One week in the south of France with kids during lavender season

Planning a road trip around the south of France in July? We spent three days in the French Riviera and four in Provence during lavender season, and it was unbelievably gorgeous. Highlights: Nice, Arles, Roussillon, Gordes and Bonnieux

Note: This post holds the dubious distinction of longest time between trip and writing about trip. Reason? General life insanity, of course. We spent a week in France, pretty much came home to do laundry, then left for five weeks in the United States less than one week later, then came back to (somehow) even more insanity: Operation Allies Refuge, job interviews for Chris, various panicked trips once we realized we’d be leaving, etc. 

Frolicking through Provence during lavender season has been a bucket list item of mine for a while, and this past summer we had the chance to make it happen! It was as pretty as I envisioned, and we got some great family photos taken by the extremely talented Ashley at Curious Provence. I highly recommend that you schedule a shoot with her if you are heading to Provence with kids. Not only will you end up with gorgeous photos taken in a field NOT swarming with tourists (I’m looking at you L’Abbaye de Senanque), but she will have other useful information about swarms. Specifically, the epic swarms of bees.

Yeah, for some reason it never occurred to me that “frolicking through the lavender fields” would mean chilling with I think is most accurately described as a metric fuckton of bees.

I have never seen so many bees, and I’ve literally hung out with bee keepers on several occasions (small town journalism, what can I say?).

The good news? Ashley informed us that the bees would not bother us in the slightest, presumably because they were busy getting jacked up on that sweet, sweet lavender goodness. This also turned out not to be a lie designed to get us to smile for photos, as we ran through these flowers for more than an hour with no issues whatsoever. Yay! So even if you happen to have a crippling fear of bees, it really is no big deal, promise.

But, to back up: this incident — and also the unfortunate situation that resulted in us paying Ashley partially in a large amount of coins — was actually in the middle of our trip. So, let’s start with:

One week in the south of France with kids: our itinerary

Note: Some of what we planned did not end happening because of Covid (Monoco) or because Lochlan got sick and we were stuck at our house (Avignon)

Day 1: Fly into Nice in the morning, check into our Old Town AirBnB and wander the city (focus on parks!)

Day 2: The beach!

Day 3: Phoenix Park

Day 4: Road trip to Curcuron, family photos near Bonnieux

Day 5: Carriere des Lumieres in Les Baux de Provence, visit to Arles

Day 6: Lochlan sick! We stayed in our AirBnB most of the day as he recovered. Poor fella.

Day 7: Roussillon (the red city), Gordes

Day 8: Flew home from Marseilles

Visiting the French Riviera.

We originally intended to come to the Riviera and Provence in July 2020, when — after much debate — we ended up selecting France for a big family reunion with my parents and siblings. We rented the most gorgeous house in Cannes, and I’m still a little sad we never got to go together. Still, the five of us had a lovely time in Nice in 2021! We did not go to Monaco as planned — we intended to visit the oceanographic museum, see various gardens, and hunt for Prince Rainer’s fancy cards on display around the city — because at the time people were required to get PCR tests to enter. That was a hard NOPE from all five of us.

WHAT TO DO IN NICE WITH KIDS

NOTE: I would like to give a shout out to our AirBnB, which — despite its fourth floor walkup location — was basically the ideal location in Old Town Nice. The only thing I will tell you, particularly if you are traveling with your school-age kids, is that the bedroom doors do not lock. That’s all I will say, but consider yourself warned.

1. Promenade du Papillion. Our AirBnB was very close to this park and we visited it every day. It’s various wooden climbing structures were shaped like animals and way fun, plus we found trampolines and a water fountain to play in. Crowd-pleasers, all. 2. Visited the beach at Castel Plage! Right off the bat, I will warn you that the beaches in Nice are rocky. I knew this going in, but when the time came to decide about whether to pack our water shoes, they still didn’t make the cut. (We didn’t bring much luggage). That said, this particular beach experience was AWESOME because we uncharacteristically went fancy.

We originally planned to seek out a sandy beach in one of the nearby towns, but when the day came around we just couldn’t seem to mobilize. Instead, we ended up going to Castel Plage, where we promptly looked like hayseeds by trying to order something at the bar and were told by our horrified “beach boy” (this is verbatim how he identified himself) that this was HIS JOB. So a couple minutes later we had a bucket of ice with a bottle of wine, some snacks and three lounge chairs.

Lochie, being an amazing baby, reverted back to his traditional beach self-defense mode of immediately falling asleep on us. Honestly, that’s pretty much like having a babysitter so we were psyched. The big kids, meanwhile, were delighted by the rocks and sat there for approximately 100 years gathering up different varieties into a collection.

Getting into the water was a bit of a challenge because we didn’t have water shoes, but not nearly as challenging as getting out. Luckily, the beach club had helpfully supplied a rope so people could drag themselves out. The water itself was perfect though (other than the occasional jellyfish).

The big kids also got a nice international bonding moment with some French children who spotted some jellyfish. In the spirit of international cooperation, they all picked up rocks and started wildly chucking them at them (the jellyfish, not the children).

3. Visited Parc Phoenix, a botanical garden and zoo (with an adventure park!)

This one was another crowd pleaser, and not just because Lochie got to use public transit to get there. There was also a high ropes course! We found a lot of these in the last five years, and the big kids always love them.

If you are going to Nice with kids, this place is absolutely worth a visit! We stayed for hours.

4. Walked along the Promenade Des Anglais! This 4-mile long promenade runs along the coast and the goal is to drink in the scenery. I actually came out here for a jog a couple mornings because it was so pretty. This is notable because jogging is NOT my favorite activity.

5. ATE! We had some great meals in Nice, and the top of the list was Pamir, an Afghani restaurant steps from our apartment. There was also a number of excellent bakeries in the area, a crepes joint called Creperie Le Trimaran, and a gelato shop run by a Sicilian close to our place. Regrettably, it has been so long that I don’t have all the names. Sorry, team! Definitely hit Pamir though.

We rented a car on our last day in Nice, and hit the road inland.

Four days in Provence with kids

When planning our four days in Provence, I really struggled with finding the perfect location for an Airbnb. Regular readers will know I am a strong advocate of setting up a home base for as long as possible when traveling with kids, so when visiting Provence I wanted to select one place and launch all day trips from there. Eventually, I settled on a farm stay in Cucuron. The house itself was not great, but the grounds were absolutely beautiful. (Bonus, I got to bust out my extremely terrible high school French because the landlord did not speak English). The beautiful grounds ended up being critical because mid-trip Lochie got sick (per usual) so we were confined to the property while he recovered. Fortunately, there were ample grounds to explore, a (FREEZING) spring-fed pool to swim in and various livestock to enjoy. Critically there were also three dogs, two of which were amazing for the kids to play with. Months later, I still hear talk of the famous Gatsby the Dog.

So, what did we do while in Provence? Here you go.

1. Visited Carriere des Lumieres.
   This place was truly incredible. I know these sort of projection art displays are common in the US right now, but I assure you that this place was like nothing I’ve seen before. It was held in an old quarry and thus the art was projected on an enormous scale. It really did feel like you were walking through the paintings. Unfortunately Lochie found the experience a little “scawy,” and Owen thought the music was too loud, so Chris ended up taking the boys out. My little artist, Fiona, would have stayed forever.
2. Walked around Arles
   After our visit to Carriere des Lumieres, we had a nice visit to Arles!Van Gogh lived in this gorgeous town and produced more than 300 paintings here in the late 1880s. We just walked around for a while, spent some time at the park, ate lunch and checked out the iconic Arles Amphitheatre. When the Romans built this around 90AD, it held about 20,000 spectators to watch chariot races and gladiator battles.

   

3. Roussillon. The red town! This town can only be described as otherworldly. Roussillon sits on a massive ochre deposit, which gives its cliffs a red hue. We walked on the Ochre Trail, which was absolutely lovely and exactly the right length. And now, I’m going to let the photos do the talking.

   

4. Gordes. After Roussillon, we made a quick stop at the Abbeye de Senanque in nearby Gordes. The abbey is a fixture of Provence photography, but was under construction while we were there. We ended up just hanging out a bit, buying some handmade lavender stuff and moving on. I think we would have been more impressed if we hadn’t already spent some time playing in a lavender field a few days before.
5. Hung out around our AirBnB. I was very excited to go to Avignon on our third day in Provence, but unfortunately Lochie came down with a bug and we ended up staying home. Fortunately, we picked a beautiful location to be housebound for the day! The kids had a fun day running around the pond, chasing ducks, swimming in the spring-water pond, trying out bocce and playing with the dogs.  

6. 

   

   

   

   

   Another highlight was definitely watching soccer! The Euro 2020 (obviously played in 2021 because of the pandemic) was on while we were in France, so we had a great time cheering on Italy to victory!

7. Enjoyed Cucuron. We picked an AirBnB near Cucuron mainly because of its central location in Provence, but wow — did it turn out to be gorgeous. We walked into town each day, mostly to grab pastry and bread.

   

   We also had our best meal in France by a longshot at a tiny restaurant on our very last night in town. I had duck, Chris had a burger that he still dreams about. The kids had gelato for what turned out to be the third time that day, but what can I say? It came with the meal.

8. Photo shoot near Bonnieux. I talked about our photo shoot with Ashley at Curious Provence already, but I wanted to close by throwing a few more photos up from our wonderful shoot with her!

Well, that about does it for our France trip (9 months after we got back!), but since I can’t resist: here are some final favorite photos. Try saying those last three words three times fast.

The post Bucket list trips: Lavender season in Provence with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

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Three weeks ago, we visited the Strasbourg Christmas markets as part of a three-day trip that included a visit to the Frankfurt Christmas markets. I was really looking forward to this post because I absolutely loved the Strasbourg Christmas markets, even more than the Frankfurt ones (which were also excellent).

And then, Dec. 11 happened. Another asshole terrorist attacked the Christmas market in Strasbourg, killing three and injuring 12.

And now? I don’t know what exactly to say. It feels — what? Insensitive? Tone deaf? Wrong? to describe with the usual excitement about this place that we loved so much, not when something so awful happened a few days later.

But at the same time, I want to write about our experience there. Because Christmas in Strasbourg — which bills itself as the “Capital of Christmas” — is absolutely gorgeous. And so is the city itself. And one scumbag doesn’t change that.

So, why visit the Strasbourg Christmas markets?

We first decided to go to the Frankfurt Christmas markets based in part on our schedule and available non-stop flights (fun fact, we haven’t taken a trip with a layover all year). Visiting the Alsace region of France has been on my radar for a while now, and once I realized how close we’d be to the border in Frankfurt, I started looking into the Strasbourg. And I was wowed. 

Strasbourg has been holding Christmas markets near its most iconic site, the Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg, since 1570. It has nine markets all over the city center, all within easy walk of one another. But what blew us away most of all were the Christmas lights. This place was completely coated with lights, probably the most impressive displays I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And I’m not usually one to get all that worked up over lights.

