August 20 - 28, 2019
Paris, city of lights, city of love. We had a fun filled time here. Come check out our experiences in this lovely city!
Day 0 - The Chunnel from London to Paris
Day 1 - Montmartre and Sacre Coeur
Day 2 - Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees, Arc de Triomphe
Day 4 - Home school
Day 5 - River cruise, Tuileries Garden & Luxembourg Garden
Day 7 - Home school
Taking the Chunnel from London to Paris. It’s the longest underwater tunnel section (23.5mi) in the world, and goes down to 380ft below sea level, 250ft below sea bed. Sometimes you can find cheaper airfare, but where else can you experience an under-the-ocean train tunnel?? Got to our apartment in Paris, nice!
Montmartre and Sacre Coeur - Montmartre is the artists’ neighborhood, high up on the hill on northern part of Paris. Sacre Coeur is a majestic church with an awesome view from the top.
Voyagers tips: The entrance to the top is outside the cathedral. Turn left after security checkpoint and go down the stairs to wait in queue. The sign encourages people to buy tickets at the machine, but the ticket counter might actually be faster, and only the ticket counter offers kids tickets at half price.
Exploring Paris - We hired a local guide to show us around Paris and give us inside scoops. He was great! We walked by Palaise Royal, Lafayette Gourmet, the Opera House, and a few other places. Very nice!
Voyagers tips: www.withlocals.com is a good place to find local tour guides at reasonable prices.
Eiffel Tower, we finally made it!
Voyagers tips: We booked the first time slot in the morning and the line was relatively short — Five minutes through security area and five minutes to get to the stairs. We really enjoyed climbing the stairs instead of the elevator. Book tickets several weeks early to go up to the “summit”, i.e. the top, in peak seasons. We tried purchasing the summit combo tickets a week in advance but had no luck.
Arc de Triomphe - Honors the French soldiers. Champs Elysees - Luxury shopping... but not for us.
Voyagers tips: Some crazy tourists run across traffic in the busy round-about to get to the Arc. Don’t do that! Go through the underground tunnel instead. You need tickets to get to the top for the view, don’t need tickets to walk around the bottom.
Versailles, the palace of all palaces. The grandeur is beyond belief! Over 721,000sf in the palace, the ground with gardens cover 2,014 acres. How would you like a house of this size?
Voyagers tips:
The train (RER-C line) is the best way to get to Versailles. Use City Mapper app to figure out how to connect from metro to the RER-C line to Versailles. Get off at the Versailles Château - Rive Gauche station. Look for the grand entrance to Versailles, which is a 7-10min walk. Note: Don’t follow City Mapper to the Palace of Versailles. Versailles is huge, and the app doesn’t take you to the right entrance. This is the first time CityMapper has failed me.
Book timed-entry tickets in advance for your desired date & time slot. Check their website if you want to see the water display and musical fountain shows; the fountains are turned off during most of the time. We booked the earliest slot (9am) and the line was already getting long at 8:45am. Luckily, the time-entry line (not the main queue) moved very quickly once the door opens.
After getting in early, move quickly past the first few packed rooms and jump to ahead of the crowds, you’ll be able to enjoy the palace much more with less crowd. The “Passport with timed entry” line is the shorter line to the left when facing the palace. Ask the people working there just to be sure.
Guidebooks like Rick Steves recommend touring the gardens in the afternoon and visit the palace late in the day when it’s less crowded. However, golf carts were all gone by mid-afternoon and there was a long line waiting for golf carts (likely >30min wait) to free up when we got back at around 1:30pm. The golf cart was a great way to tour the palace, although you have to stay on prescribed route or the cart alarm will sound. Bikes are available too if your kids are big enough for adult bikes.
Seine river cruise, Tuileries Garden and Luxembourg Garden in Paris. The fun continues.
Voyagers tips: There are a few providers for Seine river cruise, Bateaux Mouches is the largest one. Their ships are large so there’s room to move around, but they’re also popular with tour groups so you can be stuck with big groups. Audio commentary is only audible inside the glass-enclosed (air-conditioned) area downstairs, so you’re left with the choice of being outside or hearing the commentary. Ships leave every 30min and the waiting area is outside, it can get quite unpleasantly hot waiting there in the summer. The view along the way is nice and the cruise lasts about an hour. It’s an enjoyable experience, but not exactly a must-hit if you’re tight on time.
Tuileries Garden is large and beautiful, a pleasant place to spend some time. On a hot summer day, Luxembourg is a nicer park to visit, with lots of shaded area and plenty of chairs for people to sit and relax. Our kids enjoyed playing at the playground and watching others play bocce ball at Luxembourg Garden.
Voyagers tips: Tuileries Garden is right next to Place de la Concorde, and there’s a carnival next to it that kids will enjoy. The playground in Luxembourg costs 3 euros per kid, 1 euro per adult. If you visit Luxembourg Garden, stop by the Amorino ice cream shop just west of the park and get your ice cream flower. It tasted as good as it looked!
Louvre Museum. Full disclosure, our art knowledge is limited; the beauty of most art pieces are lost on us. But this is the Louvre! The long line to see Mona Lisa was painful. We got to enjoy the rest of the museum afterwards. Check out the tips below to optimize your visit.
Voyagers tips:
Entering the Louvre: You can avoid long lines to get into the Louvre through “secret entries”, but information online on these entries are quite confusing. Here’s the real inside scoop. (1) The main entry is through the famous pyramid. This is the longest line. (2) The Porte des Lions entrance is now closed. (3) CARROUSEL DU LOUVRE is the best secret entrance to go through. It’s an underground shopping center connected to the Louvre. You literally walk through the shopping area to get to the Louvre. (4) PORTE DE RICHELIEU - Mainly for tour groups. You can try your luck if you’re not with a tour group. (5) There are forums that talk about a metro stop that’s a secret entrance to the Louvre, but the information is very unclear online. That’s because the metro stop isn’t a separate entrance, it’s a metro stop that’s connected to the Carrousel du Louvre shopping center! We took the metro to the Palais-Royale Musee du Louvre station and took exit 6 (very important to take the right exit), following the sign to Musee du Louvre. This takes you to the Carrousel shopping center. The Louvre-Rivoli station should be connected also, but we didn’t try it. We went in through Carrousel and waited no more than 5 minutes in line to get in.
The trick above only gets you into the Louvre. Once you’re in, there’s a separate line to see Mona Lisa. This is the real disaster of a line, and as far as we know, there’s no way around it. You follow a massive crowd, snaking through various turns on multiple floors, it took us about 40 minutes to finally see the Mona Lisa. And once you’re there, you’re allowed about 2-3 minutes in front of it with a massive crowd and tons of cameras, then you’re forced to move on. It’s crazy. It’s part of the Louvre experience, we suppose. Just for fun, we tried to see if there’s a faster short-cut from other parts of the Louvre, but were not successful… there are guards everywhere making sure this isn’t possible. One thing to note — Our Paris tour guide said they close the line to Mona Lisa at 5pm, an hour before the museum closes.
Which day is best? The Louvre is open on evenings on Wednesday & Fridays, and many guides say these are the best times to visit. We couldn’t get this to work for our itinerary, unfortunately. We opted for Monday afternoon, thinking it should be less crowded than weekends. Turned out many museums are closed on Mondays, so the Louvre gets the spill-over crowd on Mondays. Not sure of the impact of this, but it doesn’t help. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.
