Veggies & Voyages

Winter break vacations to the Caribbean were incredibly expensive by the time we started looking so we decided to try winter in Europe for the first time in our lives. Once in college, my friends and I took Amtrak from DC to Montreal during spring break because of the winter discount and we spent the week walking around in a blizzard! Apparently I never learned my lesson.

I was nervous about the weather before we left since it said the entire week would be around 50 degrees but also overcast and rainy the entire time. In the end, it actually only drizzled on us twice for short amounts of time but the wind was really rough on some of the days.

However, the crowds were tiny compared to what you’d deal with in the summer so we’d take the wind over the heat and crowds any day!

Some things that surprised me about Paris:

1) Even though there are lots of vegetables in the open air markets, many times the only vegetable we were served in restaurants were potatoes! So many potatoes. I kept stopping at markets to buy the kids fruits so they’d at least have oranges, apples, tomatoes, and kiwis while we were there. The oranges were incredible. 

2) The non-stop police sirens were terrible. I mean all the time day and night you’d hear the noise of their police sirens. I looked up an article about it and in 2018 a new police chief said Parisians are anxious enough and his number one goal is to cut back on the siren noise.

However the head of the police union apparently fought back saying “our officers aren’t children playing with sirens, the sirens are saving lives.”  That quote made me wonder and I thought about it the rest of the trip. On top of that, you can feel the train rumblings underneath your apartment constantly so that was all a little much.

3) Do a little studying before you go on Haussman’s renovation of Paris in the 1850s-1870s. We played “was this street impacted by Haussman?” with the kids the whole trip. We preferred the non-Haussman sections of Paris! My little one even thought of building a barricade in the non-Haussman Latin Quarter. (One of the reasons Paris destroyed it’s narrow streets in favor of wide boulevards may have been to reduce revolts and barricades).

4) We went to a lot of Christmas markets which were really pretty. We thought there would be ice skating rinks everywhere based on previous articles we had read but did not see even one ice skating rink! My friend who went to Paris 6 months before us with young kids made a point of going to a different carousel every day. I’m ashamed to say we didn’t even make it to one even though we meant to! 

See below for our itinerary with my take aways about different aspects of the trip and what we loved the most! My biggest changes are I would skip Versailles and Disney Paris and take advantage of doing more spontaneous things in Paris (there are spontaneous things to do on every block so make time for that) or experiences like a cooking class or going to a perfume maker.

All in all, we felt winter was a great time to enjoy Paris given the lack of crowds, beautiful holiday lights, and relatively fine weather.

7-Day Summary Itinerary of Paris with Children

Day 1:

• Morning:
  • Arrived in Paris at 8:30 AM from Washington, DC.
  • Reached the Arc de Triumph by 10:15 AM and enjoyed lunch on Champs-Elysees
• Afternoon:
  • Checked into AirBnB for a great nap after our red eye!
  • Explored the Eiffel Tower from 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM.
• Evening:
  • Took a night lights open bus tour from 6 PM to 7:30 PM.
  • Dinner followed by window displays at Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussman and Les Printemps.

Day 2:

• Morning:
  • Visited Versailles with timed tickets to the palace at 12:00 PM.
• Afternoon:
  • Explored Versailles gardens and town.
• Evening:
  • Wandered around the Latin Quarter.
  • Dinner at a traditional French fondue restaurant.

Day 3:

• Morning:
  • Explored Sainte-Chapelle at 10:25 AM.
  • Visited the Crypt under Notre Dame.
• Afternoon:
  • Enjoyed lunch at Le Passage.
  • Attended the Cabaret burlesque show at Paradis Latin from 1:30 PM to 3:45 PM.
• Evening:
  • Explored les halles for dinner (husband and son) while my daughter and I watched the Hunchback of Notre Dame

Day 4:

• Morning:
  • Explored Musee d’Orsay with timed tickets at 11:00 AM.
• Afternoon:
  • Lunch at Cafe d’Orsay at 1:00 PM.
  • Visited Musée de l’Orangerie with timed tickets from 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM.
  • Explored Christmas market and Jardin des Tuileries.
• Evening:
  • Explored the Louvre until 9:45 PM.

Day 5:

• Morning:
  • Explored Marais (old Jewish quarter) at 11:15 AM.
• Afternoon:
  • Visited Montmartre, including Moulin Rouge and Sacré-Cœur, starting with the funicular at 3:30 PM.

Day 6:

• Celebrated New Year’s Eve at Disney Paris with fireworks.

Day 7:

• Departure day with a flight at 2:30 PM.
• Left the AirBnB at 10:30 AM.
• Advised to allow at least 3 hours at the airport due to long lines on January 1st.

