Never understood that thing. My only two negative experiences from my first trip to Paris were heavy traffic (but explainable for a big city, next time i just took the train from the airport and moved around by subway or walked), and poor water pressure in the hotel making it difficult to fill a bathtub.<p>Food was great (but i was a fan of French food long before - steak tartare being a main course rather than a starter it is outside France was a pleasant surprise!), and so were the museums.<p>Maybe a little bit more littered than desirable. Hotel rooms are small, but next time i just took a better hotel and was 100% fine, yes sure you pay 1000 EUR per night then but this is one of the world's more expensive cities, designed with density and walkability in mind - a liberal's dream, and it works in exactly that way, you can hardly anywhere get to more attractions simply on foot than there.<p>Strip clubs totally sucked though, and that was a major disappointment, but that wasn't on a first trip.
There is some more interesting stuff from the Talk page:<p>The article is reliably sourced, see the Bibliography section. Paris is sold as the most beautiful and romantic city despite being regularly ranked as one of the rudest to tourists, and East Asia buys into those claims hard. Take culture shock (which is already stronger going between East and West), crank it up to eleven, throw in:<p>a sense of powerlessness from none of your preparations being the least bit useful (Parisians hate it when you speak English)<p>a creeping sense of paranoia (Parisians hate tourists)<p>a growing sense of disgust at completely unfamiliar food (many Asians turn their nose at cheese that isn't American or this sweet milk-jelly stuff I thought was supposed to be
a non-dairy creme substitute, think that western style bread is all like Sponge cakes or croissants, and are often raised with assumed culinary theories that conflict on points with western cuisine)<p>discovering that everything about your greatest lifelong dream is a complete lie made up to take your hard earned money<p>knowing that when you get home you'll be told that your experience must be wrong, you must have done something wrong, and your trauma can't possibly be real because Paris is magical and wonderful and nothing bad ever happens there
Is what this article describes really that much of a wonder?<p>I'm in China, and even here plenty of restaurants and especially cafes and pastry shops try to attempt whatever unbelievable connection to Paris they can. Some of my students think less of me because I (a westerner) not only have never been to Paris, but recommend that they visit London, Munich, or Rome instead. Yet when some of my students came back from France over summer break, you could see a confused, frustrated, and disappointed conflict in their eyes as they tried to reconcile what everyone else told about Paris (which must be true!) with what happened to them (which must be a mistake!). Ian.thomson (talk) 04:11, 28 October 2016 (UTC)