We actually did much less shopping here than we did in Frankfurt just because a) shopping honestly isn’t our favorite thing and b) it was too gorgeous to do much but look.

And ride the carousel. Because there’s always a carousel and we always have to ride it.

How we got to Strasbourg:

We drove. As I think I mentioned, we rented a car at the airport in Frankfurt, parked during the time we were in Frankfurt and then drove it the roughly 2 hours and 20 minutes to the Strasbourg Christmas markets. We actually did look at trains between the cities, but scheduling didn’t work out for us and it would have been more expensive than the 80 euro or so we paid (plus gas) to just rent the car. Plus we didn’t have to pay for a cab to our hotel when we got in late in Frankfurt Friday night.

Where we stayed in Strasbourg:

We stayed at the Aparthotel Adagio Access Petit France for free using a free night certificate I had from hotels.com (a full round up of the 20 free nights we stayed places this year to come next week!). Fancy it was not, but it was only a few minutes’ walk to the Petit France neighborhood of Strasbourg and all the Christmas markets. And we booked a place with separate sleeping spaces for us and the kids, which was a relief. 

What we ate in Strasbourg:

Similar to Frankfurt, we ate pretty much everything in sight at the Christmas markets themselves. Among the top options were crepes, waffles and bretzels, the sweet version of the pretzels in Frankfurt. And, obviously, gluhwein.

As for restaurants, we had a fabulous meal at Au Petit Bois Vert in the evening! Even the kids ate. Woohoo.

What we did at the Strasbourg Christmas markets:

As I said, mostly we wandered around looking at the lights. But we also hit the Place Kléber for the lighting of the largest of the Strasbourg’s three Christmas trees, which stands at a minimum of 30 meters (roughly 98 feet). There was also ice skating in the Place Kleber, but after watching a kid fall down and soak his pants on some melted ice in there, we declined to participate.

Along the way, we made it through a whole bunch of the different Christmas markets. If you go, I recommend picking up a guide somewhere along the way — we got one at the hotel — to give you a bit of a checklist for spots you want to see (like the street decorated with lit up with Christmas light-shaped barrels!). If not, just follow the crowds … or the “reindeer prints” stamped on the ground in various places.

We spent a little less than 24 hours in Strasbourg, but it was our favorite part of the trip. If you are going to be anywhere near Alsace, don’t miss the opportunity to visit.

The post Strasbourg Christmas markets: a bittersweet post first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Strasbourg Christmas markets: a bittersweet post appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

What to see in Paris in just ONE DAY

Wondering what to see in Paris in one day? Our second day in Paris was, to me, an almost-perfect example of what I’d suggest someone do if they only had one day in the City of Light. As a reminder, my friend Shaina and I spent about three days in Paris together at the end of March in what was my first trip without my kids since they were born. To read about our full itinerary, click here.

Given that Shaina arrived mid-day Thursday, left early Sunday and spent a good chunk of Saturday one our ill-fated Versailles trip, we really only had one full day exclusively in Paris. I’d say it is safe to say we wrung every single bit of Paris out of that day that we could, leaving our apartment by 9 and returning well after 11 p.m. If you are wondering what to see in Paris in one day — well, this is pretty much what I’d suggest!

What to see in Paris in one day (in a modest 11 stops)

Stop 1: Musee de l’Orangerie

I’m not a huge art person generally, but I believe I can say that the Musee de L’Orangerie is my favorite art museum not only in Paris, but in the world. (Though the Musee d’Orsay is a very, very close second). We’d meant to go to Orangerie on our first day in Paris, but it ended up being closed as a result of the transportation strikes. On Friday, then, it was our very first stop.

Monet’s eight enormous water lily paintings were as achingly beautiful as I remembered from 11 months before, and it was nice to have the chance to appreciate them — and the other works on display — without interruption. I won’t wax poetic too much about this place since I already did that in this post, but suffice it to say that we both loved it. If you are wondering what to see in Paris in one day, Musee de L’Orangerie is a good choice because it has incredible works of art but is also fairly small — easy to take in on a quick trip.

If seeing the Mona Lisa is on your bucket list and you opt for a visit to the Louvre instead, I’d suggest you check out fellow blogger Shivani’s post on interesting facts about the Louvre first.

Stop 2: Musee Rodin

Despite being on my fifth visit to Paris, I’d never been to the Musee Rodin. I know, I know. Anyway, as you could have probably guessed from the name, the museum is dedicated to the works of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The museum is inside Rodin’s old home and the adjacent Hotel Biron, which he used as a workshop. The real show-stopper, however, was gardens and that’s where we focused most of our time.

While I enjoyed the Musee Rodin’s gardens immensely, we ended up bailing on the inside of the museum after a little while because we (or at least I?) turned out to be less interested in sculpture than I could be. Consequently, this is the only stop of the day that I’d say you could easily cut out if you were looking to spend a little more time doing other things. Though if you are traveling with children and have time, I could see it as being a good stop just because the kids would have the freedom to run around in the gardens a bit — always a positive.

Stop 3: Les Invalides

Stopping by Napoleon’s Tomb actually wasn’t on our radar for this trip because we just didn’t think we had time. However, considering we were already right next to it at the Musee Rodin, we opted to do a quick pop-in to see Napoleon’s Tomb. This was made possible by having the Paris Museum Pass; without it, we’d probably have hesitated to spend the money.

We did not go into the War Museum at Les Invalides, but I highly recommend it if you have time (I wrote about it here). Even my kids thought it was awesome, and Owen even threw a tantrum on the train to Tours when we found out we wouldn’t be going back there the next day. It comes down to what you are more interested in — art vs. history — but if you don’t feel like visiting the Musee Rodin, you could replace it with a visit here.

Stop 4: Lunch at Le Bosquet

Shaina’s parents are Paris enthusiasts, and before our trip gave Shaina a list of places they suggested we eat. Not a single one of them disappointed! For lunch we opted to try a restaurant from their list, Le Bosquet, a less than 15-minute walk from Les Invalides.

Like most of the food we ate in France, it was spectacular! I had an amazing filled pasta with an herb sauce and topped with bacon, while Shaina had the best French onion soup I’ve ever tasted. And, of course, wine.

Also had a fun incident while there … take a look at this picture below of this weird box in the middle of the restaurant. Take a moment to decide what you think it is.

Broom closet? Garbage receptacle? Sorry, if you answered anything other than “vanishing cabinet” you’d be wrong.

We were sitting right near this thing, not giving it much thought at all. Until all of the sudden a waiter came over and climbed into what, we’d assumed, was a garbage can. We never saw him climb out again either. After some wine we got around to asking our waiter what the hell was up with the guy climbing into the garbage, but he seemed to find our interest … odd? Go figure. Anyway, apparently there are stairs in there and it leads to a changing room.

Seriously though, food was excellent. Le Bosquet: eat here.

Stop 5: The Eiffel Tower

“Oh my God, is it that obvious?” a teenage girl, standing at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, said to Shaina and I.

The question had been whether she was from Indiana, and apparently the high schooler was horrified by the idea that we might be able to — I don’t know? Smell the farm on her? Something?

We gently reminded her that she was wearing an Indiana hoodie.

This particular story has almost nothing to do with the Eiffel Tower except as a backdrop, but for some reason it was the funniest damn thing in the world at the time.

Anyway, naturally if you only have one day in Paris you need to go see the Eiffel Tower. It’s practically mandatory. We opted to see it from the ground rather than waiting in line and shelling out a bunch of money to go on up, and I don’t think we were missing anything too much by doing that.  I do suggest, however, that if you do with children you take some time to go up. My two are still telling random people about “that time we were on the Eiffel Tower’s HEAD” and that was almost a year ago now.

If at all possible, I’d also suggest going to see the Eiffel Tower at night. It is nice enough in the day, but at night it is magnificent. At the top of every hour, it also sparkles.

Stop 6: Sainte-Chapelle (sort of)

Well, Saint Chapelle is sort of “the one that got away” for this trip. I blame Google.

After the Eiffel Tower, we’d opted to take a long walk to Sainte Chapelle so that we could take in the city as we walked. We even stopped for coffee, thinking we had time. Unfortunately, once we arrived we found that the place actually closed an hour earlier than we’d thought. Sob! Here’s a post about Sainte-Chapelle from our last visit, however.

That said, if you are planning out what to see in Paris in one day, please try not to miss Sainte-Chapelle! It is incredible, but for some reason I feel like people (at least those in my life) tend to skip it. Don’t do that! Also … maybe check the hours on the official website. Face palm.

Stop 7: Notre Dame

Perhaps the second-most recognizable building in Paris is Notre Dame, which was completed in 1345 after almost 200 years of work. I guess they figured if they were going to do the thing, they might as well put the time in to do it right? Anyway, it is gorgeous.

From Sainte Chapelle, Notre Dame is only an 8-minute walk (they are both on the Ile de la Cite) so seeing both is definitely both doable and a good idea if you are wondering what to see in Paris in one day!

Stop 8: Walk around Ile Saint Louis and ate Berthillon Glacier

Within Paris, there are two natural islands in the middle of the Seine. You’ll find Saint Chapelle and Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite, but right next to it you’ll find Ile Saint-Louis. This one is worth a visit too for shopping, eating and a quintessential Paris feel.

The end goal of the visit to Ile Saint Louis was a visit to the famed Berthillon Glacier for ice cream! As we could have expected, it was spectacular. If you are in the area, it is definitely worth a stop.

Stop 9: Visit Pierre Marcolini on Rue Saint-Honore

So yeah, this was a somewhat food-oriented day. And it was FANTASTIC! Pierre Marcolini was another “one that got away” for Chris and I, but on our trip to Belgium in February. We’d actually almost ordered some online, but ended up being unable to stomach the shipping costs. So when Shaina mentioned that her parents had suggested going here, I jumped at the chance! I had no idea they ever had Pierre Marcolini shops outside of Brussels, so naturally I celebrated by buying practically all the chocolate they had. NOM. What to see in Paris with one day.

Visiting the shop also gave us a chance to stroll down Rue Saint Honore, which was a cool street with a top of upscale shopping. Too rich for our budget, but fun to look!

Stop 10: Seine Cruise

River cruises on the Seine are a popular way of seeing the city, but it was a first for me. We opted for the cruise both so that we could see more the city at night (gorgeous) and because after a long day of walking, we figured we would be ready to sit for a bit. We were correct about that.

There are plenty of river cruise options at very levels of fanciness, including some dinner cruises. We opted to take a low-key and affordable ride with Bateaux Mouches. Since it was shoulder season and pretty chilly, we were able to pop right onto a boat and had probably less than two dozen companions with us. The views were spectacular, though hard to capture in the dark from a moving boat. It was quite cold so I stayed inside near the heater for the most part, but I think the summer it would have been nice to be in the open air.

