France and Disneyland Paris

[citrusfruit1]

Hi everyone,

I found this forum so helpful with this years holiday so I’m hoping you can help with next years now!

We have booked 2 nights in Disneyland Paris and want to tag this on to another break in France. Ideally we want to get the Eurostar as this seems the easiest way to travel for us. So looking for ideas for 4-5 nights away, somewhere that is easy to get to by train. Open to air BnB in a nice town or more structured centerparcs type holiday. Have two children age 6 and 9 who are used to centerparcs, though me and hubby would quite like a break from that and maybe something more relaxed or cultural, if there’s such a thing with kids. We did think about Paris itself, but not sure it’s very child friendly.

thanks so much for any ideas!

Oh Paris is fabulous for children! The bois de boulogne, the Luxembourg gardens ) wonderful playground), the natural history museum, jardin des plantes and zoo, river trip on a bateau mouche, Trocadero snd Eiffel tower. Crepes, 🥐 croissants, pain au chocolat … They’d love it. And the train goes direct from Disneyland.

… and a carousel tour of Paris can be fun! There is a great one at Sacre Coeur, another at Trocadero, another at the Jardin des Plantes ( with a dinosaur), Tuileries, park Monceau and sometimes at l’Hotel de Ville.

Thank you! Exactly the kind of ideas I need!

There are fun in-ground trampolines in the Tuileries too. Of course they think they are going for that but you know they are absorbing the beauty of the parks and cities by osmosis!

We did 3 nights in Paris before our DLP stay. Was great, the kids enjoyed it just as much as DLP. We stayed near the Gare de Lyon for easy access to trains to DLP and travelling around Paris was easy. We did the Louvre, Eiffel Tower and also Notre Dame, the Pantheon, Jardins du Luxembourg, Champs Elysees and a stadium tour at PSG. It was great, could definitely have stayed longer. A real family friendly city.

We've done a couple of treasure hunts with my dc in the Louvre, through a company called That Muse.
My DC's ultimate favourite place in Paris is Jardin d'Acclimation.

We did Paris a couple of years ago with an 8 and a 10 year old, was a lovely trip. I dragged my kids around many of the museums with the carrot of 2 days at Disney at the end. They enjoyed the catacombs, Arc de triomphe, the Eiffel tower and of course eating macarons, more than say the Louvre or the Rodin museum. Versailles wore them out, but was still worth seeing. The TGV is speedy, so you could pretty much go anywhere. We did France by train in the summer, hopping from Lille (for Olympic basketball) to Disney (Olympics and the parks again), to Giverny, Rouen and Amiens, the trains were great, always perfectly on time but not cheap. TGV has discounts for advance bookings, but not so the routes with slightly slower trains.