I loved driving to Paris for a weekend. 5hrs on a Friday afternoon. In time for dinner and clubbing at Bains Douches til the very early hours.
Mind this was in the late 70’s…
Nowadays its taxi or metro or per pedes…
Still love Paris, but lost on where best nightlife is to be found
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Welcome to France. I’ve been here three years, by way of Phoenix AZ and Richmond VA. While there are easier places in Europe for English-speakers to live, there is none better. The landscape is diverse and beautiful, the culture is refined, the values resonate, and the people are warm and gracious.
I’d offer that - while a little counterintuitive, given this forum - you shouldn’t get ove-reliant on expat groups or “English speaking clubs” initially. Easy and comforting, they can become something of a trap. I met a couple from California who’d lived here for ten years, had no French friends, didn’t drive because they were intimidated by the driver’s license process, and spent their evenings watching CNN International. Their entire circle was an English speaking Facebook group. I asked myself, “What’s the point?”
We’ll never be French - we don’t have the history, generational memory, or cultural references. We can try to better-understand, and that requires getting out there - humble and curious. IMHO… 
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Good advice. It was much the same up in Brittany in the mid 90’s onwards when the brits flocked over to buy extremely cheap properties and I won’t moan because it kept bread on our table from all the work OH got out of the renovations these buyers wanted, but…unfortunately many were just like your example after settling in for the rest of their lives or so they thought and we never got a moment’s peace from continual demands for bureaucratic help or even where could they buy fresh milk etc. In the end I got shirty with some of the people and said they had to learn like we did, footslogging and getting down and dirty with thelocals to get what we wanted. Many many just never settled and those that did, opted to find other brits just for company. If you move to live in a foreign country, you HAVE to integrate and leave your bubble or else, as you say, what is the point!
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Good advice, I agree with you. We know Brits whose only social life is other Brits. What never seems to work is trying to turn France into the country they left, rather than accepting France as it is.
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Je suis d’accord complètement. Tout mes copains sont français ou non américanises. C’est très important pour mois’ et la raison pourquoi j’étudie le français très diligemment.
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@vero will let you know how well you did, but I understood perfectly what you meant. 
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