Paris with three children

[kelda]

We are off to Paris in a couple of weeks for a weekend. The children are 10, 8 and 5. They have asked to see the Eiffel Tower

Any tips of where to go, what to visit?

The Jardin d'Acclimatation is good fun. It's a giant play park with rides and activities. If you take the metro to Porte Maillot, you can then get the 'petit train' to the entrance.

My dd also liked the visit to the sewers Les Egouts de Paris.

Ok thanks, will look both of those up.

We went at Easter - our dc are 11, 9, & 6.

If you can book a time slot to go up the Eiffel Tower, do. Horrendous queues. We climbed the stairs to the second floor, 6yo managed fine.

Louvre massively crowded so we went to the Mona Lisa, the Venus de milo, the Egyptian sphinx, the French Crown Jewels and the cafe . Told the kids what we were going to see and then went hunting for it.

Boat trip on Seine was great. They quite liked the metro too ...

Notre dame - we ended up not going inside; I think you have to get there at the crack of dawn to avoid the miles of queues.

We got the funicular railway up to the sacre coeur at Montmartre - no queues there so we went in (are you sending a theme?) and then there is a road train that takes you round Montmartre - because by then we'd had enough of walking.

We went up the arc de triomphe too, that was cool.

And we went to lots and lots of bakers and cake shops and cafés. Yum.

The paris museums pass is worth looking into - you get to queue-jump.

Versailles is lovely if they need to run off some energy. Beautiful grounds and you can rent rowing boats and bicycles. A train ride too!

Thanks. The Eiffel Tower has been fully booked for a couple of weeks already. We might take the stairs to the first floor or just admire it from the ground

Going up the stairs was surprisingly fun - you get to see a lot more. The very top of the tower was a bit of an anti-climax. The arc-de-triomphe was better for climbing-a-tall-thing-and-looking-out, really. And watching the traffic race around the arc de triomphe was an education in itself.

Kelda, not sure if it's changed re Eiffel Tower but when we went a few years ago with the DCs, the advice from our hotel was to get up early and go and get in the queue about an hour to an hour and a half before the lifts open. No advance booking required, just turn up and buy a ticket.

We bought croissants on the way to the tower and stood in line munching on them while watching hawkers, street artists and all manner of humanity. The time actually passed pretty quick and once the lifts open you move forward really fast because they can get lots of people up there at once. Later in the day it moves slower because they can only let people up as others come down, if that makes sense.

It worked for us as our DCs were horribly early risers so for once we made the most of it. Worth checking if you can still do this.

And if you can't get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, there's the Arc de Triomphe, the Sacre Coeur and the Tour Montparnasse. We went up them all - my kids love a tall building!

Actually the best view was one where you are looking AT the Eiffel Tower not from it!

Mine were younger when we went with them: 8, 7, 4 and 22 months. And it was over a bank holiday so things like the museums were shut. We still had a good time - Eiffel Tower, boat trip on the Seine, walk around the Ile St Louis (island in the Seine) and had a Croque Monsieur, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysee, Place de la Concorde (it helped that I had studied some French history and could talk a bit about these places) Notre Dame. My top tip however, is to climb the dome of the Sacre Coeur. You get a fantastic view of Paris from the top, and it includes the Eiffel Tower (one problem with climbing the Eiffel Tower is that you then don't get a view of it in your photos!)