Paris with outdoorsy kids

In Paris, we chose to stay in La Defense. There were a few reasons for this: It’s away from the usual tourist haunts, fun and vibrant of a warm summers evening, and it’s cheap(ish) – Paris is an expensive place, and Paris in August even more so. We booked ourselves a nice apart-hotel using loyalty points with plenty of space and a kitchenette. We had three full days in the French capital, and decided to take it easy and not pack in too many activities and frustrate the children and their short fuses.

Our first day was hot- reaching 35 degrees in the late afternoon (measured on Rafe’s handy backpack thermometer.) We headed off on the short walk to the Bois de Boulogne looking for some shade. At 2000 acres, the Bois de Boulogne is an enormous green space where kings previously hunted bears and wild boar. It was gifted to the city of Paris by Napoleon III to be turned into a public park, emulating London’s parks such as his favourite Hyde Park. There are many things to do in the park, renting bicycles to ride along 15km of cycle paths, landscape gardens, glasshouses, the Louis Vuitton Foundation art gallery, horse racing tracks and the Stade Rolland Garros. Anyway, we didn’t bother ourselves with most of these and spent most of our time in the Jardin d’Acclimatation getting sprayed by water jets and thrill seeking on fairground rides.

Back in La Defense for the evening, we took advantage of some free activities- admiring some public art, paddling in the public art water features, sitting on the steps to the Grand Arch de La Defense and hanging around in the Garden Parvis, a temporary summer garden with games, music and kids workshops.

As day two was a little cooler (28 degrees on the Rafeomometer) we went out bright and early to tick off some tourist ‘must dos’. We took the Metro to École Militaire and arrived at the Eiffel Tower through the Champ de Mars garden. The specific tickets we wanted for the tower (walk to 2nd floor, elevator to the top) were not available to pre-purchase online, so we joined a quick moving queue to access the stairs. (674 of them), looked at the view, queued for the elevator to the lift, looked at the view again and then did it all in reverse.

For sustenance, we did all the obligatory Parisian things – lunches at little bistros, citron presses, a picnic in the Jardin d’Acclimatation and some macarons (photos unavailable due to the speed of consumption).