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It's not unusual for Girl Scout Troops to travel overseas. But troop leaders Audrey Yowell and Catherine Jones go the extra mile to make trips abroad special for their Scouts.

"Catherine (looked) around for something different to do on the Internet," Yowell said. "She and I had taken the group (to Paris) before and done touristy things, and we wanted to do something different."

Jones stumbled across a Web site for Eye Prefer Paris Tours, (www.eyepreferparistours.com ) a tour-guide business run by former New Yorker Richard Nahem .

"I can't tell how I found the Web site," Jones said. "What (Nahem ) offered sounded so fascinating on a personal level."

Nahem customizes tours for groups based on individual likes.

After moving to Paris in 2005 and getting compliments from visiting friends who enjoyed his knowledge of the city, Nahem had "an interesting idea to take people on tours, to show them places they probably wouldn't see own their own.

"It's like a friend taking you around Paris instead of a formal tour guide."

The tour took Yowell and the Scouts to unexpected places.

"We would have never explored the Marais neighborhood," Yowell said of a fashionable community Nahem showed the group. "He is very entertaining. He knows interesting nooks and crannies and architectural details."

Yowell said Nahem pointed out interesting sites such as mansions that have been turned into hotels. Most people wouldn't know the hotels are there because there aren't any signs, just plates beside the doors.

"Richard had a handle on why things were the way they were," Jones said. "He also had a way to talk to the girls in a way they liked and understood."

Jones said Nahem knew of a newly opened Valentino exhibit the visiting Americans would have missed if they weren't touring with a local.

"I knew they were interested in fashion because they wanted to go shopping," Nahem said. "So I took them to see designer Valentino's retrospective at a museum here."

Nahem also took the Scouts to an open food market where they bought bread and cheese for a picnic lunch. They ate at a park on a former railroad bed overlooking the city.

The seven Scouts worked for three years to save $3,500 each to pay for the trip. Yard sales, car washes, cookie sales, flower sales and personal earnings were saved for the trip.

"I've been earning money since sixth grade, when I joined the troop," said Abby Procton , 15, a rising sophomore at Westchester Country Day. "(Raising money) made us all appreciate it a lot more than if our parents gave us money and told us to have a good time."

Mary Fontana , 14, got the opportunity to go abroad with her 21-year-old sister, Megan.

"At some point, she got on my nerves," Mary Fontana said. "But she was protecting me and everything. It was fun."

Megan Fontana asked her sister's permission before she went on the trip and the younger Fontana said it was OK.

"I didn't want to take way from her first mature trip," said Megan Fontana, a pharmacy school student at Chapel Hill.

Mary Fontana said she is excited to tell people she's traveled outside the United States.

"I've never been able to do that before. It's really cool," she said. "I'd like to go back and see different things."

This was also the first trip abroad for Madeline Rhoton, 15.

"I was kind of nervous, but once I got there I loved it," she said. "I just loved seeing a different part of the world."

Rhoton said she and the other Scouts enjoyed seeing where Marie Antoinette lived and all the historic buildings.

While abroad and with the troop leaders standing by, the girls learned to read metro bus maps and make decisions together.

"We make them try to do things on their own so when they take a semester abroad in college they are not overwhelmed," Jones said. "I loved watching the girls develop. "Outside their families, they can be very different people. It's nice to see them come together as a group."

Contact E.A. Seagraves at 883-4422, Ext. 241; or elizabeth.seagraves@news-record.com