Savoir Flair!: 211 Tips for Enjoying France and the French

Which words of French unlock a warm welcome? What should you expect in French hotels? Taxis? In café restrooms? What is the code for getting great customer service? What is all the fuss about food and French restaurants? Do you know how to charm French waiters? How to entertain business contacts? How to intrigue French women and French men? France has had 2000 years of being different. Some love it and come home with stars in their eyes. Others return frustrated and vengeful, complaining. Too many monuments. Too many stairs. Too many rude people who don't speak English.The purpose of Savoir-Flair is to put those stars in your eyes.To give you confidence that the French are wonderful. That they'll be wonderful to you.. That they've made a wonderful country. You'll be dazzled at the unexpected and laugh at the misunderstandings. You'll love the French.

Savoir-Flair is about being in the French sense: knowing how and knowing where. Think of France as a new game, with rules that you need to know, just the same as if you wanted to learn how to play tennis or chess. It's about Frenchness, about being comfortable with a few words of the language, about Paris and Parisians, and about waiters, women, getting information, dogs, bathrooms and driving in rural France. Travelers tell their tales of generous French help and the automatic French response: "It's nothing. Ç'est normal!"

Savoir Flair's 211 Tips for Enjoying France and the French are for foreigners who are curious about the solutions of a very old culture that has given us Pasteur and the movies, Degas and the Concorde, Versailles and Yves Saint Laurent, Chartres, champagne and Brigitte Bardot, credit cards with chips.... not to mention great chefs, and Mont Saint-Michel. "We''ll always have Paris."

Join Polly Platt for a romp through the Paris you're looking for, and la France profonde (rural, "deep" France).