boules in the air while her business grows by leaps and bounds.
If anyone can pull that off, I now know, it’s Henrich. And even I have to admit she started with a great idea, offering customized tours focused on what most women want to do in Paris — shop, eat, drink and absorb the city’s rich history and beauty. “I have been looking for somebody like me in every city I ever travelled to,” Henrich says. By which she means an insider who can take travellers by the hand and help them discover things they likely won’t read about in guidebooks — from how to find a great bistro free of swarming tourists to where to buy a fabulous five-euro scarf.
She’ll do everything from showing first-time visitors how to navigate a French menu and get around on the metro to organizing guided museum tours for them; she’s game for whatever her clients — mostly women, but some couples or groups — have in mind.
Where you won’t find her is at the front of a mob of tourists queuing for tickets to go up the Eiffel Tower. And she doesn’t usually offer tours in July and August, when the city is overrun. “We’re about small, customized tours and helping people get to know the city on an intimate level,” Henrich says.