Stop 11: Dinner at Le Cambodge

Oh, Cambodge. Another meal that, weeks later, Shaina and I are both still dreaming about.

We picked this Cambodian restaurant on a whim, based on good reviews online and its proximity to Gare du Nord (about 15 minutes, or 6 minute from Gare de L’est). It ended up being one of the best meals we ate in France! Tragically, I don’t seem to have any photos of this. Probably because we were too busy stuffing our faces. Which is harder to do when you’ve never used chopsticks before (that’s me), but I managed.

We both ordered the restaurant’s specialty, bobun, and I’d suggest you do the same. It was basically a bowl of noodles, salad, beef with the most incredible seasoning, vegetables and a special sauce. They also cut up egg rolls and throw them in there as well and oh man, my mouth is watering even as I write this.

Neither Shaina nor I had ever heard of “bobun,” but according to Shaina’s research it seems to be something that was started by Cambodian restaurants specifically in Paris rather than something traditionally Cambodian. Either way, it was great.

Note: If you really only have ONE DAY in France, you might prefer a specifically French meal (though Cambodge is, of course, French — I guess I just meant more what you’d picture as a traditional French meal). If so, I’d suggest checking out Chez Casimir, which I talked about in this post.

Since I did these posts rather out of order, this concludes my wrap-up of my trip to Paris with Shaina! (You can see my other posts about this here: Day 1, Day 3, 3-day itinerary, and Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it?).  To that end, I want to say once again how I lucky I feel to have had this experience with one of my favorite people. Who also happens to be an ideal travel companion, by the way! Never would I have imagined when I first met Shaina in birth class six years ago, both massively pregnant, that we’d end up running around Paris together down the road. I’m also so grateful to my husband, who not only supported me in wanting to do this, but encouraged it. You’re the best, honey!

The post Day Two, or What to see in Paris in one day first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Day Two, or What to see in Paris in one day appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Today, I recap day three of my recent adults-only (for a change!) trip to France with my friend Shaina, which featured a day trip from Paris to Versailles. You can read our full itinerary here, but in the meantime please feel free to congratulate us for not smacking any pushy tourists at Versailles. 

When planning our day trip from Paris to Versailles, I had a lot of expectations for what we’d see: opulence, extravagance and excess in gorgeous room after gorgeous room of the fabulous Versailles Palace. What I did not expect was the following:

1. That we’d end up furtively eating about $12 worth of the famous Laduree macarons (each) as lunch in the corner of a Versailles courtyard mid-afternoon because of A Series of Unfortunate Food Events.
2. That I’d feel the almost uncontrollable urge to knock out not one but SEVERAL small women in perhaps their mid-60s.

“Almost” uncontrollable because I settled for planting my feet and refusing to move a couple times just to be an asshole instead of decking these women, which I think should be considered admirable restraint under the circumstances. Shaina, on the other hand, settled for whacking a probably unrelated person in 20s with her gigantic camera in what she stubbornly insists on calling “an accident.” Either way, you’d have to hope a message was sent to the crowd at large.

So, how did we get here? Let’s rewind, folks.

So, when planning our trip to Paris we knew it would be difficult to fit in everything we wanted to see in what amounted to two-and-a-half days. We also knew that we were determined to do a day trip to Versailles, even if it took half a day. Shaina had always wanted to see it, and my interest had recently been reignited by binge-watching two seasons of a show about Versailles on Netflix. (By the way, we didn’t see nearly as many men with gorgeous, shiny, flowing locks OR drunken fountain orgies OR poisonings as I’d been led to expect by this high-quality, educational program.)

The build-up to our day trip from Paris to Versailles: A visit to Montemartre. 

Saturday started auspiciously enough — since the Trianon properties (grande and petite) we also intended to visit at Versailles weren’t open until the afternoon, we’d opted to leave Versailles until a little later in the day. Thus, we started out day with a visit to another of my favorite places in Paris: Montemartre.

This trendy neighborhood, which is perched upon a hill in Paris’s 18th Arrondissement, has traditionally been home to artists. It is also the location of the magnificent Basilica Sacre Couer, which is newer than many of Paris’s other famous churches but every bit as gorgeous. I talked a little about this area in a post from last year here.

(Psssst. You can find more Montmartre off the the beaten path from a fellow blogger here!)

We had a lovely breakfast, visited Sacre Coeur and had a nice morning walking around the arts market right next to the church. Perfect beginning to the day.

Things got a little messier after that.

So, we got a little confused by signage as to what train we should get on, which led to us panic-jumping onto a train and then asking the people around us if it was the right one. At least one dude thought it was, but wasn’t nearly as convicted about it as he could have been. Fortunately, it turned out we were indeed on the correct one (albeit stopping at Versailles-Chantiers, rather than Versailles Rive-Gauche as we would have preferred). And so we figured our train issues were done for the day.

Nope. Things went smoothly for the first few stops, until we came to a station and stopped moving. I’d like to mention that I’ve almost never found not speaking French well to be a problem in Paris because practically everyone knows English, but on this particular occasion the announcement of what was going on was exclusively in French.

Eventually, we learned that a backpack had been abandoned on the tracks (or bridge?) ahead of us and that we’d be stopped until the police investigated. Right about the time we learned this, we realized we could hear an awful lot of police sirens outside. Lovely. We spent a solid 30 minutes sitting there trying to figure out the French version of Uber (LeCab) since I couldn’t remember my damned Uber password, figuring we needed a backup plan if the train never started moving again. Mercifully, by the time we were thoroughly disgusted with our inability to get the app to work, the train started moving again at last.

We’d originally decided that we wanted to get lunch in the town before visiting Versailles. After our delays getting on the train to Versailles and then again while riding the train, we’d realize that we no longer had time for a sit-down lunch as planned and decided to grab a sandwich along the way. Which led to problem two: almost everything was closed midafteroon. The couple shops that appeared to be open didn’t look great, but we figured we’d keep walking and find something. When that didn’t pan out, we again weren’t too worried — every museum has a little cafe. We’d just stop in the one at Versailles, we reasoned.

Day trip to Versailles: visiting the palace

Visiting in the low/shoulder season meant that it was pretty chilly in Paris during our visit, but also meant that we waited in very few lines at attractions during the trip. It never even occurred to me that our day trip to Versailles would be different.

I don’t even need to say that this was a mistake at this point, do I?

Anyway, there was of course an epic line of people. Fortunately, despite its terrifying looks it didn’t take too much more than 20 minutes to get in (at least according to Shaina, whose memory is better than mine and whose guess is undoubtedly more accurate than the 200 minutes I’d estimated. I’m not always super reasonable when I’m hungry).

First order of business when we finally got in (other than to decide to blow off the audio guide because we couldn’t stand the idea of waiting even longer) was to ask someone where we might find a place to buy a sandwich. To our surprise, we were told the only place to eat was an actual restaurant on the property and that — imagine a look of disdain here — we couldn’t eat a sandwich (or anything) INSIDE the palace.

This is the type of moment, by the way, where someone who recognized what we were after might mention “but there’s tons of places to grab a sandwich just outside in the palace gardens.” This particular Versailles employee just wasn’t all that invested, however.

Salvation came in just a moment later when we realized there was indeed one place to buy food in our immediate vicinity. And that place actually was somewhere we’d intended to visit in the city — what luck! The famous macaron company Laduree, however, pretty much only sold macarons at this Versailles mini-location.

From here I assume you can fill in the blanks as to how we ended up huddled in a corner of the courtyard cramming expensive macarons into our mouths before we got busted. They were delicious though, and I assume that isn’t just the desperation talking.

Day trip from Paris to Versailles: inside the palace

Possibly it was a good thing that we got all jacked up on sugar, because our next step was actually entering the palace and HOLY COW.

It was a jungle in there.

To start, there were just about a million people in the place. Consequently, everywhere you went you did as part of a sea of people, with not a whole hell of a lot of control over pace. Regardless of everything else, that would have been annoying.

But then there were these older ladies. I don’t know if they were there as a tour group or if a bunch of similarly rude people just happened to congregate at the same place at the same time, but these women were literally shoving us. Not even so much to get around us so much as to push us forward. And for the record, we were going at the same pace as literally everyone else.

You know those people that, when stopped in traffic, immediately start honking constantly as if that will somehow make a space for you to go magically appear? Now imagine if that person in the car also decides to start running into the back of your car while beeping. That was these women.

So yeah, I can’t say we really enjoyed the inside of Versailles because we were busy attempting to neither have anxiety attacks nor cause an international incident by knocking someone the fuck out.

Getting pictures was also difficult because of the crowd, but what we did see *was* impressive. Without the crowd, I’m sure it would have been fascinating. But as I’m the kind of person who likes to read the signs and know what the hell I’m looking at, the school-of-fish-style procession through Versailles wasn’t the best.

What we could see of the Hall of Mirrors was pretty neat, and the crowd mercifully was slightly less squeezed together in there.

Once we escaped the palace itself– sorry, it is hard to describe it as anything other than escaping — we were rewarded, however. The gardens at Versailles were hands-down the best part of the entire visit. We spent a lot of time wandering around the gardens, which I imagine must be absolutely spectacular while in bloom.

We also happened to find approximately a million places in which to buy food while we wandered the gardens, because OF COURSE.

Day trip from Paris to Versailles: final conclusions

We stayed until closing, then took the train from the Versailles Rive Gauche station back to Paris. I will say that when the way isn’t obstructed by abandoned bags on the track, it is a quick and easy trip between Paris and Versailles. Always a plus for a day trip. That said, Versailles wouldn’t be my first recommendation for a day trip from Paris purely because it was so busy there — even in March. Moreover, while it is impressive on the inside I personally much preferred the other French castles we we saw on our last trip, detailed here and here. Of course, none of those are quite as easy a day trip as Paris to Versailles is. Still worth it though!

The rest of the story: the Latin Quarter and Champs d’Elysee

Once we got back to Paris, we headed for the Latin Quarter to look for dinner and the Champs d’Elysee to close out our trip. One nice thing about traveling with adults is that you have more of an opportunity to take in the city at night. And Paris at night? Absolutely spectacular.

Day trip from Paris to Versailles. 

PSSST. Enjoyed this post? Let’s stay in touch! Please consider following Babies with Backpacks at our Facebook page, Twitter or Instagram. And remember, sharing is caring! 

The post Day Three: Day Trip from Paris to Versailles first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

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Photo: Inside the Paris Pantheon, mausoleum for some of France’s greatest heroes. 

Today, I’m recapping the first day of a three-day trip to Paris with my bestie, Shaina. Otherwise known as my first kid-less trip since Owen was born in 2012. We had a blast! Here’s a look at our full itinerary this time. If you are interested in Paris with children, look here for posts on last year’s trip as a family of four.

A boom, a flash and a bunch of smoke.

