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A 39-Year-Old Man’s Guide to Fast Cars, Big Games, Great Food and Paris Without the Boring Couple Stuff

Coffee at Nine. Ferrari by Noon. Basketball After Dark.

Paris is not boring.
You were boring in Paris.
There—I said it.

I keep hearing men return from a honeymoon or couples’ vacation complaining that Paris was crowded, overpriced and not nearly as exciting as everyone promised.

Then I ask what they did.

They stood in front of the Eiffel Tower while their significant other took 47 photographs of them pretending not to notice the Eiffel Tower.

They boarded a riverboat with 200 other couples, floated past some buildings and took another 47 photographs—this time with slightly windier hair.

They dragged themselves through a museum the size of a small nation until their feet hurt, their phone battery died and every painting began to look like “the one with the sad European people.”

Then they paid too much for coffee at a trendy café with a view of the Eiffel Tower, only to discover that the view was being blocked by tourists fighting over the best selfie table.

One couple stands up. Three couples attack.

Nobody even wants the coffee. They want photographic evidence that they drank coffee near a tower.

By the third day, the man is exhausted. His partner is annoyed. They have spent half the vacation asking strangers to take their picture and the other half studying those pictures to determine whether they need to be taken again.

Then he comes home and says Paris was boring.

My brother, Paris wasn’t boring.You turned one of the greatest cities in the world into a five-day engagement shoot.

I am 39 years old. I am too old to spend an entire vacation waiting for strangers to move out of my camera frame, but still young enough to believe I can handle a Ferrari if somebody gives me three laps and very good insurance.

My Paris begins with an espresso strong enough to reorganize my personality.

By noon, I want both hands on the steering wheel of a supercar at a racetrack outside the city. That evening, I want a good jacket, a serious dinner and thousands of basketball fans screaming inside an arena.

The next night, give me two dancers trying to humiliate each other through rhythm, athleticism and moves my lower back has formally prohibited.

I want vintage cars. I want street food. I want a neighborhood bar without a laminated photograph of the Eiffel Tower on the menu. I want to buy one great piece of clothing, meet people I will never see again and return home with at least one story that cannot be summarized with, “Then we took another selfie.

”Paris has fast cars, professional basketball, breaking battles, skateboarding, nightlife, menswear, music and food worth missing a flight for.

You just have to stop visiting it like somebody’s exhausted Instagram husband.Five days. One great city. Zero matching berets.

Let’s have a damn good time.

DAY ONE

ARRIVE LIKE YOU HAVE BEEN SOMEWHERE BEFORE

The first mistake couples make in Paris is trying to accomplish romance immediately.

They land after an overnight flight, fight with their luggage, check into a room approximately the size of a walk-in closet and then rush directly toward the Eiffel Tower because apparently love expires at sunset.

Calm down.

The tower has been standing since 1889. It can wait until after you shower.

Choose a hotel in a neighborhood that gives you something to do the moment you walk outside. Le Marais puts menswear, galleries, restaurants and nightlife within reach. Saint-Germain offers old cafés and polished streets. Pigalle gives you music, bars and a little danger—or at least enough neon to make your photographs suggest danger.

Book the smallest room you can tolerate in the best location you can afford. Unless the room has a racetrack or basketball court inside it, you did not fly to Paris to remain there.

After checking in, walk.

Do not immediately open a list titled “The 19 Things You Must Do in Paris Before You Die.” That title sounds less like a vacation guide and more like a threat.
Find a café without a line around the corner. Stand at the counter. Order something simple. Watch the city. Notice how the best-dressed man in the room may be wearing an old navy jacket, dark trousers and shoes that have clearly lived a more interesting life than you have.

For dinner, stay away from restaurants where every table is holding its phone in the air. Find a room filled with conversation. Ask what the restaurant does best. Order that.

End the night at a hotel bar or neighborhood cocktail spot where you can hear yourself think. Have one great drink instead of six forgettable ones.

At 39, I no longer need to prove that I can stay out until sunrise.

I need to prove that I can wake up without requiring medical assistance.

DAY TWO

EAT WELL. DRESS BETTER.

Paris does not require a man to be rich.

