Our first European trip after moving to Dublin was to Paris. Honeybun was 22 months and I was 26 weeks pregnant with Sugarplum. Paris turned out to be a great first trip and we learned a lot about traveling with young children around Europe as well as how to better plan our trips. We planned to be in Paris for 4 days but due to the volcano/ash cloud disaster of 2010, we got to spend an extra day there.
We flew in and out of Charles De Gaulle Airport and took the train into Paris City Centre. We walked or took public transport (buses, trains and metro) everywhere so did not bother with taking a car seat and only brought our buggy for getting Honeybun around. While this worked well over all, we were all exhausted from all the walking by the end of the trip and my poor pregnant body insisted we take the metro everywhere the last (extra) day.
We took an early morning flight, dropped our bags at the hotel and were on the streets of Paris by noon. We had planned to use the City tour bus so walked to the bus stop which was right near the Paris Opera House. While we hadn’t planned to visit (I did not do a great deal of research on attractions in Paris as I had visited in Middle School and thought I knew what I wanted to do) but I quickly decided I would really like to visit the place that holds such an important place in ballet history and I’m really glad we took the time to enjoy a guided tour. This is where we first learned the magic of European ceilings for small, buggy strapped children.
After the Opera House we jumped on the bus and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Luxembourg Gardens letting Honeybun run around. After an exhausting day we realized we had not planned well and the bus (which has 4 different tour lines) that goes by Luxembourg Gardens was not the one that went near our hotel so we ended up walking over 2 miles up Blvd de Sabastopol stopping for dinner on the way. The hotel we stayed out was in the Porte Saint-Denis in the Northern part of the City which turns out is not close to anything we wanted to see.
The next day we did the obligatory Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral. While both were worth seeing, the lines were long for both, we didn’t spend much time actually “doing” either attraction (only spent about an hour actually up in the Eiffel tower but it took all morning) and all the waiting made us cranky. While we had taken the tour bus to both attractions, we again could not get back to the hotel easily on the bus and, again, walked a mile and a half up Blvd de Sabastopol, again stopping for dinner on the way.
The 3rd day was my favorite. We took the train to the Palace of Versailles where we did the Palace tour as well as wandered around the gardens and the outlying buildings and Marie Antoinette’s chalet. Often considered the “birthplace” of ballet, Versailles holds a special place in this ballerina’s heart. It is truly spectacular and I would love to go back again (and again and again!)
The 4th (and what should have been our last day) we went to the Louvre where we walked the ENTIRE museum only taking a break for lunch. Honeybun was not that interested in the art though we tried to direct her attention to the important things like the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo and she spent most of the day looking at the ceilings. Her favorite part was the remnants of the Medieval Palace.
The last day we had not planned to be there and were exhausted and tired of baguettes and croissants for breakfast. I let hubby choose what we did that day and he chose the Catacombs and the Military Museum. While these are not things really conducive to children, we really enjoyed them. The Catacombs involves doing 130 stairs down the chambers (which I carried Honeybun on and hubby carried the stroller and bags) and 83 steps to get back up (which Honeybun partially walked and I carried all the stuff). She did really well as she didn’t really understand the bones and such but some of the pictures of dead people hanging on the walls freaked her out a little bit. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this attraction for older children, though.
The Musee de l’Armee was okay for me. Hubby really enjoyed the artillery, armor, and World Wars sections but I was a little bored with that stuff (every gun looks the same to me). But the part I did really like was the tomb of Napoleon I. I’m really into European History so it was cool to see the final resting place of a man who changed the world!
Two things to know about traveling with young children in Paris: 1) Changing tables are hard to come by. We found one at the Eiffel Tower and one at McDonald’s where we had breakfast the last morning. The rest of the time I changed Honeybun’s diaper standing up in the corner of the bathroom (or Louvre exhibit hall). 2) The French serve their children warm milk with sugar which Honeybun refused to drink. The first day after wandering around looking for cold milk, we finally found a Starbucks and the barista happened to be an American exchange student who told me how to ask for “cold milk” which came in handy the rest of the trip!
This post is part of my Oh, The Places We’ve Been! series chronicling our travels around Europe with our two young girls.