I was standing in Paris’ Gare du Nord, waiting for my friend’s train to arrive, and I was rather alarmed. This sort of thing at a busy train station doesn’t generally seem like a great sign. But, as no one seemed to be running away, I did the only obvious thing — I walked over to see what all the fuss was about.

Turns out, I’d arrived in Paris just in time, as the day after my arrival (and the day of Shaina’s) brought with is mass transportation strikes in Paris, with other union organizations joining the strike in solidarity. As our lovely AirBnB was right near two major railways stations, Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est, we got to see quite a bit of marching. Fortunately, however, Shaina was able to make it from the airport to the city via train with no drama.

Paris Pantheon: burial place of heroes

So, backing up a bit. Having arrived in Paris the evening before, I had some time to kill before Shaina’s arrival. I decided to head over to the Latin Quarter to see the Paris Pantheon, a building originally intended to be a church but ultimately repurposed as a burial place for French patriots and distinguished citizens after the French Revolution. People like Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie have all been buried there. I wanted to go to the Pantheon last spring when we were in Paris with the kids but hadn’t made it, so I was pumped to have the opportunity to check it out!

Burial at the Pantheon is restricted to those named by government decree to be “National Heroes.’ It is a recognition of that individual’s contribution to French honor. Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, was reinterred there in 2002. Two heroines of the French resistance were also symbolically interred there in 2015 (their families didn’t want their bodies actually moved.)

The walls of the Pantheon are lined with murals depicting some of France’s greatest heroes at significant moments in French history. I was also intrigued by two walls of names labeled “Aux ecrivains morts pour la France,” or “for the writers who died for France.” I wasn’t able to research it until I got home, but apparently this is a monument to the 560 writers of all nationalities who were killed during World War I. You can read a little more about that here.

Unfortunately, there was some significant construction going on at the Pantheon, so I wasn’t able to go to the crypt and see the tombs. Also, the Foucault Pendulum was also off display. In 1851, physicist Leon Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by conducting an experiment with a pendulum within the Paris Pantheon. Since 1995, they’ve had a replica of this 67-meter (about 22o-foot) pendulum on display. Except, unfortunately, during a brief period that happened to fall while I was visiting. But c’est la vie!

This was another good use of the Paris Museum Pass (which I talk about here) though, as I would probably have been a bit annoyed if I had paid to get into the Pantheon and was unable to see half of it.

Luxembourg Gardens: one of my favorite places in Paris

I’d intended to head back to Gare du Nord after visiting the Paris Pantheon, but couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to pop by into the Luxembourg Gardens, one of my favorite places in Paris. I talked about our visit to the Luxembourg Gardens with the kids last year in this post, and I’m happy to report I found it just as charming while walking on my own.

Reunited with Shaina! And some mass protests

After my brief bit of drama at Gare du Nord, I finally reunited with Shaina and we headed off to see the city together. We ended up walking a considerable distance to get from our apartment to the Tuileries Gardens, because while we’d planned to catch the metro from Gare de l’Est, we ran into this protest and didn’t feel like trying to wade through the crowd.

Walking turned out to be an excellent choice, however, as we had so much opportunity to see the city and for Shaina to stretch her legs after an incredibly long plane trip. Walking also ended up being basically the theme of the trip, because although we did use the metro a lot, we also logged about 12 miles of walking each day.

We grabbed a quick lunch in the Tuileries Gardens– an extremely overpriced but delicious croque monsier with hot wine — then intended to hit both Musee de L’Orangerie and Musee d’Orsay that afternoon. We ended up being thwarted by the strike again at Orangerie because for whatever reason they also decided to close (solidarity?), but Orsay was thankfully still open.

Museum time: Musee d’Orsay and Musee du Louvre

If I’m picking my favorite art museums in Paris, it’s a pretty good tossup between Orsay and Orangerie (though I think the latter might edge out Orsay by a tiny bit). Chris and I went on our honeymoon and loved it then, and it was still great this time around. The Musee d’Orsay is much less overwhelming than the Louvre and it includes works by a lot of my favorite artists.

The Musee d’Orsay boasts the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works in the world. 

The building that houses Musee d’Orsay, a restored train station, is also basically a work of art itself.

We did not intend to go to La Louvre this trip; I’d already been before and found it too overwhelming and less enjoyable than Orsay or Orangerie, and Shaina wasn’t too interested either. Here’s the great thing about the Paris Museum Pass though: it gave us the freedom to indulge a whim. We had a bit of extra time since we didn’t get to see the Musee de l’Orangerie as planned, and it occurred to Shaina that since we were RIGHT THERE we might as well pop in and see the Mona Lisa. So we did.

Where to eat in the 10th Arrondissement Paris? Chez Casimir! 

For dinner, we opted to try out a spot near our AirBnB that had come highly recommended by our hosts: Chez Casimir.

Guys. GUYS.

LISTEN.

If you come to Paris, you NEED TO EAT HERE.

Everything was so insanely good that even thought this meal took place about 18 days ago, Shaina and I were still texting about it as recently as today.

Despite a somewhat terrifying waitress who was annoyed that we sat down at a table and that she spotted us sipping from a bottle of water we’d brought in (hey, it was a LONG WALK), we ended up staying for four courses and three hours. Literally every single thing was awesome. If you go and they happen to have it, absolutely get the goat cheese and honey appetizer. It was insane.

If you find yourself anywhere near the 10th Arrondissement: CHEZ CASIMIR. Go there!

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Ok, so “seeing it all” is a bit of a lie. No itinerary can include EVERYTHING there is to see in only 3-days in Paris. To be honest, this was my 5th trip and I still have lots to see in the future. But damned if my bestie Shaina and I didn’t squeeze every possible minute out of our own 3-day Paris itinerary! I don’t think I’ve ever covered so much ground on a trip, even when by myself. So, go us!

So, first a little back story: Shaina and I met in birth class when we were both pregnant with our oldest kiddos, who ultimately ended up being born five days apart. Our second kids were later born 13 days apart. Shaina moved away from Indiana about a year before we moved to Sicily, but obviously we kept in touch. Which led to THIS TRIP! We spent 3 days in Paris and had an amazing time. After that, it was back to our house for all things Sicilian (but we’ll get to that later).

I’ll get into more details of each day later, but for now — here’s how we tackled the challenge of seeing as much of Paris (and Versailles!) as possible in a quick 3-day holiday. One thing that was absolutely instrumental was our decision to purchase the Paris Museum Pass, which I wrote about here.

Psssst. If you are heading to France, I’d also suggest you check out this post on what not to do in Paris! 

Our 3 days in Paris: The details

Arrivals: me, late Wednesday night. Shaina, midday Thursday.

Where we stayed: An AirBnB extremely close to Gare du Nord and Gare de L’Est, which was absolutely fantastic! Very convenient. The only thing was that it as located on the top of a sixth-floor walk-up, which was fine in the morning but a little rough after walking at least 12 miles per day. We referred to the stairs as “the thing we don’t talk about” or “the thing.” Still, the stairs were at least not at all death-y (I’m looking at you, Brussels), and I would honestly stay there again.

Never used AirBnB? We love it! (See post about it here). If you want to give it a try, please consider using my referral link to get $40 off your first stay. www.airbnb.com/c/kaseyh50

If you are headed to Paris as a couple, I also just want to throw out a recommendation for the Hotel Familia on Rue des Ecoles, where we stayed on our honeymoon. It is affordable and has a perfect location near Notre Dame!

What we ate: Uh, everything? Highlights were incredible meals at Chez Casimir, La Cambodge and Le Bosquet. We also enjoyed ice cream at the famed Berthillion Glacier, chocolate at Pierre Marcolini and pain au chocolat from practically every bakery we passed.

How we got around: From the airport, an extremely easy train ride on RER B directly to Gare du Nord and a 5-minute walk to the apartment. Everywhere else: the excellent metro system (bought a package of 10 tickets) and our own two feet. (One note about traveling from the airport: when we went with the kids we pre-arranged a car with car seats to bring us to the hotel; this now seems like a waste of money because the RER B was so easy. However, if you do decide to go the taxi route, make sure you are getting a legit taxi or Uber, because fake taxis are apparently now a common tourist scam in Paris.)

Our 3-day Paris itinerary

Day 1 of our 3-day Paris itinerary:

Update: Find a full recap of our first day in Paris here.

• Pantheon (me alone, Shaina hadn’t arrived)
• Luxembourg Gardens (same)
• Meet Shaina, drop off stuff, encounter protests and decide to walk to enjoy the scenery
• Tuileries Gardens for lunch
• Musee d’Orsay
• Pop-in at the Louvre
• Epic 3-hour dinner at the fabulous Chez Casimir, which we highly recommend!

• 

Day 2 of our 3-day Paris itinerary: 

Update: find a full recap of our second day in Paris here. 

• Musee de l’Orangerie
• Musee Rodin
• Les Invalides
• Lunch at Le Bosquet  (fabulous!)
• Eiffel Tower
• Long walk to Sainte-Chapelle (closed earlier than we thought)
• Pop by Notre Dame for a quick look
• Walk around Ile Saint-Louis, ice cream at Berthillion Glacier
• Visit to fancy Rue Saint-Honore and Pierre Marcolini chocolate shop
• Seine River cruise
• Dinner at La Cambodge (AMAZING)

  

Day 3 of our 3-day Paris itinerary: 

Update: find a full recap of our third day in Paris here.

• Montemarte: breakfast, shopping for art and visit to Sacre Couer
• Drama/starvation-filled trip to Versailles
• Dinner in the Latin Quarter
• Walk along the Champs d’Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe

  

I actually just had to text Shaina to confirm we actually did all this, with the follow-up question of HOW?

Anyway, if you are looking to see as much of Paris as possible within a few days — it is definitely possible to cover a lot of ground. I would suggest taking advantage of the excellent Metro system (buy a pack of 10 tickets to save time) to get around, but also investing some time walking and getting a good look at the city. I feel like looking at this itinerary it seems like we must have been frantically rushing from place to place, but it honestly didn’t seem like that at the time — especially during the time we took the time to take in the sights while walking. I think Shaina would probably join me in also suggesting that you also embrace the long, leisurely dinners! We are also advocates for lunch wine.

Looking to head to Paris with kids? No worries, I have an itinerary planned for you too. Until then, feel free to look through my posts about last year’s trip to Paris and the Loire Valley with our crew here.

PSSST. Enjoyed this post? Let’s stay in touch! Please consider following Babies with Backpacks at our Facebook page, Twitter or Instagram. And remember, sharing is caring! 

The post Seeing it all: a fast-paced 3-day Paris itinerary first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Seeing it all: a fast-paced 3-day Paris itinerary appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

If you are a lover of museums headed to the City of Lights, the Paris Museum Pass is a tempting offering. For 48 euro for a 2-day Paris Museum Pass, you can gain entry to more than 50 museums, monuments and attractions. But the question is: Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it?

Answer: It depends. 

