The Single Girl Travel Guide: A Parisian Renaissance
When Beyonce announced her world tour on Juneteenth last year – I immediately began to devise a plan on how I could attend. I had never been to her concert before and felt major FOMO when her Coachella performance was released on Netflix – and with the delay of the visual elements for the Renaissance album I had an intuitive feeling that it would be a while until she toured again. Since this was the first time I was going to see her – I made the superfluous decision to purchase my concert ticket for her show in Paris!
I know it's a bit extreme to fly across the globe to see someone in concert – especially when they are planning to come to your city. However, you only live once and since my fathers’ passing, I’ve decided to do things that would create joyful memories and going to the Beyonce concert in the City of Lights would definitely be one. I waited for the pre-sale tickets to drop but I had trouble getting on the site, so I decided to wait for the general sale tickets and STILL had trouble securing seats! The difficulty of me trying to obtain tickets made me think that maybe it just wasn’t in the cards for me to see her in Paris and I should try to go to her show somewhere else. However, I told myself that I would follow through with the commitments I made to myself. They say that third time’s a charm and on the third try I was able to finally secure my tickets.
Now, I was ready to go by myself but I really wanted to experience something of this magnitude with someone else — which led me to reach out to my bestie Jamilah. She was immediately on board and I got us 2 well placed seats for the show. The thrill of receiving that confirmation email is what I suspect the high of cocaine to feel like. After the initial high began to dwindle down, I realized that I needed to actually get to Paris and at this point it didn’t matter if the plane tickets were outrageously expensive I had to get to Paris some way and somehow by May 26th.
I began pricing out flights and then soon realized that I had a bookoo amount of miles on my Citi Advantage Mastercard with American Airlines. When I say that I'm lucky I truly mean it. Like, the song Lucky Girl by Carlina was made specifically for me and is based on my life because I was able to purchase roundtrip tickets to Paris using only miles. Yep, you read that right! I purchased roundtrip tickets using MILES! I only had to pay the tax which came to about $90. Can we talk about perfect alignment! After tickets for both the concert and flight were secured, the next step was to secure lodging and it was a constant toss up between hotel or Airbnb. I love staying in a hotel on vacation because I like having the option of not having to make my own bed every morning, however, I felt that staying in a Parisian Airbnb would enhance our experience – so we secured a beautiful apartment in the 16th arrondissement area. The area was not only gorgeous but extremely secure, perfect for single ladies that were traveling to a new country. We had to get through 4 different gates before accessing our apartment and all of our neighbors were lovely.
Everything We Did in the City
The concert was magical. Beyonce put on an incredible show and her mellifluous voice had the entire audience in a trance. The visuals were incredible and quite literally out of this world. I sang my heart out and strained my voice as I belted every song on the set list. It was a moment I will never forget and will deeply cherish. I am still in awe that I took myself to Paris to see the Queen in concert – that’s a major flex in my opinion.
Outside of the concert we did all of the fun tourist activities too. We checked out the Eiffel tower and got to see it sparkle. We enjoyed a guided tour at the Louvre Museum and got a close look at the Mona Lisa and learned that it gained its global popularity after it was stolen in 1911. We also enjoyed an educational tour of the Palace of Versailles with our amazing tour guide Alex. He taught us about the history of the palace and the transition of power after the death and execution of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoniette. Additionally, we did a wine tasting and sampled some of the best wines I’ve ever had outside of the recent Single Girl Club wine tasting of course. And to end our vacation we treated ourselves to the Crazy Privilege Package at the historic cabaret house Crazy Horse. The package included champagne, priority seating, delicious hors d'oeuvres and dinner at the neighboring restaurant Ginger.
Places We Ate
The food in Paris was phenomenal! I didn’t have one bad meal while I was out there, not one! The first spot we checked out was the infamous Cafe Le Marly located right across from the Louvre Museum. We parked ourselves right in front of the museum’s pyramid and enjoyed a breakfast that included the best soft scrambled eggs I have ever had in my life, so far. We also enjoyed a a few cappuccinos, croissants, and people watched as we sipped our cappuccinos. It was the perfect welcome meal.
Later that night we went over to Perruche located on the rooftop of the Printemps Haussmann shopping plaza. My original plan was to go to the popular Italian spot, Pink Mamma but I couldn’t get a reservation and was suggested this alternative. It turns out they are sister restaurants. The food was amazing from start to finish. We started out with the Tuna carpaccio, arugula, basil oil, and tomatoes entree and ordered two different main courses to share. I ordered the Lamb Chops with candied eggplant and garlic cream and my friend ordered the Truffle Tagliatelles. Both dishes were incredibly flavorful but the Truffle Tagliatelles won best dish of the evening.
It had the perfect truffle to cream ratio, the pasta was perfectly al dente and the truffle shavings were absolute heaven. I am going to try to recreate that master piece in my kitchen at some point and put the recipe on my food blog Food Magic. For dessert — because we’re on vacation and dessert is a must after every meal — my friend and I shared a decadent chocolate mousse. I would highly recommend putting this spot on your must try list while in the city. It checked all of the boxes for me. Other notable mentions are African Lounge, Coco, Emporio Armani Caffé, Sadelle’s at Kith, Tomo, and Ginger. I go into more in depth reviews about the spots on my tiktok series Single in the City.
Paris was a dream come true and moments like these remind me of how lucky and blessed I really am because most of the women in my family have never had the opportunity to experience moments like these. A majority of them were living to survive and getting the opportunity to pick up and jet set across the world for a concert is a tremendous blessing that helps me realize that life doesn’t always have to be about survival but can and should include moments of joy and spontaneity. I have become addicted to collecting stamps in my passport and I’m looking forward to my next trip
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