Our 7-day Itinerary with commentary

Day 1:

– Arrive paris 8:30 AM from Washington, DC, taxi 55 euros to anywhere in Paris ( we cleared the airport much faster than anticipated and were at the Arc de Triumph by 10:15am.

–          lunch at Champs-Élysées at 11:30 AM 

Azur cafe: 10 Av. de Wagram, 75008 Paris, France (We never actually made it here. I did a lot of restaurant research before we left and in the end whether we were hungry we wanted to go somewhere close rather than finding a specific place).

–          1 PM check in to AirBnB, nap/rest: 16 Quai de la Mégisserie, 75001 [We loved our AirBnB]. We almost always stay in AirBnBs so that the kids can share their open room separate from ours. The cost for a two room hotel suite is insanely expensive and we love all our air bnbs. This building was gorgeous and the kids became experts at taking the tiny lift by themselves.

–          3:30 PM -5:30 PM Eiffel Tour  BOOKED to the 2^nd platform via lift [Then we walked down to the 1st platform and took the elevator down the rest of the way from there. We didn’t realize until we were back at the bottom there’s a place on the platform where you can look down to see the bottom of the tower – we somehow missed that and our son had wish we had found where that was.] There was a random strike that closed the tower the next day so we were very grateful we got to go!

–          6-7:30 PM night lights open bus tour! Paris: Open-Top Christmas Bus Tour | GetYourGuide  BOOKED- leave from near opera house 9 Rue Auber, 75009 Paris, France [This was clearly pushing it because our 6 year old slept through the entire bus tour and the following dinner] the last half hour was just sitting in traffic in the rain so fairly unpleasant. I think a tour with a live guide that was completely in English would have worked better for us than headphones tours.

–          7:45 dinner Midi12 Crepes: 12 Rue La Fayette, 75009 Paris, France reserved. We never made it because it was a ten minute walk which sounded reasonable when I did my research but not so reasonable when my husband was carrying a sleeping 6 year old! So we opted for a place across the street from the bus tour.

–          Window displays at Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussman and Les printemps [It makes me laugh to think I thought we’d have enough energy to do this after our dinner street not sleeping on the 7 hour red eye plane ride!; however, we did see the displays from the open bus tour and they far exceeded my expectations]

Day 2

–          Versailles hours: 8 am-6 pm [note do not do this on day 2 when everyone is still tired!)

–          Versailles 12:00 PM timed tickets to palace! Confirmation: 166820125

–  Can be 30 min late only [There are two lines – one for timed tickets of 12, 1, 2, 3, etc and the other for 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30 etc. There is no huge benefit to showing up before your timed slot. We got there at 11:40 for our 12 PM slot and had to wait in the 12 PM line. We watched all the people who got there after us with 11:30 tickets go in before we were allowed to enter. But if you’re later than 12:30, you have no line to go into since the top of the hour line will now have the 1 PM people lining up.]]

• Take RER C train: this was incredibly fast and easy.
• I think we were the fastest people to go/run through Versailles! We stopped at all the highlights but didn’t waste our time on the audio guides because our kids were too young. We played “find how many secret doors you can find in the rooms.” We found 11.
• We really wanted a golf cart to explore the gardens but the line was way too long and you had to wait for other golf carts to come back before you could get one. So with 20 people ahead of you that’s a very long time. We opted for the train instead but after waiting in the extreme wind for 15 minutes with no train in sight, we gave our train tickets to another couple and went into town to get some great souvenirs. 
• In retrospect, I think I would have skipped Versailles in the winter with a 6 and 9 year old since they get to see an old palace at the Louvre anyhow! In the spring or summer we would do this and rent bikes.

Day 3

–  Sainte-Chapelle: 10:25 AM on Isle de la Cite ( this was sold out all week so we booked via the Get your Guide website. I wasn’t sure if the site was a scam at the time but it was not. The only problem was kids are free but need tickets so going this way I needed to pay for their “adult tickets” to get them in. My kids were less impressed but my husband and I loved it! The bible stories in stained glass are amazing. They even had almost an entire section on Queen Esther and Mordechi (purim!).

– Crypt under Notre Dame: [We snuck this into our itinerary on the way to our cabaret show and it was SO cool! You get to see how OLD paris looked back when the island was many smaller islands. You can see the old port and waterway that was under Notre Dame and a video screen is in the background to help your imagination. They also have a video of how the Romans lived when the town you’re walking through was built up to help imagine the buildings you’re looking at. That night we watched Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame at our Air BnB.]