For Shaina and I, the Paris Museum Pass was absolutely worth our investment for several reasons — most specifically, our travel style. On the other hand, I can’t say we would have gotten our money’s worth if Chris and I had purchased it while traveling in Paris with the kids last spring.

Here’s a look at our itinerary, by the way.

Running the numbers with the Paris Museum Pass

So, the Paris Museum Pass runs 48 euro for the 2-day pass, 62 euro for a 4-day pass and 74 euro for 6-day pass. As Shaina and I were there together from midday Thursday to early Sunday, and planned to see Versailles on Saturday, we opted for the 2-day pass. During that time, we covered a pretty serious number of museum and monuments (though not necessarily thoroughly — I’ll get to that.)

So, let’s run the numbers with what we would have spent buying tickets to each place individually rather than using the Paris Museum Pass.

Musee de l’Orangerie: 9 euro

Musee d’Orsay: 12 euro (note: you can get a combined Orsay/Orangerie ticket for 16 euro)

Les Invalides (Napoleon’s Tomb, war museum): 12 euro

La Louvre: 15 euro

Musee Rodin: 10 euro

Pantheon (me only on Thursday morning): 9 euro

Sainte-Chappelle (honorable mention): 10 euro

All told, paying individually for these tickets would have cost us 67 euro without Sainte Chapelle, or 77 euro with. (Though if we’d bought joint Orsay-Orangerie tickets it would have come out 5 euro cheaper). The reason I’m hedging on including Sainte Chapelle is because we didn’t actually make it inside — we mistakenly thought it was open until 6, but it actually closed at 5 during that time of year. We made it there shortly before 5:30 p.m. after a leisurely walk — if we’d known, we’d have been able to make it in time and thus use the card. But c’est la vie!

The real value: guilt-free travel with the Paris Museum Pass

So, from a pure numbers perspective, in our case it absolutely made sense to get the Paris Museum Pass. We saved somewhere in the neighborhood of 20+ euro by doing so. However, for us the real value of the Paris Museum Pass was more about accommodating our style of travel and freeing us from guilt.

As you read the above, you might have thought — gee, that’s a hell of a lot of stuff to have seen in just two days. Surely they can’t have seen it all properly? Congratulations, you are absolutely correct.

While we spent quite a lot of time in Orsay and Orangerie, neither of us had much interest in the Louvre since it is so overwhelming. But, already being in the Tuileries and with the museum open for another 40 minutes, we made the spur of the moment decision to pop in so Shaina could see “the big three”: Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and Venus de Milo. We’d have been crazy to pay 15 euro to do that, but with the Paris Museum Pass there was no real reason not to. Boom. Bucket list-type item checked off the list.

We actually ended up popping in to Napoleon’s Tomb for exactly the same reason — we emerged from the Varenne metro station en route to somewhere else and thought, why not? As I’ve mentioned before, Chris and I took the kids to Les Invalides last spring and spent a lot of time in the War Museum. This time around, Shaina and I didn’t necessarily have time to wander through the extensive museum, but since we had the Paris Museum Pass there was no reason not to stop and admire the tombs at Les Invalides.

Having the Paris Museum Pass also made us feel less guilty about ditching the Rodin museum when we got bored. While the garden was cool and worth a visit, by the time we got indoors we realized we didn’t care as much about statutes as possibly we’d imagined. Normally paying for something and then bailing on it before seeing *everything* makes my cheap heart hurt, but with the Paris Museum Pass? Not so much. Which I realize doesn’t make that much sense but … there it is.

Other perks with the Paris Museum Pass

The Paris Museum Pass is also billed as allowing you to skip the line for some attractions. In our case, that was less of a big deal because we were there mostly mid-week during chilly March. Still, it was nice not to wait in the few lines we did see. However, that’s not to say you can just skip into whatever attractions without waiting. As you could have probably guessed, security is tight in Paris. Thus, the few lines we waited in (excluding Versailles) were almost exclusively to get through security. During peak season, however, I would say there is likely to be a considerable time savings in not having to buy individual tickets everywhere we went.

So, is the Paris Museum Pass worth it? 

If you are trying to cram as much sight-seeing as possible into a few days and are traveling with adults or (at the very least) older children, then yes.

If you are the type of person who is going to spend five hours taking in each museum, on the other hand, you’ll probably not be jumping around to enough sights to get the full value of the pass. If you know that hitting three or four museums/attractions per day isn’t your speed, it probably isn’t for you.

On the other hand, if you are traveling with young children as we usually are, you’ll want to think carefully about whether the pass is worth it as well. Fellow blogger Melissa spells out some of the considerations in her excellent Paris with children guide, including the option to simply prebuy tickets to the attractions you plan to visit.

The main thing is being realistic about your expectations when traveling with kids. Shaina got off the plane Thursday without having slept hardly at all, then promptly walked more than 10 miles, visited several museums and sat through a 3-hour long dinner that evening. Parents, you know that isn’t happening if you’ve got preschoolers or toddlers in tow.

Overall, deciding whether the Paris Museum Pass is worth it comes down just running the numbers and — seriously — knowing yourself well.

The post Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it? first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Is the Paris Museum Pass worth it? appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Many of the people who know me in real life know about my love of British royal history … my guilty pleasure being literally any historical fiction novel based on Plantagenets, Tudors, etc. I also have an affection for French history, however, so this day made me a happy lady.

Naturally, I got to start my day off by lecturing Chris about some of the principal characters related to the history of the castles we were going to see that day, in particular Queen Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poiters. “Luckily” for Chris, I had just recently read a biography about Catherine so I had lots of fun facts to share.

Rough excerpts of our conversation:

“Born in Florence to the powerful Medici family, she was the niece of a pope -”

“- parents both dead before she was a month old – ”

“- invading Spanish troops laying seige to Florence called for her to dragged out of her convent naked at age 11-”

“- universally considered pretty unfortuante looking -”

” – married to the second son of the King of France, known to history as his “least favorite son,” because the king badly needed the huge dowry she brought and the friendship of a Medici pope – ”

“- that pope promptly dies and leaves her dowry unpaid, pissing off the French – ”

” – husband ignores her in favor of his mistress, courtiers call for him to divorce her – ”

Right about here is where Chris jumped in to ask why he needed to know about this very unfortuante sounding woman. Answer: because she ultimately ends up being one of the more powerful women in French history, the power behind the throne for 30 years. Also? She is accused of assassinating many people (including by poisoning) throughout her life, and definitely did do some of that.

So, our first stop of the day was Chateau de Chenonceau, a gorgeous castle that is deeply intewined with the personal histories of three women, among them Catherine de Medici and her rival, Diane de Poiters. But first, a look at this gorgeous place.

So, the Catherine/Diane drama. Catherine marries Henry, duke d’Orleans, when they are both 14. By 15 or 16, however, Henry — soon to become the Dauphin after the death of his older brother — takes up with Diane de Poiters, a woman 21 years his senior. Diane becomes Henry’s queen in all but name after he ascends to the throne and Catherine, who was already facing criticism for not conceiving, basically has to suck up to Diane to keep her from speaking against her. She even ends up acting as her informant/spy at various points. For her part, Diane is not particularly eager for Henry to divorce his ugly wife and marry some hot princess who might not be so tolerant of her taking precedence, so she ends up helping Catherine conceive — by kicking Henry out of her bed and ordering him to go spend some time with Catherine. Catherine finally ends up with a son after a decade of marriage, then nine more children in 12 years. Go figure. At any rate, however, she is still completely powerless at court. Diane picks her children’s tutors, where they’ll live, what they’ll study, what they’ll wear — everything.

Where Chenonceau figures in: Catherine de Medici believed that her late father-in-law had promised this castle, which she loved, to her. Henry naturally hands it over to Diane instead, so Catherine has to settle for nearby Chaumont. She is not pleased.

AND NOW WE ENTER THE REVENGE PHASE. So for 20-odd years Catherine has to see Diane basically every day, watch her be set up in Catherine’s rightful place, watch her usurp her role as mother … until Henry drops dead. More accurately, while he is on his deathbed. While Henry is crying out for Diane as he is dying, she has her barred from the room. When Henry is dead, one of her first actions is to have someone inform Diane that she never wants to see her again, effectively banishing her from court. Not long after, she managed to wrest Chenonceau from Diane’s grip. She did compensate her, however — by giving her Chaumont instead. I can only imagine vengenance was sweet.

ANYWAY. Enough of your history lesson for the day. The palace! If you are in the Loire Valley, I would say it is not one to miss.

The Catherine de Medici room

While inside of the palace was certainly interesting, but the real showstopper here was the grounds. They were enormous and beautiful, both the carefully manicured gardens created by Diane and Catherine and the more wild,woody areas. If we didn’t have the kids with us, I think we could have walked around the grounds all day.

Diane’s gardens   

Hands down, the kids’ favorite part of the day was the hedge maze on the grounds.

Overall there was a lot more stuff to see than I anticipated, including a donkey farm and even more gardens that we didn’t visit. We ended up spending four hours there, which pretty much shocked me. And honestly, we could have easily stayed longer (especially if it wasn’t as chilly as it was).

Our next stop on my itinerary was to be Chateau de Chaumont, the castle that Catherine de Medici received instead of Chenonceau and subsequently pawned off on her vanquished rival. However, with the weather starting to look threatening and it already being early afternoon, we realized we needed to press on to Chateau de Chambord even though Chaumont was literally on the way — we could see it from our car. (I have no idea why so many of these castles names start with Ch, by the way).

Good news for the readers who are less interested in my historical hot gossip: I don’t know a ton of details of its history and thus won’t be bothering you much with details. But, you should know that it is the largest castle in the Loire Valley that was (somewhat inexplicably to me) used as a hunting lodge. Why on earth would you need to build such an opulant building if you are only going to spend a weeks a year there?! Answer, I guess, is to impress people with your wealth. And have one cool crib when you go hunting. Anyway, it was constructed by King Francis I (Catherine’s father-in-law) and took 20 years. It *may* have been designed in part by Leonardo da Vinci, who lived his final days in a manor just outside the nearby Chateau d’Amboise. The double helix staircase for which it is famous almost certainly was.

Closer look at the roof. 

This is the famous double helix staircase. People could go up or down the stairs on different sides of the spiral without ever meeting until the come to the landings of one of the three floors. 

Inside the castle was absolutely enormous, with 440 rooms. Several times I walked into what I thought was just a room and it turned out to be an enormous multi-room apartment — Fiona and I almost lost Chris and Owen a few times doing this!

The grounds of Chambord were also huge, which is no doubt why they had bikes, golf carts and event boats for rent. If it had been warmer (and we had enough time) we definitly would have rented a boat because it looked really cool.

From Chambord we drove back to our cottage (stopping in Amboise, a town we missed this day, for an excellent dinner near their chateau) for our last evening in France. Driving in the Loire was so cool because there are so many castles packed into the same area that we could even see them from the car. I’m pretty sure you could spend weeks just exploring castles if you were into that sort of thing.

