Simply put, Chapeau is the French word for “hat”. If you attend a cycling race or other sporting event, you’ll often hear Francophones exclaim “Chapeau!” to congratulate the winner. In a word, it’s taking off your hat and shaking it in the air while shouting “way to go!”

More personally, when I travel abroad I always wear a navy blue St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap.  This small touch serves as a direct connection to my home in St. Louis.

I know Paris the best of all the destinations I’ve been, and it remains my favorite city on the face of the earth. I’m enamored by the lifestyle and feeling I get whenever I’m there. I love to experience Paris as a temporary local, and find experiences that match up with who I am personally instead of only going to the major sights. Normally this means sports, music and old bars are on the docket, but I also have a healthy-ish obsession with history,

The plan is to cover Paris to the best of my ability, but to soon expand to the rest of Europe with this same mindset of experiencing places as a local and as myself.

I’m glad you asked! I think it boils down to a pretty simple method when I visit a place: plan one or two BIG thing(s) a day, and leave the rest of the time to explore things that interest you more personally with just a general heading in mind. I do a lot of research before I leave for any destination so that I know the layout and have places in mind to visit, but very rarely do I make a full, line by line itinerary for even one day abroad. Why? I find that being unburdened from a rigid schedule leaves us more relaxed and more open to be spontaneous.