It requires him to pay attention.

Start with coffee, bread and absolutely no guilt about carbohydrates. You will walk approximately 40,000 miles before dinner.

Then go shopping—but not the frantic, logo-hunting kind.

Visit an independent menswear store. Try on the jacket you would normally walk past. Test a fragrance that does not have a celebrity’s face attached to it. Search vintage stores for an old military coat, silk scarf, watch or pair of sunglasses that makes you look slightly more mysterious than your employment history suggests.
The objective is not to return home with a suitcase full of French labels.

Find one thing that will remind you of the trip every time you wear it.

That is style. The logo is just the receipt talking.
Spend part of the afternoon in a museum, but stop behaving as though you must personally inspect every object France has acquired since the Roman Empire.
Choose one section. Pick one period. Find three works you genuinely want to see.

Then leave.

There is no medal for completing the Louvre while dehydrated.

If you have ever followed a exhausted crowd through 37 galleries just to glimpse the Mona Lisa over a forest of raised phones, you already understand that museums can become tiring when approached like warehouse inventory.

Art should make you feel something.
“Where is the nearest chair?” should not be the only emotion.

DAY THREE

TRADE THE MÉTRO FOR A FERRARI

Today, subtlety can take the afternoon off.

Outside the city, Circuit Jean-Pierre Beltoise offers driving experiences in machines normally encountered behind velvet ropes. Depending on the available program, you may find yourself sitting inside a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche or open-wheel race car.This is the moment your Paris vacation stops looking like everybody else’s.

Listen to the instructor. Adjust your seat. Tighten your helmet. Try not to mention how many years you have been driving. Your daily commute has not prepared you for a Ferrari any more than watching Top Gun prepared you to land on an aircraft carrier.

Then the signal comes.You hit the accelerator.The engine explodes behind you, the first corner begins approaching at an unreasonable rate and every concern you brought from home suddenly becomes much less important.The first lap is nerves. During the second, your hands begin to relax. By the third, you are Lewis Hamilton—at least until the instructor calmly explains that you missed another braking point.

When the session ends, your hair will be destroyed and your version of events will already be improving.

Return to Paris, shower and put on the best thing you packed. Tonight requires steak, red wine and a table large enough to accommodate the hand gestures you will use while explaining how fast you were going.

If your travel dates align with an event, the historic Linas-Montlhéry Autodrome adds another level of automotive culture. The venue hosts gatherings devoted to classic, Italian, German, Japanese and performance cars.

This is where grown men stare into engine compartments with the emotional intensity normally reserved for the birth of a child.

For serious racing fans, build an overnight extension around the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Some of the greatest manufacturers in the world compete through daylight, darkness, exhaustion and mechanical punishment.Your friends took a riverboat.

You went to Le Mans.There will be no need to compare photographs.

DAY FOUR

ART BY DAY. BASKETBALL AFTER DARK.

Keep the morning slow. Your nervous system has earned it.

Have a late breakfast. Walk beside the Seine. Visit a record shop, gallery or neighborhood market. Stop treating every hour as a productivity contest.

Then get ready for an entirely different Paris.

Paris Basketball competes in France’s top professional league and in the EuroLeague, where many of Europe’s strongest clubs meet. Home games are generally played at Adidas Arena, with selected events moving to the larger Accor Arena.

Do not expect an NBA game translated into French.

European basketball has its own personality. Supporters chant together. Drums pound. The crowd remains emotionally invested while American fans would ordinarily be checking fantasy statistics or ordering another plate of nachos.

The court is familiar.

The atmosphere is not.

On the right night, Paris could be facing a European powerhouse such as Real Madrid, Olympiacos or Fenerbahçe.

Arrive early. Watch the arena fill. Learn one chant, even if your pronunciation causes an international incident. Buy something questionable from the concession stand. Allow yourself to care deeply about players whose names you learned during warmups.

That is one of travel’s greatest pleasures: becoming emotionally invested in something that meant nothing to you two hours earlier.

Check the official Paris Basketball schedule and ticket page before finalizing your travel dates.

After the game, find a late dinner or neighborhood bar. Let the adrenaline wear off naturally.