Veretz castle, in the little town where we stayed in the Loire. I took this picture from the car when we basically ran right into it. 

If you are planning a trip to the Loire, I HIGHLY recommend renting a car for this reason. Also, the driving is honestly unintimidating in this area. I wouldn’t want to drive in Paris, but driving in the Loire was basically like driving in Indiana. Also helpful: renting a car with GPS.

Next up: I’ll compile a list of our suggestions for traveling to Paris/Loire with kids.

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The post FRANCE, Day Seven: Castles, castles, castles appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Our family spent the last half of our trip to France visiting the Loire Valley with kids, and I can honestly say its been one of my favorite trips ever. One this particular day, we saw the Chateau d’Usse (Sleeping Beauty’s castle), Fontevrault Abbey and the Saumur wine caves. I’d recommend all of them!

To read more about our visit to the Loire Valley with kids, click here. 

In a day marked by some great sightseeing, the best moment of our visit to the Loire Valley with kids came not inside a great monument but just outside of it: sitting in a sweet little restaurant (Le Comptoir des Vins) just outside Fontevrault Abbey, having a great meal and two good glasses of wine and telling Owen the history of one of my favorite historical figures, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

I swear one of the best things about having kids is that they are a captive audience …

Visiting the Loire Valley with kids

So, backing up a bit. Thursday dawned in our shared hotel room (after a night that reinforced why we usually rent apartments) and we headed off for the first of two full days planned in the Loire Valley. The Loire Valley, an area sometimes described as “The Garden of France,” is in central France surrounding the Loire River. This area was of strategic importance in previous centuries, and the result is that there are literally hundreds of castles of varying sizes and levels of opulence throughout this region.

When we first planned by 30th birthday trip, my first priority was going to Paris, with the idea of doing “something else” as well. A little research led me to the idea of going to the Loire Valley, and soon enough I was more excited about that part of the trip than anything else. Luckily, it lived up to the hype! Because there are so very many castles and historically significant sites in the Loire Valley, and mostly all within very easy driving distance of each other, deciding what to prioritize was our biggest challenge. We ended up deciding on three activities per day, split up by location.

I’d also like to mention that this trip has completely inspired me to want to visit basically all of France. There’s so much more than Paris, and so many wonderful places to see. In particular, I’m looking forward to visiting Alsace and Provence some day soon. My bloggy friend Sabrina has an awesome post up right now about her hiking trip to Calanques National Park and visit to Cassis (which she calls one of the most beautiful towns in Provence). 

Visiting Sleeping Beauty’s castle: Chateau d’Usse

Thursday started with the Chateau d’Usse, a castle that I chose specifically with the kids in mind. Unlike the others we’d see in the next two days, it does not have enormous historical significance — choosing it over nearby Chateau de Chinon was a bit of a wrench for this history nerd — but it is gorgeous and is believed to have been the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.

Although I would still like to see Chinon at some point, going to the Chateau d’Usse was the right choice for a visit to the Loire Valley with kids. It wasn’t overly busy, which meant we felt like we were just getting to wander around Sleeping Beauty’s castle all by ourselves.

The castle has definitely leaned into the idea that the author of Sleeping Beauty had Chateau d’Usse in mind for Princess Aurora.

Fiona loved the princess stuff at Chateau d’Usse, even though her questions about when we’d see a “real princess” persisted. I guess we’ll have to try and search for the Princess Charlotte in London some day, ha! Though if we ran into them at the park I expect she’d be disappointed by the lack of tiara.

These stairs led to an underground chamber that at one point was the beginning of a tunnel that ended in the forest. It was a way of escaping the Chateau d’Usse in case of attack. 

The Sleeping Beauty motif was contained largely to one tower of the Chateau d’Usse. Elsewhere, the mannequins were dressed in 1920s style. 

Overall, Chateau d’Usse made an excellent stop for anyone visiting the Loire Valley with kids. What it lacks in historical significance, it more than makes up for in beauty and kid-friendly Sleeping Beauty decor. And if you go early in the day during the shoulder season, you might even find you have the place practically to yourself!

Loire Valley with kids: visiting Fontevrault Abbey

If the Chateau d’Usse visit was chosen in part because it would appeal to the kids, our next stop of the day — I freely admit — was entirely for me. If you are not overly interested in history, I encourage you to let your eyes wander down to the pictures now and rejoin us toward the end. I’ll back back with wine after this!

The Abbaye de Fontevrauld is a fascinating part of Angevin history, and it dates back to 1101. During its heydey, it included four religious houses and though there were both nuns and monks in these houses, it was a woman who had the running of the overall establishment, the Abbess of Fontevrault. The abbess was usually a highborn, often well-connected woman (widow of the Duke of Burgundy is one example) and this was an important position. The abbey was patronized in particular by the Plantagenets, the family who would ultimately end up ruling England for centuries. Highborn children were often raised at Fontevrault, including at least two of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s children.

My interest in going here was partially because of the history,and partially because I was interested in seeing the effigies of Eleanor, her husband Henry II, and her son King Richard “the Lionheart.” If you aren’t familiar with Eleanor, she was one of the most powerful women in Europe during the Middle Ages. Here are some highlights:

-She became soverign duchess of Aquitaine as a young teenager after the death of her father

-Almost immediately marries Louis VII, King of France

-Goes on the Second Crusade as one of its leaders

-Unsuccessfully makes a bid for an annulment from the Louis; Later, finally receives her annulment after 15 years of marriage results in just two daughters

-Almost immediately remarries, this time to the Count of Anjou/Duke of Normandy, a teenager 11 years her junior who would become the most powerful man in Europe in time — helped in no small part by Eleanor adding her lands to his. Henry Fitzempress was the son of the woman considered by many to be the rightful Queen of England, Empress Matilda. Matilda, only surviving legitimate child of King Henry I, was named by Henry as his heir but in the end lost the throne to her cousin Stephen after years of warfare. Her son Henry, therefore, had a claim to the English throne and ultimately convinced King Stephen to agree to name Henry as his heir in exchange for peace. Henry acended to the throne of England a year later, in 1154.

-With Henry II, had at least eight children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Among them are four surviving sons: Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and John.

-During long periods of separation, Eleanor often ran parts of the now enormous and ever-growing Angevin empire, which stretched over England and wide swaths of France. In later life she returned to Aquitaine as its duchess again. Her court is known for celebrating troubadors, chivalry and courtly love.

-Joined her sons in a revolt against her husband/their father, in the process seeking help from her first husband, Louis VII. The sons wanted to weild more power in the domains they’d inherit.

-The sons lost. Eleanor is imprisoned by her husband for most of the next 16 years. During this time, her son Henry “the Young King” dies, as does her son Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany by virtue of his marriage to the duchy’s heiress

-Eleanor is freed upon the death of Henry II, who ended his days at war with his heir, Richard, after finding out that his youngest and favorite son, John, had also betrayed him.

-Eleanor is basically running things while her son, Richard, goes off on the Third Crusade, then plays a huge role in raising the enormous ranson set by the Holy Roman Emperor when he captures Richard. Richard dies a few years later.

-In her late 70s she was still running all over the world, including a journey across the Pyrannees into Castile to pick one of her granddaughters to marry the new King of France.

-Eventually, she retires to Fontevrauld for some well-earned rest after decades of badassery. She died there in 82.

Queen Eleanor, King Henry II and King Richard the Lionheart (and King John’s wife, Isabella d’Angouleme) were all buried at Fontevrauld, but their bones were scattered during the French Revolution. Their effigies, however, remain.

Seeing them was a surprisingly emotional experience, which I can’t really explain.

The rest of Fontevrauld was interesting, including learning about how it was converted into a prison after the French Revolution. From 1804 to 1963 it served as one of the toughest prisons in France, apparently. Members of the French Resistance were shot there under the orders of the Vichy Government.

Overall, I would say the place is worthy of a visit if you are interested in that particular history. It may be boring for young children, but there is grassy area to run around in when they need a break. And frankly, it doesn’t kill a kid to be bored once in a while!

Loire Valley with kids: wine caves of Saumur

Our final stop of the day was the second-oldest winery in (well, near) Saumur, a city known for its excellent wines. There were tons to choose from, but we ended up going to Bouvet Ladubay, which formed in 1851 when a married couple by the names of Etienne Bouvet and Celestine Ladubay purchased 8 kilometers of caves in which to produce and age their wines. The concept of “wine caves” seems to be quite common in the region, as we saw them advertised everywhere. I knew that this one had frequent tours of the caves and I planned for us to join one whenever we got there (instead of doing advanced tickets and being a slave to the clock), but unfortunately I failed to consider that the frequent wine tours might not be offered in English. Whoops. We joined a French one since you can’t see the caves without going on the tour and it was only a few euro anyway — plus it ended with a tasting. It was interesting to see the caves and we did have a pamphlet to read describing the things our guide would be talking about, but I’d recommend hitting an English tour.

I only have a few crappy pictures because it was dark and I was tired of carrying my big camera. 

The wine tasting afterward helped make up for the awkwardness of our tour, however. We liked some of the wines enough to buy a couple bottles, and even Owen got to try some sparkling grape juice (Fiona was asleep on my back). Had Fiona been awake, I’m not sure she would have loved being in the cave, but hey! That’s what baby-wearing is for.

From here, our exhausted bunch piled into the SpaceCar and headed to our final destination of the evening — the cottage we had rented with a mysterious address: “Le Parc, Veretz.” Fortunately, our faithful SpaceCar’s navigation system got us there.

A note about the driving: loved it. It was like driving in Indiana again — wide open spaces, pretty farmland, less honking and very chill. I ended up doing all the driving because I was the one who went to retrieve the car from the rental agency and didn’t know I was supposed to bring Chris’ driver’s licence with me. It worked out great though, because when you are driving it turns out you can pull over and take a picture whenever the hell you feel like it even when the rest of the car is begging to JUST GET HOME ALREADY.

Worth it. 

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The post FRANCE, Day Six: Sleeping Beauty’s castle, history and wine appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

So picture this:

You are heading to your seat on what you hope will be a nice, relaxing 1.5 hour train ride to another city. You’ve got your laptop bag and plans to do a little work along the way.

And then you get to your seat.

A screaming 2-year-old is in your seat, valiantly resisting all efforts by her mother to remove her. A boy of about four years is whining to eat what is in the bags currently covering the entire table meant to be shared by this grouping of four seats. The father is standing there with an enormous teal bag, blocking the aisle as the two parents try to consider what to do with the thing. The wife half-heartedly suggests it can perhaps be shoved under the table. Spoiler: it can’t.

.

.

.

As you can guess, we were NOT the protagonists in this particular tale. Yes, I felt bad for the poor bastard as well.

