ArcaMax

Forget the ubiquitous and delicious French macarons. "Parisians are very keen on eclairs now," said Edouard Morhange, as he ushers us into a shop called L'Atelier de L'eclair on the rue Bachaumont where all they sell are delectable eclairs -- strawberry, caramel, chocolate...

Morhange, who lives nearby and is on the board of the Paris Greeter (www.parisgreeters.fr) organization is touring us around this hip, foodie neighborhood close to where Les Halles market existed for generations until it was moved out of the city.

The Les Halles redevelopment project, he shows us, is under way, complete with green space, shops and a reorganized underground road and more functional train station. While the famous shopping mall under the Louvre's glass pyramid, he explains, is largely used by tourists, this "new heart of Paris" will be largely for locals.

We stop in The Church of St. Eustace at the beginning of rue Montorgueill, which was completed in 1637. Mozart held his mother's funeral here; Cardinal Richelieu was baptized here. Today, it's known for its fabulous acoustics -- they are getting ready for a concert as we stop in -- and the largest pipe organ in France (8,000 pipes) -- larger even than that at Notre Dame. But tourists rarely find this amazing place, Morhange tells us.

We're appropriately awed and thrilled to be seeing a bit of Paris tourists typically miss. The best part is it's not costing us a penny.

That's because 360 volunteer Paris Greeters offers some 3,000 free tours every year. There are also free Greeter tours in Versailles and Marseilles and about 30 other French cities. The French," concedes Morhange, an engaging 40-year-old marketing executive with two kids, "have a reputation of not welcoming tourists. ... We want to show that is not the case." Just sign up online (www.parisgreeters.fr).

Not going to be in Paris? Sign up for a tour with Greeter in the city you're going to be visiting this holiday season (www.globalgreeternetwork.info/). We had a great time in Lower Manhattan walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with Big Apple Greeter (www.bigapplegreeter.org), the first welcome visitor program in the United States that now shows some 7,000 visitors 114 of New York's neighborhoods.

Take a free tour everywhere from Toronto to Tel-Aviv, Munich to Moscow, London, Zurich, Berlin and Shanghai. In the United States, you'll also find Chicago Greeter (www.chicagogreeter.com) and Houston Greeters (www.houstongreeters.org).

Paris, a city of about 3 million, gets something like 20 million visitors a year. We saw that firsthand earlier in the day at the Musee D'Orsay -- a top tourist draw for their Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections -- with crowds lined up out the door in the rain. I was glad we had the Paris Pass (www.parispass.com) that allowed us to skip those lines!

"A lot of people want to interact with the tourists," explains Morhange. "They just don't know how." Paris Greeters is a way to facilitate that interaction. "It is interesting for the tourists to meet Parisians, adds Morhange, "just as it is interesting for the Parisians to meet the tourists."

...continued

(c) 2013 DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.