Any tips for Paris?

[viktoria]

We have been to Paris a few times, with and without children - who are now 16 and 18, so have seen most sights.

Things we definitely want to do this time

• visit Versailles
• Louvre

Older DS is interested in history, younger DS in streetwear/skateboarding.

Does anybody have any interesting tips what to see/do/where to eat?

Spend a whole day at Versailles. Apart from the amazing palace and gardens, there are musical fountain displays, a mini train which tours the gardens, rowing boats, bike hire, animals to stroke etc... A five-minutes train journey from Versailles, in Elancourt, there’s a miniature France with hyper-realistic models which our whole family enjoyed.

The Magic Museum is worth a short visit and entry includes a magic demonstration. The museum also has a large collection of moving mechanical figures.

If you’ve done all the usual stuff, you should consider visiting the Catacombs, because it is interesting, quite impressive and a little creepy. A good kind of creepy, don’t worry! Since only 200 people are allowed inside at a time, you might have to wait for some time. So, the best you can do is to buy your tickets in advance.

We did a cooking class with this company and enjoyed it so much that we went back again for one of the baking classes (we made macarons and croissants). Classes generally last a couple of hours and are in English. They also do food tours. lacuisineparis.com

We did the military museum last time, very interesting. For eats just head to the back streets especially south of Notre dame and there's set menus everywhere from about €12 and up. We sometimes grab food from a bakery (there's a chain that has a lunch meal deal including delicious cakes) and head to a park

The catacombs are pretty cool.

Great tips - thank you so much.
Catacombs sound very interesting, we'll definitely do that.
Magic museum and military museum sound intriguing too. Thank you!

Musee D’Orsay might be more relevant to teenagers than the Louvre. More accessible art. The Mona Lisa is tiny with huge numbers of people trying to find it. Pre book tickets for Musee D’Orsay to avoid long queues.

We also did a River Trip which is always popular. Galleries Lafayette not only has a glorious roof it also has a cafe on a roof terrace. Not cheap but great views. The Opera Garner is an amazing building and exquisite.

The web site Culture Trip (app) has details on where to skateboard! Check that out.

Thanks everybody!
We have just come back and had a great time.
Re-visited a few sites as our kids claimed they couldn't remember (like the Eiffel Tower).
But based on your excellent suggestions we did

• Musée d'Orsay
• Army Museum
• Catacombs
• used the culture trip app (which is great and will use for other cities too)
• Versailles - I did some extra research and found a way to beat the queues.

We booked normal Versailles tickets and on top of that we booked King's Private Apartment tickets (10 Euros each). We had timed entrance for those and our time was 1pm on a Sunday. We arrived at about 12.50. The queues for security for the normal tickets and the skip the line tickets were horrendous - at least 1000 people. We asked for the king's private apartment tour and were directed to a door with NO queue whatsoever. There were about 12 people in our guided tour, which was very informative. We had access to really interesting rooms which are usually off limit, eg the inside of the chapel and it was brilliant. After 90 minutes the tour ended and then we just joined the masses in the other rooms of the palace and the garden.

We also hired electric scooters to get around in Paris (especially on the banks of the Seine, but not advisable on cobbled or very busy streets) which our teenagers loved.