Backing up: Wednesday marked our last morning in Paris. We’d made a real effort to clean up and pack the night before so that we could spend our morning looking at (and hopefully buying) some art in the area around Sacre Coeur. Montemartre has long been known as a trendy, artsy kind of area, no doubt because it used to be cheap — “used to be” because literally nothing in Paris is cheap — and Chris and I bought two paintings there in 2010 that remain some of our favorites. Since we didn’t have to be out of our apartment until 11, we figured we could walk up that way and maybe pick something up before we left. Unfortunately, it didn’t really occur to us that most of the artists wouldn’t be out that early and of those who were there, nothing really struck our fancy. However, we did take the opportunity to go into Sacre Coeur and look around. (It is gorgeous).

We also stopped for one last pain au chocolat (our absolute FAVORITE) before we left. Oh man, these things were SO GOOD. I’m sorry, but Italian pastry really has a tendency of being ridiculously over the top. You bite into something and it has to be a giant mass of Nutella. Pain au chocolate? Perfection in pastry. Just the right amount of chocolate. 

When planning the trip, I had settled on taking the high-speed train to Tours because the city is a great jumping-off point for the Loire Valley, which we planned to spend our last few days touring. I had booked a cute little cottage in a Loire town called Veretz for us to stay in the last few days, but since I had intended to get to Tours in the evening I booked us a hotel in the city for the night. While I don’t necessarily regret this decision — I actually quite liked Tours — I do think it would have been easier to just go straight to Veretz for three nights instead of staying in a hotel for one, then going to the cottage.

But anyway. When I booked the tickets (for the afternoon, for reasons that are no longer clear to me) I noticed that you didn’t have to buy a ticket for anyone under 4 (they sit on your lap). Since I had a bit of sticker shock — 160 euro for three roundtrip tickets between Paris and Tours — this seemed like an awesome idea.

Chris, supposedly unaware of this particular decision until the day of, did not think this was a “awesome idea.”

At any rate, despite the inauspicious start it did turn out to be a perfectly lovely train ride. The dude who was supposed to be in what Fiona had determined was “her seat” found another since the train wasn’t crowded, we ate lunch and I read the kids a book we’d bought about Joan of Arc (though I changed the ending a bit because the idea of being burned at the stake fucking HAUNTED ME as a child). Of course, once we reached the other end we realized that there are in fact two “Tours” train stations (one is actually St. Pierre de Corps) and that our rental car was at the other one. Whoops. We had meant to drive straight to the nearby town of Amboise to see Leonardo da Vinci’s home, the Clos Luce, but after this particular realization we ended up deciding to just stay in Tours and go to bed early.

I’m not sorry we got to see more of Tours than planned, because it really was a lovely city. We immediately noticed some differences from Paris — it seemed much more relaxed, fewer people spoke English (got to break out my French for real here!*) and service felt like it was shockingly fast. They had a tram system at ground level, which was pretty cool even if it did freak me out a little when I drove across it in our rental car, SpaceCar.

We also got to see Tours Cathedral, which was beautiful and impressive.

We also made the acquaintance of SpaceCar, our vehicle for the next few days. Chris *may* have gotten sick of this name (coughcoughNeverReallySawThePoint) but I assure you it did NOT get old. I ended up being quite pleased with it, despite my initial annoyance at Europcar because the employee there handed me the keys, two car seats to carry myself and send me out to find it on my own in a crowded parking lot. Once I found it, however (after learning the name of the vehicle was not, it turned out, “Essence” as written on the key) I was thrilled to find that it had built-in navigation and wasn’t as tiny as I expected after frugally** paying for only the smallest, cheapest car available.

* A note about my French: I spent a lot of time in school studying it up to the AP level, followed by a single semester in college because it turned out that I only needed one to fulfil my whole language requirement and, after learning that, the Arabic I had considered studying seemed HARD. I was always fairly sucky at the language, especially the understanding-and-speaking part (aka the only part that actually matters), but could read it reasonably well. On our honeymoon, I barely used it because I was so self conscious and because everyone in Paris spoke English anyway. Having been humiliated in Italian for months, however, seems to have given me a bizarre confidence in my French. All of the sudden I was AMAZED that I could read menus and plaques and stuff and even make a little conversation with people like my cabbie en route to pick up our rental car. The contrast with my constant confusion in Italian was insane. Of course, my newfound confidence was somewhat compromised when our landlord at the tiny cottage in Veretz proved to speak no English at all and seemed to think I spoke more French than I actually did based on my initial ability to say approximately three things correctly. Um. Hello, Google Translate. We meet again, my friend.

**I say frugal, Chris say cheap. If you are a seeing a theme of me attempting to save money to the detriment of convenience than congratulations! You are on Chris’ side. If you are applauding me for saving a buck, then welcome to Team Kasey.

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One of the best parts of traveling with little kids is seeing their unexpected delight at the most random things.

Tuesday may have been one of the kids’ absolutely favorite days, and the chief reason wasn’t the one I expected. We started off the day at Napoleon’s Tomb and the Musee de l’Armee, part of a complex of buildings known as Les Invalides because it was a former hospital/retirement home for soldiers. We went because I hadn’t been there since I was a kid and because I assumed Chris, currently reading a series of books in which Napoleon features prominently, would be interested. Chris and I indeed enjoy the visit — I was much more interested in the museum at 30 than I was at 13, especially the excellent World War II exhibit — but it was Owen and Fiona who loved it.

Fiona loved the gold on the dome and kept asked if a real princess lived here. She was fairly devastated throughout the trip when I had to keep telling her that we wouldn’t be meeting a princess, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her about Marie Antoinette. 

Both kids were keen to open Napoleon’s tomb — I think they may have gotten the idea from the Catacombs that they should be allowed to see the bodies of all the tombs — but were suitably impressed with the side of the box even without getting to open it.

Several other prominent military leaders are also buried at this site, as are Napoleon’s brothers, who he had made kings of various lands he conquered. Which is a pretty nice gift, if you ask me, but must have made it difficult to think of something to get him for Christmas in return. “Oh, this is a nice golden cup. Hey, remember that time I gave you a COUNTRY? But no, no, this is great. Thanks, Jerome. It’s great. Really.” 

The Army Museum was a big hit with Owen in particular because of the various weaponry for them to look at. They were all pretty impressed by these cannon and spent ages out here playing with them.

Leaving resulted in a bunch of tears from Owen, and I suspect we may have promised him we’d come back “sometime soon” because he spent the next several days asking if we were going back to the Army Museum and getting pissed when the answer was no. Whoops. Take away message though: you never really know what kids are going to like.

Our second stop of the day was the Luxembourg Garden, an enormous gorgeous garden in the middle of Paris. The place was enormous and included a pretty pond where you could rent toy boats to sail. Chris and Owen took a rest here while I walked around (Fiona being asleep on my back) and found tons of statutes of women who were influential in French history.

This is Margaret d’Anjou, wife to King Henry VI of England. She was an exceptionally driven woman who became the leader of the Lancastrian faction during the Wars of the Roses. Her husband, Henry VI, was mentally ill and had a nasty habit of falling into catatonic states for months and a time. He and Margaret (already hated because she was French and brought essentially no dowry) had an unpopular reign because of their mismanagement, duplicity and habit of playing favorites at court. When Henry VI was deposed by the Edward of York after the Battle of Towton, he and Margaret and their son went into exile. Henry VI was ultimately captured and imprisoned a few years later, but Margaret’s resistance continued and, through her scheming with a disaffected York lord, Henry VI briefly regained his crown a decade after he lost it. This triumph was short-lived, however; Edward IV regained his throne about six months later. Margaret and her teenaged son, Edward,had  brought an army against the Yorks in an effort to defeat the Yorks once and for all, but Edward was killed and Margaret captured at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Henry VI died of “a broken heart” (probably murdered) in the Tower of London a week later. Margaret is a hard character to necessarily feel warm and fuzzy about given some pretty poor choices, such as ordering the deaths of two lords who kept her mad husband safe during a battle and had been promised safe conduct, but she was a woman of great courage and conviction and that makes her fascinating to me. 

The park included a large playground, which cost a couple euros each to get into but proved to be very fun. European playground equipment tends to remind me of playground equipment from when I was younger, awesome at the time but which now seems strangely hazardous compared to what we most often see in the United States. Still, my little climbers had a great time and spent a good two hours here despite it being quite chilly. I highly recommend a visit for anyone traveling with children, including bigger ones — the park was separated by age ranges and the “big kids” side had lots of cool looking stuff too.

Afterward, I meant to visit the Pantheon, a structure originally envisioned as a church but repurposed as a burial place for French patriots and distinguished citizens after the French Revolution. People like Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie have all been buried there. However, though we were right in the neighborhood we ultimately decided that the kids were too worn out for another visit. Instead, we opted to stroll through the Latin Quarter and grab a crepe. This area has always been one of my favorites in France little streets with tons of restaurants, very diverse and vibrant and with a fun vibe. I originally looked into finding an AirBnB in this area, but regrettably I couldn’t find anything in our price range. Next time we go back though, I’d love to stay in the area.

Tuesday was also the day we took the subway most; we had been mostly walking or taking Ubers the rest of the time. Chris and I are fairly divided on the transportation issue, though we both like walking best when we don’t have two kids to drag along. He prefers Uber because it is so hassle-free and he considers it not overly expensive. I prefer the metro because traffic makes me a crazy person. Paris has an amazing, easy to use subway system (we never waited more a couple minutes for our train) and I like feeling of being constantly in motion, versus sitting in traffic. And it is cheaper.

We had told him before, but for some reason he didn’t really grasp that we were traveling underground until this particular Metro ride. He was shocked. 

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While most of my recap posts (here and here) have been fairly wordy, for Day Three the pictures pretty much say it all.

Monday — which happened to by my 30th birthday — we decided to visit the water lilies we’d seen the day before at Musee de L’Orangerie in person, at Monet’s home in Giverny. We caught the train to the town of Vernon by the skin of our teeth (five minutes to spare!) which resulted in Chris and Owen having to sit on the stairs, while Fiona and I shared a seat and she cried for Daddy. Happy birthday to me, I guess?! Thanks, baby girl! Haha.

We took the train to the town of Vernon, which was an easy hour-long trip. Honestly though, after making the journey I wonder whether it would have been cheaper to rent a car for a day and drive. The train tickets for three (Fi was free) cost us 80 euro, plus another 20 euro for the bus ride from Vernon to Giverny. It probably would have been too much bother to rent a car for a day, but it is something to consider if you are planning a trip yourselves with a group. Another option between Vernon and Giverny was renting bicycles, by the way, which I think would have been amazing if our kids were old enough.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter how you get there. Just get there. It is gorgeous and was one of my favorite things we did on a trip packed with awesome.

Can you believe that I honestly wondered whether many flowers would be out this time of year?

