I wanted to go to Paris since I was a little girl for my honeymoon but once I got there, I realized Paris wasn’t the best place to go for my first trip outside of the United States. I have been to 8 countries since then and have gotten considerably better at navigating foreign counties. I have lived in Iowa my entire life so no, I’m not used to seeing rats on a daily basis and no, I didn’t know what to expect once I got there versus what all of my research led me to believe the city would be like. So the following things listed are what happened to me on my honeymoon. I hope your honeymoon or vacation there goes better than mine but below are why I wouldn’t recommend honeymooning in Paris especially if it’s your first time overseas.

There are scammers at every possible tourist spot in town. They will do charming things like grab you and try and put a ten cent piece of string on your wrist and then demand money for this valuable piece of string or else they’ll be forced to kidnap you or your loved one. They will try and sell you very obviously cheap souvenirs you can get anywhere in town for better prices and better quality. If you try to avoid them, they will say nasty things to you- I was called an “American Dog” when my husband almost got grabbed for their string trick and I yelled at him to stay away from the scammers and this proceeded to make them call me that. I was also told not to be “cheap like Chinese” at multiple tourist spots. These people are there solely to take advantage of tourists-stay as far away from them as you can because I didn’t see any police around to stop them from doing anything worse than what I dealt with. Paris smells like dog pee. I hate to say it since I apparently am breaking some sort of secret rule that you can’t mention this to people who have never been there but that city smells rank. We went in the fall and it still stunk so I don’t want to know what it smells like in the middle of a hot summer and frankly I don’t want to know. The food isn’t that great unless you’re willing to spend an arm and a leg to get it. It’s not horrible by any means but I took French and was exposed to these seemingly delightful foods I’d be bombarded with once I got there and was hugely disappointed in what I ended up getting. I really just wanted a chocolate croissant while I was there after getting addicted to them in French class and I was only able to find one in the Starbucks across from the Moulin Rouge. There’s incredibly fancy restaurants there that will serve you excellent food but my husband and I didn’t go to any of these places so if you go the cheap route like us, expect to eat a lot of fresh but thin baguettes and flatbread pizza items that they’ll toast for you if you ask them to. We could have done better research on the restaurants I will admit but we shouldn’t have had to settle for quite so many flatbreads when the city is vast and has so many supposed options. Street cart crepes are delightful especially filled with Nutella. Load up on these if you’re having trouble finding real meals. The city is dirty. Yes, this probably contributes to the dog urine smell but don’t think this place is going to match the Disney versions what the city will look like once you’re there. It’s a working city that is also incredibly old. Think more of New York City in the 70’s before they did all of that work to clean the city up. I saw a rat run by me at full speed at the Eiffel tower. This rat was not precious nor an acclaimed chef like a certain movie would make you believe Paris rats all are. This one looked as big as my cat and would probably easily beat me up. The city apparently doesn’t sell deodorant. My charming husband didn’t pack any and after a solid day of doing nothing but walking everywhere we went, he started to smell very ripe so we searched every pharmacy we could find for deodorant and never found any. We tried the grocery stores that were within walking distance of our hotel. We simply knew of no other place to find the stuff in the city since the obvious options didn’t sell it. He only got stinkier and stinkier as the trip progressed Pack deodorant and pack lots of it.Nothing kills romance like 4 days old body odor especially body odor from 4 days of non stop walking. The men love tight pants there. I mean pants so tight they shouldn’t be worn in public.They like to pair these tight man pants with large leather boots that look like they should be worn by stylish elves. This is going to be a problem no matter where you go in Europe. They love them some tight man pants so be warned and be hopeful American men never reach European levels in pant tightness. The hotels are small and cramped. Our room wasn’t overly small by any means but was a tight space. We saw pictures of other hotels and read descriptions of what their rooms were like and we passed on a lot of them even though they were closer to attractions because of how small they were. You may end up sharing a bathroom with everyone in your hallway too. Read the small print of the hotel information or you’ll be spending your mornings waiting in line to shower. Perfume isn’t sold on every street corner or is as easy to find as at least I was told. I didn’t find a single perfumery even after walking a big chunk of the city. Again, I feel this was probably bad research on my end- I didn’t research it since I was told it wouldn’t be a difficult thing to find- so I’ll take the blame on that but I had trouble finding their famous perfumes so if you’re going there to buy some, the airport duty free shop might be your only option. The people aren’t as snobby or mean as they say but they are aloof especially to tourists. I understood this since their city is just flooded with people that clearly don’t belong there so I’d get sick of it too. They’re polite but they’re not going to be overly welcoming or go out their way to be nice. Don’t take it personally.They’re not overly nice to each other from what I observed. This was my first trip overseas and I found out very quickly reading about a place online and going there are two very different things. What the city turned out to be from my research felt vastly different from the city I ended up going to. Again, this list was based on my experience. I agree, I could have done better research but since I nor my husband had never been overseas before, I did as best as I could. I feel I did more research than most people did and I still didn’t feel like it did all that much to prepare me for what to actually expect once I got there. I also pointed out that we did this on the cheap since just flying there and our hotel room ate up a big chunk of the budget we had for the trip so we didn’t have the luxury of eating at the fancy restaurants I was able to find through my research. We had to make due with what we could afford and what we could actually find within such a tight budget. My only goal with this list was to help those who are on the fence about going or who may not have seen the information I am providing in their research since I certainly didn’t find it in my research. Finally, for the love of god, pack deodorant. For the love of all things holy, pack deodorant.