Black Paris Tours

Amazing! Learn, know, grow… Ricki is a fabulous tour guide. I will do this tour again :)

AWESOME! Ricki Stevenson was our guide and she is just wonderful. It was the perfect way to kick off our visit to Paris. We were with a great group of people. We learned so much on this tour and honestly will travel different from this point forward. Madame Ricki offered excellent advise for Americans visiting Paris. She offered far more than just the tour. She is a wealth of Parisian knowledge. I highly recommend this tour to anyone. Take it early in your stay. We had a full day with the group and enjoyed an amazing group lunch when it was all over. Kudos to Black Paris Tour! The best.

I would give this tour 1 star, except I like the idea of going on black history tours and the general experience was worth it although extremely expensive. I also like supporting the Diaspora. However, the tour guide is a bit of mess.
Let me explain, I booked the tour online and received instructions, on a restaurant where to meet. I showed up at the restaurant and met another couple who was scheduled to go on the tour too. We waited at the meeting place for over an hour and the tour guide — Ricki — never showed. It turns out the couple was a part of a larger tour and the larger group was meeting the tour guide at a hotel location in a completely different part of Paris. We never would have known that, but the other tour participants called their friends who were also to take the tour. And I was extremely annoyed that she assumed I was with this larger group, even though I was not. She insisted that when one books the tour persons are told to call. I booked the tour the day before and received an email confirmation. Her poor management skills renders her to be fairly incompetent at customer service. I complained to the tour guide and she comped me a bad lunch at a restaurant that would have been over priced anyway.
I was unimpressed with the tour guide’s knowledge of current events and Parisian history. I asked her specific questions about blacks in Paris including census counts, and she could barely form a coherent answer. Don’t expect an expert.
Despite the expense of the tour, we did travel to Josephine Baker’s home and drove around Paris; probably the same cost in a taxi. We drove through the neighborhoods where James Baldwin and Richard Wright supposedly lived and the ‘black’ arrondissement — Little Africa. I never would have gone to those areas given where my hotel was.
That said the tour was extremely expensive. I hope that other black expatriates in Paris start tour companies to provide competition to this one. Hopefully, it would improve the quality of tours and provide better rates.

This experience was so enriching and personalized to a point that Ricki took me to a tea house after I described the label from the tea I enjoyed the night prior. I was especially inspired by this tour as I retraced the steps of several of my muses (Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Frederick Douglas and, of course, Josephine Baker). The architecture was awe inspiring, but I found the finite historic details to be the most empowering. Our tour guide, Ms. Ricki, made me feel like a family member as she was caring, compassionate and fun. This tour is a must do for anyone traveling to Paris. Be sure to add this to your itinerary. Oh and p. s. Ricki referred us to an awesome restaurant/​piano bar on our last night in town — we had the time of our lives! Tres magnifique!!!

I had an AMAZING AMAZING tour with Ricki! I am a college student that was in Paris for a month studying and took Ricki’s tour just before I left. I wish I had taken the tour sooner because she showed us so many hidden, treasures and unique places. I loved having her as our walking tour guide. She provided very interesting stories and made the journey around town very easy by having us take the bus along with walking. It was great to be able to sit on the bus and view all the beautiful buildings while Ricki talked about them. If you go I would wear very comfortable shoes as there is a lot of walking, as well as a camera to capture the memories. If you are deciding between a full or half day, you should do the full day! (You are sure to regret it because you will miss out on more great stories and places.) Ricki is so knowledgeable about Black history in Paris. You will not find any sort of tour like it, she makes it so personable and is just a joy to be around! The experience is one of a kind! I cannot praise Ricki or this Tour enough or this Tour. It is a MUST when traveling around the beautiful city!

We totally enjoyed this tour with Ricki. She is so knowledgeable and the tour was a perfect introduction to Paris in general, and to the Black presence in Paris in particular. Our tour was totally by bus, and we had many opportunities to leave the bus and observe the various locations. Ricki knows Paris!

