Small Group Trip Recap: The Paris Pivot (2024)
A slow travel experience,
designed to engage your mind and rejuvenate your soul.
THE PARIS PIVOT: 7 DAYS | 8 NIGHTS IN PARIS: SEPTEMBER 21-28, 2024
A week-long slow travel experience where travelers immersed themselves in the City of Light. They discovered Paris, rekindled their own spark, and designed their next chapter.
THE PARIS PIVOT
This week was filled with beautiful Parisian neighborhoods, as guests walked in the footsteps of some of the most renowned artists and creatives in French history, and experienced the local side of Paris.
Travelers day-tripped to Claude Monet’s house & gardens, sipped champagne in the centuries-old champagne caves, and cruised along the Seine. All with the time and space to reconnect with themselves and envisioned their next chapter through life & career design conversations.
2024 TRIP HIGHLIGHTS
CO-HOSTS
Lauren Gibson, artist (photographer) & slow travel guide | Charlotte to Paris
Tiffany Waddell Tate, business owner and career & leadership expert | Career Maven Consulting
ITINERARY HIGHLIGHTS
Travelers connected for daily group experiences, including:
- Neighborhood Walking Tours to explore some of Paris’ most stunning neighborhoods.
- A day trip to Champagne: cellar tours and tastings at two Champagne houses in Reims, France.
- A day trip to Giverny, France, to visit impressionist painter Claude Monet’s house and gardens.
- Culture & art experiences, including a private guided tour of the Musée d’Orsay and a visit to the Musée de l’Orangerie to see Claude Monet’s incredible Water Lilies series.
- A sightseeing boat cruise along the Seine River.
- Guided conversations with Tiffany Waddell Tate on life design: goal-setting, creating ease and clarity in your next chapter.
- A Paris metro “how-to” tour and pre-loaded metro card.
- Welcome and farewell dinners at two incredible restaurants on the Left Bank of Paris.
- A mid-week Seine Dinner Cruise, a fine dining experience with five courses and wine pairings along the Seine River.
Outside of the daily group experiences, travelers had solo time to explore Paris on their own.
To help guide your solo exploration of Paris, Lauren provided a custom Paris guidebook for each traveler, tailored specifically to their preferences and interests.
GUEST TESTIMONIALS
Click on the photos below to read guest testimonials from some of the guests who traveled on the 2024 Paris Pivot Small Group Trip.
TRIP ITINERARY RECAP & PHOTOS
ARRIVAL DAY - SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS
Morning & Afternoon: Solo Traveler Time
Early Evening, the group met up for the first time for a walk through the gorgeous Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood just before sunset. After stopping at the Pont des Arts footbridge for a scenic overlook of the Seine River, the group enjoyed a delicious carte-blanche welcome dinner at a gorgeous French restaurant tucked just two blocks away from the Seine. During our meal, Tiffany facilitated the first of our career and life design conversations over the course of our week together.
DAY 1 - WELCOME TO PARIS
After a breakfast of coffee and croissants, we joined a tour of the Luxembourg Gardens by Entrée to Black Paris, where we walked in the footsteps of Black Americans in Paris, including Josephine Baker, James Reese Europe, James Baldwin, and Chester Himes. This was a beautiful step back in time on a misty morning before lunch over savory galettes in Saint Germain.
Then it was time for the Paris metro! Lauren guided travelers through how to navigate and use the Paris metro system, followed by a group ride to a stop near Île Saint-Louis, one of the two islands in central Paris. We toured both islands and finished our group time together with a late afternoon Seine River Sightseeing Boat Cruise.
Evening: Solo Traveler Time
DAY 2 - DAY TRIP TO GIVERNY
Morning & Early Afternoon: Solo Traveler Time
We hopped on the train at Gare Saint-Lazare, arriving about an hour later in the town of Vernon in Normandy, France. We took a short bus ride to the tiny commune of Giverny, a small commune in the Normandy region of France.
Claude Monet lived and painted at his home in this tiny commune of Giverny for over 40 years of his life, from 1883 until his death in 1926 at 86 years old. Monet was known for painting outdoors (“en plein air”), and for painting multiple studies of the same subject.
Travelers had the morning to themselves, wandering through Claude Monet’s House & Gardens at their own pace. They were able to visit the stunning ponds where Monet painted his famous Water Lilies (Nymphéas) and go inside his charming home in which he lived for 40 years.
We enjoyed a lovely lunch around the corner from Monet’s home and a guided life & career conversation with Tiffany, before catching our return train back to Paris.
Evening: Solo Traveler Time
DAY 3 - THE MARAIS
We took the metro to the Marais for coffee and a light breakfast at one of Lauren’s favorite coffee shops in Paris. Then it was off to the Place des Vosges in the heart of the Marais for a historic walking tour of the neighborhood with Paris art historian, professor, and tour guide: Stephanie Nadalo. The Marais neighborhood is filled with beautiful old buildings, curving streets, pocket gardens, small museums, art galleries, restaurants and cocktail bars. Stephanie led travelers through a stunning walking tour of the historic Marais neighborhood, filled with rich history and gorgeous little corners at every turn and steeped in centuries of richly layered Parisian history.
