Free Guided Tour Anyone?

If you saw the Birmingham News this morning (and why would you have?), the Travel section featured two articles about Paris. One was a pretty lame article about how to save money in Paris (sample useless tip: time your visit to include the first Sunday of the month when the Louvre has free admission).

Much more interesting was an article by the same author, Gaelle Faure, about a relatively new initiative called Paris Greeters. This is a volunteer organization that recruits Parisians to take people on a two or three hour visit to their favorite parts of Paris. The volunteers can take up to six people at a time and the best part is that they don't charge a single centime for the service. In fact they aren't even allowed to accept tips.

Here's a link to the English language version of the paris greeters website.

Here's a link to the story that ran in the paper today.

This sounds kind of fun to me, but bear in mind that this is not the same thing as taking a tour with a professional tour guide. The last time Teri and I took a free walking tour we were in York, England. Our guide on that rainy day was a sweet little old lady who was as boring as she was enthusiastic about her town.

So, what do you think? Who would like to try this out on one of our days in the City of Lights? If you think you'd like to do this, post a comment or pop me an e-mail, and I'll try to set it up for the folks who are interested.