I have been using and referring clients and friends to Ms Stevenson’s tours for years and have never heard one complaint from my friends. We just returned last week with a group of 28 and they are still on a cloud as it was truly a highlight of their Paris trip. The initial info sent by Black Paris Tours to all interested parties indicates clearly that it is a walking/​city bus tour. However, with large groups it can totally be done by private bus at an additional expense of course. It’s a pity Mr. H did not get an opportunity to meet Ms Stevenson because he would have found that she is not only warm, wonderful and charismatic but quite an historian and a knowledgeable expert in the field of African Americans in Paris.

I did the black Paris tour in June of 2012 and it was wonderful. Madame Ricki proved to be a very passionate and knowledgable historian. Not only did we see the city via the metro and bus line– it taught us how to ride the metro (much cheaper than cabbing it like we had been doing). She also gave us a list black restaurant and clubs to visit during our stay that we would not have been able to find without her. I learned the city, thanks to her, on my 2^nd day there! If you are looking to ride an air conditioned tour bus as someone spews out meaningless facts to you– this is not that kind of tour. This is a hands on intimate walking tour, that goes over the rich heritage of black Parisians and the famous black Americans who later called this wonderful city home. Merci Ricki! We highly recommend this tour and will be back next year!
Kim and Jerod Scurry

A WONDERFUL TOUR OF PARIS AND BLACK PARIS”
«We returned from our extended vacation and started reflecting on everything: The places we visited, the things we saw. It was all so overwhelmingly wonderful!
But of all of our travels, Paris stands out the most! A couple of days in Paris really wasn’t enough time to see it all. Thank God for your Black Paris Tour! There is no way we
could have seen so much on our own… starting on day 1. We all agree that your tour was a lot of fun, very educational and the highlight of our trip! It made us want to return to Paris!
THANK YOU SO MUCH! «
3 gal pals from Los Angeles

This tour was way overpriced and a complete waste of money. This tour is supposed to be given by Ricki Stevenson and when we arrived in Paris, we were surprised to find out she was on vacation and we would have a new tour guide. The tour information on the website says walking and bus tour, which makes you believe the tour will be given by a private bus. In addition, I thought it would be a group of us. Well that was not the case! On the day of our tour, we met our tour guide (who was very new– 3 weeks) in a café. And surprise! the three of us (I, my wife and mother in law) were the only ones going on the tour that day. And to make matters worse, the bus meant public transportation and the metro to get around. This meant that we also had to pay more money for our tickets and transportation to get around on the tour. We were shocked and had no idea this was the case as my mother in law is partially disabled and walks with a cane. We paid 100 Euros a piece, so almost $ 500 to be escorted by public bus transportation to the Arc de Triomphe, the church where Josephine Baker’s funeral was held, to stand outside a theater where Josephine Baker performed, and another statue. We had no special access to any place and were taken to locations to just look at something and listen to our tour guide and look at paper photos that she showed us. The tour guide, would show us printed paper photos of famous black Parisians or Americans who visited Paris and tell us about their history. Needless to say it was very elementary, most stuff which you probably already know, and you could save yourself a lot of hours and money by just buying a book and visiting these places on your own.
To end the tour, we were taken to a restaurant in the Little Africa section of Paris to have a meal. The food was decent, but on top of paying 100 Euros a piece, we had to pay for our meal that we shared with the tour guide (she paid for her portion and we paid ours). Again, this is just another way for them to direct business to their friends who I am sure give them a kickback for bringing people there to eat all the time.
Again, we had no special access to anything as part of this tour. It was as if we paid $ 500 to have someone walk us to a few places and look at them. There was absolutely no value in this tour and it was the biggest waste of time and money we spent in Paris.
Do not go on this tour! It is not worth it. I wish there was some way I could get my money back, but since I tried that and was completely dismissed by the owner. I will have to settle for warning others about this severly disappointing tour.