About Mathilde, founder of Paris on the spot
I’m Mathilde Vuillemenot, a Parisian, and the founder of Paris on the spot, a travel app that helps first-time visitors get more out of their trip to Paris without having to become professional trip-planners overnight.
How Paris On The Spot Grew Out of a Paris Newsletter
For the past few years, I have been writing a newsletter that around 3,000 readers, mostly American women planning a first trip to France, follow for honest restaurant reviews, neighborhood walks, and the kind of practical detail you only get from someone who actually lives here.
That newsletter is where Paris on the spot started. Readers kept asking the same kind of questions, and almost all of them were not “what should I see in Paris” (they had read every guide already), they were the smaller, sharper ones that come up once you are actually on the ground. Where do I have lunch near the Eiffel Tower without ending up at a tourist trap. What can I do for the two hours between Arc de Triomphe and dinner. Which entrance to the Louvre is the fastest.
What Paris On The Spot Is
Paris on the spot is a content app. You open it, you pick a monument, you pick what you actually need (finding what to do next, making the logistics easier, or adapting when your plans shift), and you get short, tested, practical recommendations. Where to eat near a monument, what to do with an unexpected free hour, which part of a museum has the quiet spot, the bakery worth a small detour…
Behind every recommendation is a place I have personally been to and tested. If I have not tried it, it does not go in.
The app is designed for two kinds of travelers.
The pre-trip planners who want to feel ready before they fly,
The on-the-spot resolvers who would rather decide things in the moment, in line for the Louvre, on a bench in the Tuileries, in a café when the rain starts.
Either way, the structure is the same. The monument is the context, your job at that moment is the filter, the tips are the payload. It costs $1.90 (launch price until June!), paid once, with no subscription. The app carries no advertising, and I do not resell user data.
A Parisian Wrote This App, Not an Algorithm
I am Parisian, born here, still living here. I also spent years living abroad, in Colombia and Brazil, which is the experience that taught me the most about what it feels like to be a tourist who is trying their best in a city that is not their own.
I have worked in hospitality for over 8 years. That job taught me to notice the small things, what makes a guest feel welcome, and what makes them feel like a number instead. For 2 years, I put that same instinct into a newsletter, twice a month, writing about addresses I tested myself. This app is that same habit, just in your pocket. I still notice things too, the Eiffel Tower lighting up at night can stop me mid-step, even after all these years.
Before Paris on the Spot, I ran a small ecommerce shop called French Address for 5 years, selling French gifts to Americans who wanted a piece of France sent home. It started as a way for people living outside of France to receive carefully chosen French gifts at home, and for a while that worked well. Then customs duties and shipping costs slowly made the original model unworkable, so I narrowed the shop down. Today French Address is for a more specific use case, people who live outside France and want to send a gift to someone they care about who lives in France. That whole journey taught me a lot about curation, about how much harder it is to choose what gets cut than what gets kept in, and that is exactly the discipline I bring to deciding what makes it into the app.
That is the voice the app is written in, the same one I would use if you and I were sitting at a café and you asked me, in real life, “Mathilde, I have 3 hours, where do I go?”.
If you are someone who likes to land in Paris already feeling ready, with tested recommendations to use both before you leave and once you are on the ground, you can download Paris on the spot now on the App Store or on Google Play!
You can also read my blog: Paris travel tips, it is where I cover practical Paris questions in long form, like the secret to getting lost in Paris, and a quiz to see if it's worth visiting the Louvre Museum.