I know most of you are sick of hearing about France, so for you guys, just skip this and the next post. But for those of you who have e-mailed me or Facebooked me and said, “I want to get ideas from you for when we go to Paris with our kid(s),” I wanted to get all my thoughts down in one place that I could refer back to. So that is this.
**The first day will be a disaster. Expect it. Prepare for it. It’s a six-hour flight and a six-hour time difference, so when you arrive at 7:30 in the morning, your kids will be exhausted. Check in at our hotel was 2 p.m. We dropped off our luggage, went out for breakfast, and then went to play at the Jardin du Luxemborg. A late afternoon nap got them pretty much on schedule.
**Don’t fear the French. Not the people. The language. My kids could spit out a “Merci†if under duress, but that was the extent of their knowledge. Adam and I had minimal French but not enough for any real conversation. That said, we went to a few things that were in French only and still thoroughly enjoyed them.
—The marionette (which is “puppet†in French, and not necessarily the marionnette dolls we think of with strings) show in the Jardins du Luxemborg are completely in French, but the stories are familiar enough that the kids enjoyed them.
—The Musee de Magie is a museum of magic that has a show that’s all in French. The Double Fond is also a magic show entirely in French. But magic is magic and you don’t have to understand the banter to be wowed by the tricks.
—Lots of places had demonstrations—a gladiator show in Arles, a catapult demonstration in La Boux—that had no English, but again, who needs English when things are being launched in the air or men in strange get-ups are swinging at each other with swords and nets.
**The key to museums for us was a sketchbook and drawing set that we gave each child. They decorated their sketchbooks before we left with Paris pictures to get them in the mood. Then, in each museum, they happily stopped to sketch, which meant one parent could explore the room they were sketching in and the other could even go a bit farther. People took as many pictures of our kids sketching as they did of the art work!
**Set your expectations low. Buy a museum pass so you don’t feel that you just spent 10 Euros on an hour at the Louvre. Also, the museum pass lets you skip the ticket buyers line, which will save a lot of headache. At each museum, we had one or two goals. Anything else we saw we considered at bonus. For instance, at the Louvre, we wanted to see the Mona Lisa and a vase that Doodles had read about in A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E. L. Konigsburg that Eleanor of Aquitaine had been given by Louis VII on their marriage. (We asked for help finding the vase at the information desk, and once the woman figured out my pronunciation of “Eleanor of Aquitaine,†she was extremely nice in helping us to locate it; I think she was happy that someone was looking for something other than the Mona Lisa). At the Musee D’Orsay, Pie wanted to see the Degas ballerina with the peach ribbon from her book Degas and the Little Dancer.
**Throw out any normal expectations of healthy eating. Some nights, it’s just better to have chocolate sorbet (from Martine Lambert, of course!) for dinner. One child pretty much lived on pasta with butter; the other on steak Hachette, which is a burger—no bun—and fries. Note the French default to rare meat unless you tell them otherwise.
**Buy your ticket to the Eifel Tower before you even leave the USA. You can print out a ticket and boy does it make the day soooo much better! The lines for tickets snake for hours. Our prepurchased ticket had a time to show up, and we waited for about 15 minutes. Once on top of the Eifel Tower, do the Follow Gus activity with your child—it’s a cute way to learn about the Tower.
**Hannah Montana dubbed in French is as annoying as Hannah Montana in English, but at least you can pretend your kids are learning some of the language.
**Keep a stock of Euros for carousels. Carousels are everywhere and they are a fabulous bribe. “If you can walk across that bridge because your parents would like to walk instead of taking a subway, you can ride the carousel over there!”
So, the highlights with the kids:
- A Bateau Parisianne cruise on the Seine
- Going up the Eifel Tower
- Going up the Arc de Triomphe
- Watching the Eifel Tower light show (at the top of the hour, after dusk, which in the summer is about 10 p.m.)
- The Louvre
- The Musee D’Orsay
- Shopping the street markets
- The Invalides (Army museum where Napoleon’s tomb is)
- The Orangerie (Monet’s water lilies)
- Musee Rodin
- The Musee de Magie
- Shopping at Printemps; window shopping at the more expensive Galleries de Lafeyette
- Macaroons at Pierre Herme
- Climbing the stairs to Sacre Couer
- The Centre Pompidou at the Beaubourg
- Watching the street performers outside the Centre Pompidou
- Things to skip (not many!):
- The Paris Story movie—overrated and really pretty boring
- Most flea markets in August (many things shut down in Paris in August so the markets were sparse; most of what we wanted to see, though, was open and it was a boon to my wallet that so many cute stores were closed). We went to one market that was a complete dud and one that was lively and fun—so just check!
If you’re really planning a trip, you can find a lot of my hotel/dining reviews on TripAdvisor (of course, as you probably know that’s where Adam works, so that’s where I do my reviewing).
Tomorrow I’ll post my kids’ book list for Paris, but in the meantime, Bon Voyage!
Your trip to Paris was so much better prepared than my trip to Russia, I am taking notes.