We had a lovely lunch in Giverny before catching the train back to Paris, where we ended our evening at an Indian restaurant in our neighborhood. It was delicious but I don’t think the owners were overly impressed with us being there … possibly because of Owen’s refusal to eat anything, or possibly because Fiona — apparently deciding the rice was the best thing ever — started shoving it into her mouth with her hands at a rate that can only be described as cartoonish. I swear, we do feed this girl!

Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off my 30s than spending it in a beautiful place with my favorite people in the universe.

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“It’s so beautiful that it hurts me,” said Anne softly. “Perfect things like that always did hurt me — I remember I called it ‘the queer ache’ when I was a child. What is the reason that pain like this seems inseparable from perfection?” 

-Anne’s House of Dreams

Day Two

This trip marked my fourth trip to Paris, but somehow I’ve never been to Sainte-Chapelle. After visiting, I can’t imagine why.

Some backstory: Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel built starting 1238 to house the relics acquired by King Louis IX, chief among them the Crown of Thorns. Apparently the Crown cost about 500 million in today’s terms, though presumably to Louis — later canonized as Saint Louis — it would have been priceless. Accordingly, he built an appropriately glorious place to house this treasure.

The exterior of the chapel isn’t that impressive — it was a royal chapel within a palace on the Ile-de-la-Cite, which is now a government building. But once you walk inside … it’s just wow.

The first floor, where more common folk could go, is impressive enough …

This is King/Saint Louis in the first level of the chapel. 

But walking upstairs, where the king would worship, was like walking into a jewelry box. It was amazing. It gave me Anne Shirley’s “queer ache.” I just stood there, thinking about how much more amazing it must have been to stand here 770 years ago and what it must have been like for Louis to be here in the presence what he can only have truly believed was the real Crown of Thorns.

During this reverie, Fiona was standing next to me in what I guess I assumed was awed silence. Because even though I have two children, I apparently believe that 2-year-olds are capable of an “awed silence” of more than two seconds.

Naturally, she made a break for the wall to touch it (fortunately not the glass), ducking under a metal railing intended to keep people from doing just that. Instead of going under myself and grabbing her, like an idiot I tried to grab her over the railing, resulting in her hugging the wall even more to be out of my reach. At this point a security guy came running over going “NO NO NO NO” and, after approximately two seconds of watching my feeble effort, picked her up and handed her to me. This, of course, scared her senseless and so began the second embarrassing phase — bloodcurdling screaming in a a sacred and mostly silent chapel. I dragged her to the closest exit to at least keep her from shattering the 12th century glass, but that proved to be a fairly crowded balcony and I was basically trapped there begging her to stop screaming.

We left shortly after.

This feels like a good time to note that if I missed one thing from Sicily (other than good cappuccino), it was their remarkably indulgent attitude toward children. I’m not saying that the vast majority of people we encountered in Paris weren’t lovely, but we absolutely got more nasty looks directed at the kids in four days in Paris than we have in six months in Sicily. To the Sicilians, pretty much everything a kid does is “va bene.”

Anyway, Sainte Chapelle is quite near Notre Dame, so our next stop was there — mostly for nostalgia reasons. A million years ago, when Chris and I were on our honeymoon, we stayed at a hotel near Notre Dame. A few of the days we bought our lunch from a bakery and went to the park next to the cathedral for a picnic, so we wanted a repeat with the kids. There was also playground equipment, which is either new or we didn’t notice it at the time since we didn’t have kids. It was the perfect stop to recover from Sainte Chapelle, though in hindsight a little wine might have been in order.

We chose not to go in because Chris and I had already been and we didn’t feel it was necessary. Owen was actually a bit annoyed. 

Back view of Notre Dame, in the area where we had our picnic. 

I also really wanted to replicate a picture that Chris and I had taken in the garden almost seven years ago, this time with the kiddos. It was definitely easier the first time …

Best one we could get. 

One of several outtakes. 

From here, it was off to the Tuileries Garden, a vast green space first created by Queen Catherine de Medici, whose personal history was very important to a couple of the castles we saw later in our trip. Since we rented an apartment in Montmartre, a little further from the center of things, going home for naps wasn’t really an option. Fiona napped in my carrier as we were walking there. but unfortunately Chris got stuck carting a very tired Owen on his shoulders most of the the way. Sometimes a stroller would be super helpful, but sometime I’ll have to do a post on why we don’t bring one with us on trips. Update: I did do this post. Here it is.

Our walk took us past to Louvre as well, which we opted not to go into since we’d been there in 2010. And honestly, we found it ridiculously overwhelming even back then. We much preferred the more chill Musee D’Orsay last time. Still, I was glad Owen got to see the glass pyramids, even if he did inform me that they “weren’t real pyramids because pyramids aren’t made of glass.”

After a stop to admire the Tuileries and have cocktails and ice cream to power us through the rest of the day, we set off for Musee de l’Orangerie. I had been interested in going here specifically to see Monet’s large water lily paintings (since we were going to Giverny the next day!) but I ended up loving every minute of this place. I am not a huge art person. I don’t know much about it like, at all. But this museum was what it would look like if they were like, “hey Kasey, you know the only types of art you are particularly interested in, and the only artists you actually know? Well, we thought it might be easier if we just put them all in one place for you so we just … did. Enjoy.”

So it was mostly impressionists — Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Cezanne, etc. Absolutely gorgeous. Also, they had a mandatory coat/backpack check (free) so we got to wander unencumbered. It tells you how sick I was of carrying things that this sticks out in my mind.

Deep discussion of art underway here, obviously. 

This was possibly one of the only museums I’ve ever visited where I earnestly wished to stay longer, but the troops were restless.

We ended our day outside of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, one of my favorite places when we last visited because Chris and I spent a nice evening sitting on the steps overlooking the city, drinking Heinekens sold to us by guys wandering the area selling them out of boxes. Visiting with the kids wasn’t quite as relaxing, but the kids were on great behavior during our (very overpriced) dinner.

This picture is from a couple days later; I think I was too tired for photos on this particular evening. But Sacre Coeur is exceptionally beautiful, though much younger than Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle (finished in 1914). 

Even thought we were staying in the Montmartre area, getting to Sacre Coeur at the top of the hill still required a lot of stairs like this. At one point Owen was crying that he couldn’t do more stairs, so I told him about Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris, to distract him. Saint Denis came to Paris sometime in the third century to convert locals to Christianity. He was beheaded for his trouble, but apparently after the decapitation picked up his head, washed it off in a fountain (beheadings are messy affairs, I understand) and then walked up the hill to Montemartre to expire for real. Please refer to the picture above for even more reason why this walk was SUPER IMPRESSIVE. Anyway, Owen was fascinated, quit whining and then asked for “more stories about France” throughout the trip. Obviously, I need to save up more gruesome martyrdom stories for future emergencies.

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We’re back!

Chris, the kids and I just spent a fabulous eight days in France (celebrating my 30th birthday along the way) and it went even better than I could have hoped for. This was Chris’ second and my fourth trip  to Paris, but we were able to focus on the places that we hadn’t been before so a lot of things were as new for us and they were for the kids. We did have a few mishaps along the way with the kids naturally causing a scene in various national monuments, and I was unfortunately sick for the entire trip, but all the same it was an amazing trip.

Day One in Paris

We actually arrived in Paris Friday night, but since we got in two hours later than expected — a situation I’ll be talking about after I have finished arguing with Chase — we didn’t do anything but go to a restaurant, eat and smash a wine glass. So, let’s kick off on Saturday morning.

Our first stop had to be the Eiffel Tower, obviously, because the kids have been obsessed with it for some time. When we drive through Indiana, Owen and Fiona would frequently ask if various radio towers were the Eiffel Tower.

Fiona’s first birthday was even Paris themed, haha. 

Their reactions to seeing the tower were great! But naturally once we got into the area — for security reasons the Eiffel Tower area is now fenced and has metal detectors and bag checks — they were most interested in chasing pigeons with other child tourists. What is it about trying to catch those dirty birds that offers such universal appeal to young children?!

We had assumed that we weren’t gong to be able to go up the Eiffel Tower unless we walked the stairs to the first level, something I wasn’t really up to doing since I had been sick all night. During the planning phase, Rick Steves and various websites had basically described trying to get on the elevator to the top without reserving a ticket beforehand to be madness, unless you showed up well before opening and waited in line for ages. To our surprise, however, we found that the line wasn’t all that long, maybe half an hour? Then an additional perhaps 40 minutes of waiting to cram onto the elevator.

I’m not entirely sure why our experience getting tickets was different than others, but I expect it had to do with the chilly, overcast weather, relatively early hour (within first hour of opening) and off-season timing of our trip. I still recommend trying to get tickets ahead of time if you are going, and doing so immediately after you know your dates.

I have been to Paris before, but only ever gone to the first level of the tower. We decided this time to go big or go home, so all the way up to le sommet it was! The view from 1,000 feet up was worth the wait.

View of Champ de Mars on this side.

The Seine on this side! 

She looks cute in this picture, but looking through this thing led to one of about three tantrums at 1,000 feet. The kids were obsessed even when we ran out of coins to put in the telescopes. 

Once we had our fill of the tower, we grabbed a few sandwiches and headed to the Champ de Mars greenspace right next to the tower. While part of it was fenced off for landscaping, there was room on the sides for an impromptu picnic and some running around time.

Our second stop of the day came at the insistence of Owen: the Catacombs. If you aren’t familiar, the Catacombs are underground tunnels in which the bones of millions of Parisians are laid to rest. They were moved to the tunnels in the late 1700s because overflowing cemeteries in Paris were creating a health hazard. I honestly didn’t really think we’d go there when I was first planning because I thought Owen, previously afraid of things like the movie Kung Fu Panda, would be too freaked out. But when I told him about it he latched on and got OBSESSED with the idea of going. Sure enough, he loved every minute of the roughly 45-minute underground journey through the a portion of the tunnels.

At this site we DID have to wait in a lengthy line (perhaps about an hour and a half?) but it went faster that it might have because a couple from Chicago were behind us in line and we spent the whole time chatting, while their 9- and 11-year-old boys entertained the kids for much of the time. Also, about five bathroom trips for Fiona helped break things up.

The tombs themselves were delightfully creepy, with several signs that said (in French) things like “Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead!” and “Whichever way you turn, death will be waiting for you.” I found it more fascinating than I expected, though I do wonder how these people would feel about their bones becoming a tourist attraction.

Fiona didn’t love the tunnels as much as Owen by any means, saying repeatedly that it was “too dark,” but since she was in the carrier on my back she did fine. I, on the other hand, thought that the stairs coming up from the tunnels might kill me. Narrow spiral stairs are the worst since you can never see when it will end, and you can’t pause without holding up the line!

The kids, who had been up incredibly late the night before, were pretty tired. We had a little dinner — some of us, anyway — and headed back to our AirBnB to collapse.

Owen fell asleep at our dinner table. Fiona, who seems to not need sleep, was hyper instead. 

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