One of the things I liked the most about the schedule that my brother-in-law put together for Paris is that every day we had one or two planned activities, and then we had a bunch of downtime. Jack scheduled timed entries for everything, and he even booked us an official guide for our visits to the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay.
When we didn’t have set plans, we did a lot of wandering. Paris is perfect for window-shopping and people watching. We had leisurely lunches (including a delightful picnic in the Tuileries) and decompressed at the end of long days with dinners at our Airbnb.
It’s not easy to navigate a large city with a group of seven, but I think we made it work pretty well. At the very least, we didn’t have any screaming family fights in the middle of the Champs Elysées. And that’s always a win, isn’t it?
On our first full day, we made our way to Île de la Cité, because we had timed entry tickets for Sainte-Chapelle. Over the course of the trip, we did a lot of “let’s get ourselves in the general area, because who knows how long it will take this horde of turtles to get there.” Because it was our first day, we were zippy turtles. We sat in a café and had some leisurely cappuccinos and croissants. I was very proud of the fact that the waiter let me speak French for the group.
What you have to understand about Paris is this: everyone who took French 27 years ago in high school wants to show it off. And every waiter wants to bring you your cappuccino as soon as possible so they can get over to their next table. They’re not working for tip, but they do still have a job to perform. The social construct is this: as soon as you falter, hesitate, slow-down, or miss a word… they’re going to switch to English. Don’t be offended by it, they do it to everyone. They don’t know how much time you spent practicing. They don’t know that I actually live here. They just know that they’re gonna get dinged for “slow service” on Google Maps if they have to keep this up.
If you want to practice your French? You’re gonna have to go to places off the beaten path. Or visit a smaller city.
Now that we have that out of the way… Sainte-Chapelle!
My word, it’s beautiful. Nina (my sister-in-law) told us a funny story about a guy she knew who said he finally understood the appeal of Christianity after visiting. King Louis IX built it to house his “Passion” relics. Say what you will about French kings, those guys knew how to build stuff. Well, they knew how to get other people to build stuff for them. Sainte-Chapelle is very much built to awe and inspire
You start the tour in the basement, which is where the servants prayed. And you stand there thinking, “wow this is pretty fancy, they really put the gift shop here?” Isn’t this too nice a location for a gift shop?
And then you walk upstairs and it makes a lot more sense. The full chapel makes the servants’ chapel area look like, well, something that was built for servants.
Sainte-Chappelle is practically one giant stained glass window. Pictures don’t really do it justice (do they ever?). Each little sections tells part of the story of Jesus’s life. I’m pretty sure it’s heavy on the crucifixion, but I’m honestly not sure. The details are so tiny and there are so many dozens of windows. I pretty much let it all wash over me. I simply enjoyed standing in the room with a bunch of other people having a “wow” moment.
(I also listened to the audio guide, but apparently it all went in one ear and out the other).
After Sainte-Chapelle, we walked by Notre Dame, but we didn’t go inside. Jack tried his best to get us a timed entry, but no luck. Technically, you can just get in line and wait (it’s a national monument and entry is free), but…. they get an average of 35,000 visitors a day. The plaza outside is a madhouse.
One of these days, I’ll go inside. But that day will probably be mid-week in January, when nobody is around.
It’s still nice to hang out on the bridge nearby and appreciate the architecture. Especially if you have a daughter as adorable as mine and she lets you take photos of her.
We took some pictures closer to the building, but the kids all look crazy grumpy in them. I will not be sharing them.
I believe that at some point we promised the girls ice cream in a bid to rally their spirits. So, we wandered around the neighborhood behind Notre Dame in search of some sweet treats. We found this cute little place that serves their cones with the ice cream shaped to look like flower petals. It turns out they’re a chain, because there’s another location here in Lyon. I have mixed feelings every time it turns out that the cute little place that I wandered into is a chain.
Just about as soon as we received our cones, it started raining. Not exactly the best conditions for eating something frozen, but at least it was a light rain. Every time it rains in Paris, I think about the movie Sabrina (the original one, obvs). It’s a surprisingly helpful method for appreciating the weather.
Our second day was mostly dedicated to visiting the Louvre. You could dedicate an entire month to visiting the Louvre and still not see everything. But, a day there is a decent place to start. Although, it gets so crowded, you might be better off visiting one of the smaller museums if you’re pressed for time.
We all knew that the Louvre was going to be crowded, but I don’t think we realized that it was going to be crowded. Once again we had our timed entry tickets, but the line for our group was behind several other lines. This is one of the areas where it’s helpful to hire a guide. “We’re not going to wait there,” he said, and so we… didn’t.
We had to try a few different lines, but eventually we inched our way closer to getting inside. It helped that it seemed like he knew all of the other guides and most of the security guards. I think we really were in the correct line (we weren’t being those people, I swear!). But it’s also way easier to get into the correct line when you’re with the guy who knows how to get there.
Visiting the Louvre is a little bit like visiting Disney World. You’re surrounded by unhappy families, and you spend a lot of time in line waiting to get into another line. In this case, we were just going through security checks. Once we got inside and under the pyramids, we still had to get into the museum.
