Paris with Children by Sue Carpenter
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I've been to Paris many times, from my student days when I lived in a garret in Montmartre in exchange for doing the washing up, to more recently staying in a bohemian loft in the 9th and hanging out at the Buddha Bar. But I'd never been with a child until this year, when I took my six-year-old daughter.
Doing a city like Paris with children means cutting your normal agenda and expectations by half. I'm against turning your entire itinerary over to kiddie-orientated activities - although we did take a lovely trip down the Seine on a Vedette du Pont-Neuf, go up the Eiffel Tower (the queues and icy gales making us descend as rapidly as possible), and brave Disneyland (of which more later).
Instead I'd suggest a series of gentle adjustments to your usual modus operandi - do what you like doing, but with more breaks and more bus and metro-hops (activities in themselves) rather than doing the whole thing on foot. What I like doing is browsing the quartiers, eating in street cafes and bistrots, sopping up the ambience. And as long as the browsing included ice-cream stops and quirky things to look at (old barges on the Seine, kitsch souvenir stands, caricaturists in Montmartre), Simi loved it too.
But I also wanted Simi to see the landmark sights. I primed her at home via her storybooks - Madeline, an orphan who lives in Paris, Eloise, a six-year-old American girl who visits Paris, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame - which made sightseeing more like a fun I-Spy tour than a schlep around boring monuments.
Being with her made me see things through fresh eyes: our trip to the Louvre, for example, was less a mission to pack in the famous paintings and sculptures than a holistic experience - the Mona Lisa's bullet-proof glass, the see-through pyramid and the fountains providing more interest than Venus de Milo's harmonious curves.
Top Paris Hotels for Children? Go Luxe...
Then there's the question of finding a child-friendly hotel in Paris. The main revision to my child-free mode was to choose a more expensive hotel. used to go for the cheapest dive in a nice area, given that I'd be out most of the time. Now I've discovered that the swankier the hotel, the more child-friendly the staff are. If your wallet will run to it, I commend to you Le Bristol, that grandest of Paris dames, where the bathrooms are double the size of a bedroom in the Marais, room service is a godsend, and the diversions are endless - revolving doors, doormen who doff their caps, cage lifts that afford views of each floor and a rooftop pool decked out like a yacht.
Visiting a city with a child is an enlightening experience in many ways. You become more attuned to how that city treats children. I became hyper-alert to the existence of public loos, parks, playgrounds, dishes that included vegetables, non-smoking tables, public transport and ice-creams. Paris excels in the final two respects. However, in every other detail it is shockingly deficient.
Few Concessions for Children in Paris...
I had no idea before how few concessions there were for children in Paris. No free rides on buses or entrance to museums. Our researches took us from foie gras and tarte aux fraises at Les Deux Magots to an enormous hotdog baguette amid chain-smoking youths at the Horses Tavern. Charming staff, but not one kids' menu did we see, no opportunity to avoid passive smoking, and precious few greens (unless snuggling under a mound of goats' cheese and croutons).
Until now, I'd never noticed how few little darlings there were in restaurants or on the streets. Lord knows where the poor things go. There are almost no green spaces or free playgrounds like we have in London. All we found was a square with two rocking ducks for toddlers and a sandpit where boys were throwing sand (presumably their only release until they take up smoking at the age of 12).
Maintaining a Child-Friendly Itinerary in Paris
Nevertheless, we blazed a child-orientated trail through Paris. In the afternoon when Simi began to wilt, we'd either go for a swim or head for the Jardin du Luxembourg and pay, yes pay, 2,50 Euros for a rare playground with rope climbing frame, swings and curvy slides (exercise generally proving a better reviver for Simi than a siesta). Then we'd walk over the Pont St Michel to Notre Dame where Simi would cavort in the square, try and spot Quasimodo in the bell tower, and light a candle. Then we'd head to the Ile St Louis for an ice cream at Berthillon.
This route provided the bonus of spontaneous free shows at the weekend. We watched a clown riding trick bicycles, from a wobbly one to a teeny toy one, which had Simi in hysterics. Then we watched the cool kids rollerblading near Notre Dame, slaloming and leaping in thrilling fashion.
When we'd exhausted most of the sights of the city, I capitulated and took Simi to Disneyland. Apart from a heart-stopping start to the day, when she disappeared for 20 minutes (she'd followed Pinocchio, as one does - but thankfully remembered our rule to return to the place where we last saw each other), I loved it as much as she did.
We shrieked on Thunder Mountain, flew in Dumbo, twirled in the Mad Hatter's Teacups, climbed the Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse, and boarded the Mark Twain for a steamboat ride around the lake. Having given up on the notion of healthy eating, we had supper at Planet Hollywood and arrived home dead beat and punch-drunk at 10pm.
On our last day, we had one more classic sight left to experience. The Arc de Triomphe. Simi's storybook heroine Eloise had circled round it in every possible mode of transport, from a tricycle to the roof of a bubble car. Simi didn't just want to look at it - she wanted to go round and round it like Eloise. We persuaded one of Le Bristol's doormen to drive us in one of their natty lime green Smart cars (rentable for only 10 Euros for three hours - if only I'd remembered my driving licence). We whizzed round three times, shot across five lanes of traffic to halt for a photo, and returned to the hotel for a final swim before catching the train home. Now that's the way to do Paris with a child.
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