– We enjoyed a great lunch at Le Passage, which was only a block away from the show.

– 1:30-3:45 My first Cabaret burlesque show at Paradis Latin (reserved in advance) show starts 2:15 [This was a trip highlight! I’d say paying extra for seats in the center front is worth it because 1) the kids get to go on stage and dance and I bet the balcony folks didn’t get to do this 2) There are some balloons at the end that the kids in the center section got to take home 3) if it’s your birthday one lucky kid who raises their hand gets to be part of a section of the show, 4) you’re in the action. Also a lot of it was in French which my family doesn’t speak but that didn’t take away from how fun the show was. Half the songs are in English. 

–     4-9 wander latin quarter and enjoy a traditional french fondue restaurant [we really wanted to take the kids to a jazz club at 9:30 PM at caveau de la huchette but I was feeling under the weather]

Day 4 

–          Musee d’Orsay 11:00 AM TIMED TICKETS BOOKED

[First, the storage lockers are free so use them! Second, we randomly found the kids room right away on the 2nd floor and this was a HUGE hit. They had telescopes you can decorate and take around with you, life size art you can add to and take pictures in, and a scavenger hunt by age group with a prize at the end.  The hunt for my 9 year old was to take pictures with 6 specific paintings and write down what kind of flowers are in each painting (they had a flowers guide to help]. My 6 year old had to find 4 specific paintings and write the season and time of day she thought was in each painting. They loved this and were so excited to find the art.

–          Lunch at Cafe d’Orsay 1:00 PM

We all loved lunch at this restaurant right outside the museum! My risotto was excellent. We brought the kids art pads with colored pencils and clay crayons for the day to create the art in the galleries and they spent lunch making copies of the beautiful art on the walls of this restaurant.

–          Musée de l’Orangerie 2:30 PM TIMED TICKETS BOOKED- 4:00 

[We were so excited to see the water lilies but was a library-enforced atmosphere and they were not as vibrant as all the art we had just seen at d’Orsay. If you have time for only one, I’d definitely do d’Orsay. 

–     Christmas market and jardin des tuileries (carrousel and trampoline) in front of the louvre

[I’m embarrassed to say we never found the trampolines BUT we did let the kids do the fun house at the christmas market and they had a blast there. After on route to the Louvre, we found one of the covered passages in Paris but I’d probably skip that and opt for finding the in-ground trampolines instead.]

–          7:30-9:45 Louvre open until 9:45 PM this one day of the week: go after dinner  $36 total – kids free

[Our friends said 3 art museums in one day was too ambitious but we did it and it was great. They all felt so different. In the louvre we literally only wanted to see the Mona Lisa.  We thought we’d find a bathroom with a shorter line than in the front entrance and that was a big mistake. The only other one we found was one stall with no paper and we all had wait forever for it. Use the one at the front!  The kids trick to get to the front of the Mona Lisa is to walk right against the screen partition toward the front and then crawl to the front below all the adults. Our kids were small so no one minded since they blocked no views. My 9 year old was obsessed and went back 3 times to see her again. My 6 year old loved the royal crowns on display right before the hall with the Mona Lisa. We had to stand just right to make it look like the crowns were on her head.

Day 5

• 11:15AM Marais (old jewish quarter)
  • The rue des Rosiers, L’As du Fallafel, Victor Hugo’s house with a fun playground outside. This park was surrounded by awesome art and galleries.
  • We found a park (Jardin des Rosiers- Joseph Migneret) with a plaque of all the kids from France who were taken away during the Holocaust and the 500 kids from this section of Paris, and the 100 from this section who who taken and so little that they never got to go to school. I cried there and talked to my kids about what happened a little. We had the kids find names of children that were the same ages as them from the plaque and read a name each aloud.
• 3:30 PM Montmatre visit  – start with funicular -(moulin rouge, sacre cours, etc).

[We should have done Montmatre in the morning and Marais in the evening. Esp because there’s a museum of magic in les marais with a magic show I wanted to take the kids to but we ran out of time. We paid for the train ride at the top of Montmatre but the kids were bored and thought it was too long.  I’d skip that and just visit the shops and artists. We absolutely loved les Marais and the time we spent was not enough. I wish we had at least 6 hours there to explore the entire area and more of the streets]

Day 6

–          New years eve at Disney paris with fireworks! [See my separate post about this experience!]

Day 7

• Flight was at 2:30 and we left our Air BnB at 10:30. The lines were insanely long at the airport on January 1st and people were missing their flights. There were so many lines and they were all so long. Give yourself at least 3 hours at the airport and more if you need to wait in the VAT refund line (we did not).