The group enjoyed lunch in the Marais before going our separate ways for the rest of the day.
Afternoon & Evening: Solo Traveler Time
DAY 4 - MONTMARTRE & SEINE RIVER CRUISE DINNER
Travelers spent a charming morning walking through the picturesque (if a little rainy!) hilltop neighborhood of Montmartre. Travelers wandered through beautiful cobblestoned streets as we climbed the steps up to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur for sweeping views overlooking the city of Paris below.
Afternoon: Solo Traveler Time
The group reconvened for dinner aboard a luxurious cruise along the Seine River. Despite the rain, it was an extraordinary evening in a beautiful setting!
DAY 5 - THE DAY OF THE MUSEUMS!
Morning: Solo Traveler Time
Travelers visited the Musée de l’Orangerie, home to Monet’s famous Water Lilies (Nymphéas) series. Due to the few days of rain, we pivoted (fitting!) and added in a visit to the Petit Palais in lieu of our walking tour of the 7th arrondissement.
After a late lunch in the Petit Palais’ stunning café, travelers explored the Petit Palais, the City of Paris’ beaux-arts museum - there was a fantastic temporary exhibit on Parisian street artists on-view.
To wrap up our day of museums, we met up with a familiar face, art historian Stephanie Nadalo, to guide us through the Musée d’Orsay. Set alongside the Seine on a gorgeous stretch of the Left Bank, the Orsay is completely devoted only to 19th and 20th century European art. In addition to the stunning art collection, the architecture of the museum itself is beautiful, retaining hints of its previous life as a train station.
DAY 6 - DAY TRIP TO CHAMPAGNE
Travelers boarded the high-speed TGV to the the city of Reims in the Champagne region for our second day trip. After our 45-minute speed train ride to Reims, we enjoyed two tours.
Our tours at both Veuve Clicquot and Tattinger included tours of their respective champagne cellars (UNESCO World Heritage sites) and tastings of a few of their champagnes.
We paused for a quick, delicious lunch at Café Clicquot, where Tiffany led our final conversation on career and life design in between tours.
On our way back to the train station, we walked through the charming “Centre Ville” (town center) of Reims, stopping at the stunning cathedral, Notre Dame de Reims, before our train journey back to Paris.
Evening: Solo Traveler Time
DAY 7 - AU REVOIR, PARIS!
Travelers met up for an optional mini photoshoot in the Luxembourg Gardens. We took our final little neighborhood walk to our Farewell Dinner at a fantastic Parisian brasserie, tucked along a cobblestoned passageway in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
TRIP CO-HOST BIOS
LAUREN GIBSON
Artist, Photographer, & Slow Travel Guide
Owner of Charlotte to Paris
Lauren Gibson is the artist behind the photographs and the creator & designer behind the travel plans at Charlotte to Paris. Lauren started Charlotte to Paris five years ago to give people another way to see Paris: in the context of the neighborhood-based travel, blending famous sites with lesser-known spots and local gems. She loves watching people find joy and meaning on the small-group, slow travel trips she leads to France each year.
In addition to her work in slow travel, Lauren spends much of her time in her art practice, creating cinematic, street-style photographs at Studio Di Sarlo. You’ll find her vibrant, cityscape and landscape artworks that explore the intersection of memory, nostalgia, and the passage of time.
Instagram: @charlotte.to.paris | @studio.di.sarlo
View Lauren Gibson’s Artist Website & Artist Portfolio
TIFFANY WADDELL TATE
Career & Leadership Expert
Founder of Career Maven Consulting
Tiffanyis a leadership coach & talent development consultant with deep experience helping individuals and companies reimagine the future of work through 1:1 career & leadership coaching, digital education, and training & development for organizations and teams. As a coach, Tate believes deeply in the power & edge of harnessing strengths to do good work while shifting organizational culture to retain top talent.
As an in-demand coach, consultant, speaker and thought leader, she has been featured on Forbes, Well + Good, The Everymom, The Muse and a variety of podcasts. She is a master in coaching professionals to learn, lead, and grow at work.
Tiffany is a Double Deac, having earned her BA and MA from Wake Forest University, and is a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, Diversity Educator, and MBTI Certified.
Tiffany serves on the board of Reach Women’s Network, an organization that seeks to advance economic development and promote gender equality, and the advisory board of the Black Philanthropy Initiative of the Winston Salem Foundation, an initiative that promotes equity in education and economic development for the Black community.
Instagram @tiffanywaddelltate
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanywaddelltate
Website: www.careermavenconsulting.com
FEATURED LOCAL PARIS TOUR GUIDE
STEPHANIE NADALO
Art Historian, Professor, & Professional Parisian Tour Guide
Stephanie Nadalo was our tour guide for the Historic Marais Walking Tour and the Private Tour of the Musée d’Orsay.
Stephanie Nadalo is an art historian, museum guide and passionate Parisienne. Originally from the United States, she completed her PhD at Northwestern University in Chicago and lived in Italy for several years before settling in France a decade ago. When she is not teaching art history classes at Parsons Paris, she adores helping visitors discover the cultural gems in and around Paris.
Instagram: @postmodernclio
