Traveling to Paris With Kids (in April)
It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post because I’ve been doing a weekly podcast for a year and a half now. But I’ve received a lot of questions about our spring break trip to France, particularly about our time in Paris. We had an amazing time in Paris with our kids so I thought a blog post with links would be the most helpful.
We were in France April 7th through 15th. We spent four nights in Paris and four nights in Colmar. Our girls are 8 and 10 years old. This is our second trip to Europe with them. We spent 2 weeks in Italy when they were 4 and 6 years old.
In this post I will share packing tips, Paris recommendations when you have young children, and tips for quickly transitioning your children to a different time zone.
Packing for Paris (particularly in April)
First, I recommend one suitcase and one small carry on (like a backpack) for each family member. This is what we did for both two weeks in Italy and for 9 days in France. When you have kids, too much luggage makes navigating the airport and moving between cities much more challenging. My husband and I each took a large Away suitcase and I packed each of the girls in a rolling carryon suitcase (that we checked). By packing them in carryon size suitcases, they were able to roll their own suitcase or my husband and I could easily pull our own, plus theirs. This made getting through the airport and train station much easier.
I have to brag a bit – I absolutely nailed packing for Paris/France in April. I did a good amount of research and in the end we had everything we needed and nothing we didn’t use. Here’s my Paris / France packing list for April:
A pair of tennis shoes – my girls wore their Asics and I wore my Allbird Tree Runners. I swear by Allbirds for walking around cities.
A pair of flats we could wear to dinner and comfortably walk all over the city in. I have loved Rothy’s for years and decided to get my girls each a pair before this trip. They LOVE them. If you’re new to Rothy’s THIS LINK will get you $20 off. I have several pairs, but this was the pair I purchased ahead of this trip and I got each of my girls a pair of these in black. Because it’s often rainy and chilly in April, I also got a pair of Rothy black boots, but they are no longer available to link to.
Since spring is rainy in Paris, we each had a rain coat and we took two umbrellas.
We also each took a spring jacket (the girls are wearing theirs in the picture above) and I had a few lightweight scarves that we definitely used on cooler mornings.
As far as clothes, for our 9 day trip we each had 4 pairs of pants, a casual top for each day, 2 sweaters for layering, 2 dresses for dinners, a couple nicer tops for dinners, 2 pairs of pajamas, and our swim suits (our Paris hotel had an indoor pool). We wore layers each day – top, sweater, and jacket or rain coat. We carried my Away backpack (this is the current version of what I have) packed with umbrellas, scarves, and a few protein bars and CHOMPS sticks. Then we put layers we took off in there during the day.
I purchased this crossbody bag (oversized) and loved using it as my daily purse. It held my wallet, phone charger pack, and my little pouch that held bandaids, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, lipgloss, and earbuds.
Other items I highly recommend using/packing:
Kids travel journal – my 8 year old wrote in it every night at dinner and the game pages also kept them entertained at dinners
Bag trackers – we put one of these in each of our checked bags
Portable phone charger – the came in handy multiple times
European plug adapter – I actually took one that didn’t have a voltage converter and it was fine for phones, but fried my hair straightener … so make sure you get one that converts like the one I linked to here
Great kids travel pillow – this fit in their backpacks easily and we also put their toddler pillows in their backpacks and they used them on the plane and at the hotel
My girls didn’t need these for this trip, but when we went to Italy, we used these vests instead of boosters or carseats and they are awesome and super easy to pack.
Family Friendly Paris Recommendations
This Paris pocket book is awesome. It helped us plan the trip and we carried it with us every day. On the first afternoon we were in Paris, we did Rick Steve’s walking tour that is in this book and I highly recommend it. We downloaded his audio version and just listened to it on my phone as we walked the tour.
There are a lot of river cruise options, but if you have kids I highly recommend booking Vedettes-De-Paris’ Families in Paris river cruise. It allowed us to choose a time (11am), it was a great length, and the guide did a nice job balancing interesting info for adults and kids. Plus, the kids got crepes and the adults got champagne!
We talked to several people who told us to skip the Louvre with kids and instead visit Musee d’Orsay. I can’t compare our experience to the Louvre, but I would highly recommend Musee d’Orsay. It’s very manageable to walk through the entire museum with kids. We downloaded Rick Steve’s tour for this as well. We each put one earbud in and followed his tour which was great and not too much for the kids.
You should absolutely visit The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre. Walk through the church and pay the small fee to walk the 290+ steps up to the dome. Then, be sure to exit towards the shopping square. We met lovely artists and had our girls’ portraits sketched. After spending time in the artist square we walked down to a charming area with shops and restaurants on Rue Des Abbesses .
Let’s Talk About Food
We ate plenty of good food (really only ate at one bad tourist trap), but four spots I think are truly worth mentioning:
L’Atelier Rouliere was delicious and the service was fantastic.
La Chalet des Iles is a charming lunch location. You take a boat across the pond to get to it and the food was great.
Angelina Paris is definitely a tourist spot and we stood in a long line, BUT the line moved much faster than I ever would have anticipated, the hot chocolate was truly amazing, and the pastries were fabulous. The brunch/breakfast dishes we ordered were all good and the kids just loved this place.
Laduree has the most amazing macarons I’ve ever tasted. I am not actually a huge macarons fan, but I’ve been craving these ever since we popped in here. I’m linking to the location we visited, but it looks like there are several in the city.
Quick Tips For Shifting Your Child’s Sleep Schedule
When heading to Paris from the United States, most people fly overnight and arrive in Paris in the morning. This is ideal. Those of us on the east coast typically leave around 6:30/7 P.M. If that’s your situation, plan to feed your children dinner before you board the plane and then try to get them to fall asleep as soon as possible. When we flew to Italy when the girls were 4 and 6 years old I had both girls asleep before dinner was served and then they made me wake them to land. It was amazing. Now that my girls are a bit older, it was actually a bit harder. We took off at 6:30 P.M. and I think they were asleep between 8/8:30 P.M.
We landed in Paris at 8:30 A.M. (2:30 A.M back home) and we hit the ground running. We took a taxi into Paris (fixed rate so it’s an easy way to go), dropped our bags at the hotel, and headed straight out to lunch. Then we went right on our walking tour. We all caught a second wind after lunch. We ate dinner at 7 P.M. and then we all came back and collapsed into bed. I set an alarm to wake us up at 8:30 A.M. and we got outside to get natural sun exposure ASAP.
Those are the two key steps – power through that first day (spending time outside so you get lots of natural light exposure) and shoot for a normal-ish bedtime and then force yourself and your children to get up in the morning and get back outside. If you have children who no longer nap, this is the way to go.
If you have a napper, let them nap in their normal window when you arrive…. again, wake them at the time they would normally wake from a nap.
When we went to Italy, I did this same approach, but Ainsley (4 years old at the time) could NOT fall asleep at bedtime because her body thought it was afternoon. I just laid with her in the dark hotel room from 8pm until she fell asleep at 1 A.M. and then I still woke her at 8:30 A.M. That next day she did take a stroller nap midday, but I didn’t let her sleep too long and she went to bed fine that second night and then was all set. If your child is having trouble falling asleep that first night, the key is keeping their body in the dark room and waking them in the morning to help shift their circadian rhythm.
There you have it – those are my Paris travel tips. I hope you found this helpful and I hope you have an amazing time exploring Paris with your kids.
Looking for more sleep tips or parenting solutions? Check out the How Long ‘Til Bedtime podcast.