You came to Paris for culture.

Nobody said culture had to whisper.

WHEN THE DANCE FLOOR BECOMES A BOXING RING

If a major breaking or freestyle competition is happening during your visit, rearrange your itinerary.

Cancel the table with the tower view.

The tower will survive.

Events such as Battle Pro and the Fusion Concept Festival bring international dancers together in breaking, popping, krump, litefeet and other freestyle disciplines.

No one throws a punch, but do not confuse this with a polite dance recital.

One dancer enters the circle and makes a statement. The opponent answers. The music is unpredictable. The crowd applies pressure. Every move must demonstrate control, personality, technique and nerve.

The best competitors do not merely outperform their opponents.

They make them appear to have chosen the wrong evening to leave home.

Battle Pro transforms the Théâtre du Châtelet into an international breaking arena. Fusion Concept brings its hip-hop freestyle competition to the Cirque d’Hiver, combining battles with DJs, workshops and performances.

The buildings may be historic.The energy is happening right now.A rap battle can also be worth exploring if you speak enough French to understand the insults. Otherwise, you may spend the night enthusiastically cheering for a man who has just said something unforgivable about another man’s grandmother.Dance requires no translation.You know when someone has been destroyed.

ROLAND-GARROS WITHOUT A TENNIS RACKET

Paris also knows how to place a young sport inside an old institution and improve them both.

Street League Skateboarding brings elite street skaters to Roland-Garros, transforming the famous tennis venue into a stage for speed, risk and technical precision.

There is something beautifully disrespectful about watching skateboarders attack stairs and rails inside a place normally associated with tennis whites and controlled applause.

A missed landing echoes through the stadium.

A successful trick detonates the crowd.

You do not need to know every trick’s name. Gravity will explain the degree of difficulty.

And unlike the man who spent two hours waiting for an unobstructed Eiffel Tower selfie, you will have witnessed something that actually moved.

DAY FIVE

DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING—BEAUTIFULLY

By the fifth day, panic sets in.

You begin looking at maps and realizing how much of Paris you have not seen. Suddenly, you want to visit twelve monuments, four markets, three museums and a bakery somebody recommended in a video recorded three years ago.

Stop.

This is how vacations become unpaid internships.

Wake up without an alarm. Return to the café where the server now almost recognizes you. Walk through a market. Sit beside the Seine. Buy a magazine, even if your French is limited to menu items and words you learned from action movies.

Order lunch and allow it to become the afternoon.

Put your phone away long enough for boredom to turn into observation.

Watch an older man carry flowers through traffic. Watch two friends stretch one espresso into a 90-minute conversation. Watch a sharply dressed woman walk a dog that appears to own several apartment buildings.

Paris is theatrical even when nothing is happening.

If you still need competition, find a casual game of pétanque. Accept that the rules are more strategic than they appear. Prepare to be humiliated by a 72-year-old Frenchman wearing loafers.

He will defeat you, retrieve his metal balls and return to his conversation without acknowledging that you ever existed.

It will be magnificent.

THE REAL LUXURY

The best Paris vacation is not determined by how much money you spend.

It is determined by contrast.

Coffee at a counter and champagne under a chandelier.

A quiet gallery followed by a roaring basketball arena.

A perfectly fitted jacket worn inside a violently fast car.

An afternoon with no plan followed by a night you could never have planned.

Choose one or two experiences worthy of a splurge. Allow the rest of the city to entertain you through walking, watching, eating and paying attention.

You do not need the largest hotel room.

You do not need every famous restaurant.

You do not need 600 photographs proving you stood in front of something.

You need one meal you continue talking about. One night when the crowd became louder than your thoughts. One item of clothing that improves with age. One moment behind the wheel when the engine opened up and every ordinary concern in your life was left several corners behind.

Take a photograph in front of the Eiffel Tower if you want.

Take two.

Just do not return home claiming Paris was boring because you spent the entire trip trying to fit a 1,083-foot tower into a six-inch phone.

Paris was never the problem.

You just needed a better plan.

Coffee at nine.

Ferrari by noon.

Basketball after dark.

And tomorrow?

Paris will think of something.