Curated by Collins · Paris & Champagne
She Knows Paris
A Girls’ Getaway Guide
Six Days · Paris · Versailles · Épernay
No compromises, no scheduling around nap times, no rushing through galleries.
I’ve been to Paris more times than I can count on one hand — but the girls trip turned out to be the best version of the city I’ve experienced yet. Just three women with a Haussmannian apartment in the Marais, a curated list, and the freedom to follow the day wherever it went.
We blended fragrances at the Molinard atelier. Stood inside Moët & Chandon cellars in chalk-carved tunnels with 100 million bottles aging in the dark. Had a Fora-vetted private chef prepare dinner in our rental. And found a pair of sneakers at Versailles that stopped all three of us mid-stride.
Everything below is firsthand, personally vetted, and bookable through Curated by Collins.
Evening Experience
Private Seine Cruise at Dusk
A private wooden vessel, a captain in a white Panama hat, and the Bir-Hakeim bridge as the city goes gold. Not a Bateaux Mouches with 200 strangers — the real thing. Book this for your first or second evening. It resets your entire relationship with the city.
Private Seine cruises vary enormously in quality. The vessel, the captain, and the route all matter. I arrange this directly — don’t book independently before speaking with me.
Artisan Workshop
Molinard Perfume Workshop
Of all the make-your-own experiences Paris offers, this is the one worth doing. You blend your own signature scent from individual essences — Mimosa, Patchouli, Santal, Cèdre — guided without being led. You leave with a custom fragrance and a personalized label. Allow two hours. We lost track of time entirely.
Sessions fill quickly, especially on weekends. The 50ml creation runs approximately €90–110 per person. I time this correctly within your itinerary.
Dining Experience
Café V — Louis Vuitton Maison
There are restaurants in Paris worth visiting for the food, and restaurants worth visiting for the experience of being inside them. Café V, on the top floor of the Louis Vuitton Maison on the Champs-Élysées, delivers on both.
Come for brunch or a mid-morning stop: pastries, a proper cappuccino, and the monogram-embossed chocolate on LV china that is one of the most photographed things in Paris right now. The room sits above the flagship store with views over the Champs-Élysées — the kind of vantage point that makes you feel like you’re seeing the avenue from inside an idea rather than standing on it.
Café V fills weeks in advance, particularly for weekend brunches. This is not a walk-in experience. I handle the reservation strategy as part of your Paris build.
Cultural & Neighborhood
Palais Garnier + Montmartre on the Same Day
Morning at the Palais Garnier — the 1875 Beaux-Arts building that inspired Phantom of the Opera. The Grand Foyer alone requires an hour if you’re paying attention. Afternoon: a private food and market tour through the tucked-away streets of Montmartre before the tour groups arrive. Evening: No Entry, the speakeasy hidden inside Pink Mama. The entrance involves a phone booth.
I arrange a private Garnier guide and a private Montmartre guide. The difference between a guided and self-guided experience in both places is significant.
Dinner & Late Night
Kong for Dinner. Le Matignon for the Last Night.
Kong sits above the Kenzo building on Pont Neuf: a Philippe Starck-designed glass-ceiling restaurant with a view over the Seine that exists nowhere else in Paris. Best experienced at dinner when the Seine goes dark below and the room lights up around you.
Le Matignon is the closing chapter — one of the most discreetly exclusive venues on Avenue Matignon. Drinks upstairs first, then downstairs to the lounge: a more intimate space, darker, where the last night of a trip becomes something worth marking deliberately.
Kong for dinner on a mid-trip evening. Le Matignon for the final night, after dinner elsewhere, as the deliberate last act.
Dining Experience
Private Chef Dinner in the Rental
One of the most underused luxuries in Paris is the rental apartment with a proper kitchen — not because you should be cooking your own dinner, but because it’s the perfect setting for a private chef.
We had one come in on our fifth night, and the experience of sitting at our own table in a Paris apartment while someone plated scallops in a herb cream sauce a few feet away is something I haven’t been able to recreate anywhere else. It’s intimate in a way restaurants can’t be.
The chef I use for Paris is on the Fora preferred vendor list: vetted, exceptional, and worth every euro. I coordinate both the rental and the chef together as part of your bespoke itinerary.
Two Day Trips Worth Every Kilometer
40 min · RER C or private transfer
Versailles
Arrive at opening. Semi-private access to the King’s Apartments, the Orangerie gardens, and the bosquet fountains most people skip. Then Baron Papillon at the museum shop — hand-printed Toile de Jouy leather sneakers that stopped all three of us mid-stride. They’re not online anywhere that ships to the US easily. This is where you find them.
90 min · TGV + private tour
Épernay & the Champagne Route
Morning inside the Moët & Chandon cellars: 28 kilometers of chalk-carved tunnels, 100 million bottles aging in amber-lit darkness. Afternoon above the Marne Valley with a private guide, standing in the middle of UNESCO-listed vineyards looking down at the village and the river below.
Ready for Your Version of Paris?
Everything in this guide is personally vetted and bookable through Curated by Collins. I know exactly who to call, how to time it, and what to combine.
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