Unfortunately, our tickets were incompatible with visiting the Louvre with an official guide. This was a new rule. So new, in fact, that the museum employees didn’t entirely know what was going on. They just knew that our barcodes made a “whomp whomp” noise when they tried to scan our tickets. I was hoping that the line backing up behind us would motivate them to wave us in, but that’s not the French way. Kristian and Jack had to go with the guide to stand in an entirely different line. Eventually, they had to purchase entirely new tickets.
I highly recommend visiting the larger Parisian museums with a guide, but definitely double check your tickets types. As of now, I think it’s just the Louvre where it was a problem, but the French government does love making updates to their rulebooks.
We started our tour down in the basement, in the site that they discovered when they started digging down to build I.M. Pei’s glass pyramids. The Louvre began its life as a fort (after that, it was a palace), and it turns out that a bunch of the original battlements are still there. It was really neat to walk around and see what the building looked like originally. It’s all limestone, so you can see all sorts of fossils.
It’s also a lot less crowded down there than the rest of the museum.
Stonecutters used to be paid per stone. Depending on which way each stone is facing, you can often see the marks that the stonecutters made to delineate which stones were there. I wanted to take a photo of Lilian in front of one of the stones with a big heart shape on it, but we were rushing through pretty fast.
From there, we made our way upstairs to the museum proper. We got some more architecture lessons along the way. Our guide pointed out the difference between French stairs (narrow, steep, spiral) and Italian stairs (wide, gently sloping, straight with large landings). We also learned how to look for the initials of the leader who sponsored construction. Henry IV was in charge during the construction of the wing we were in, so there were H’s everywhere (I heartily approve!). A cheeky little touch: we stopped to admire a gorgeous statue of the goddess Diana. Pope Paul IV gave it to Henry II as a nod to the fact that Henry’s mistress was also named Diana.
Cheeky. Very Cheeky.
Our guide promised us the “highlights” and that is definitely what we saw. Unfortunately, you have to wade through hundreds (thousands?) of people to get to said highlights. We saw the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa. Well, we wandered along the side of the gallery where the Mona Lisa lives and we saw her over the top of the barricade they put up stop people from disrupting the flow of traffic.
Spoiler alert: tourists are always going to fine a way to disrupt the flow of traffic.
Directly across from the Mona Lisa is a painting titled “The Wedding at Cana,” which is absolutely enormous. Our guide wanted to spend more time looking at it, but we were buffeted by the tides of our fellow visitors and had to keep moving. He did mention that Napoleon stole the painting from the Italians (a pretty impressive feat, the painting is basically the size of an entire gallery wall). “The Italians keep asking for it back,” he said, “and we tell them it’s too big to ship.”
You gotta love a guide with a sense of humor.
I don’t want to sugar-coat our visit. The Louvre gets crowded, especially during the high season (or a holiday weekend, like during our visit). That’s just a fact of life, like water being wet or French croissants being delicious. But please don’t cry for me that I had to bump a few shoulders in order to see world-famous artwork. It was overwhelming at times, but none of us left the museum wishing that we’d done something else.
After the highlights tour, our guide bid us an au revoir and we had some time to explore the rest of the museum. We had lunch at one of the restaurants, where our waiter seemed like he was having a very bad day. At first I thought maybe he just hated dealing with allergies (he got extremely snippy when I asked for the allergen menu for my niece). But, then I watched him get annoyed by all of his other tables. Paris has a reputation for rude waitstaff, but honestly he’s the only rude waiter I’ve had in all my visits since we moved here. Wouldn’t you occasionally be a little snippy if you had to deal with tourists in the Louvre all the time?
Lilian was complete toast after our crowded morning. I’m so proud of her for being able to recognize that feeling when it happens. She made herself cozy on a bench in an atrium and the rest of us did some more exploring. Nina was hoping to find an exhibit of soldier’s coffins? that she remembered from a previous visit, but unfortunately they’ve been dispersed throughout the city.
Speaking of non-extant exhibits, I have a vague memory of getting lost in the Louvre when I was 17. In my memory, I was down in the basement, and there were piles of skeletons everywhere. The only problem is, the Louvre isn’t actually connected to the catacombs. Is it possible that I was lost in the ruins of the fortress? Were there ever skeletons down there? Am I misremembering skeletons? Was I not in the Louvre? Have I made the whole thing up in my head? I’ve done some googling, but I can’t figure it out. Based on pictures I’ve looked at online (and the fact that several websites specifically say that the Louvre and the Paris Catacombs are not related) I think my brain has mixed up two memories. Which is wild, because the memory of walking down one of those giant (Italian-style, definitely Italian-style) staircases and then getting lost among the skeletons feels incredibly real to me.
I guess that’s why eyewitness testimony can be so unreliable.
On our last full day, we spent the morning at the flagship Galleries Lafayette location. It seems kindof crass to spend that much time in a department store, but it’s actually a really cool location. It’s a grand, Haussmann-style building. I mean, it’s literally located on Haussmann Boulevard. All of the departments are oriented around a large open atrium, with a stained glass dome at the top.
Think of it like a Sainte-Chappelle, but built to honor the gods of retail shopping.
If you’re in the Galleries Lafayette, you can use the escalators to make your way up to the roof and check out a panoramic view of the city. Be forewarned, it is hot up there. I’m not sure how they got the sun dialed up to 11, but as you can see in our family photo, it is bright. We wanted to have a snack on the terrace, but you need to make your reservations well in advance. Instead, we had an extremely mid snack from the cafeteria downstairs.
Moving from food to food, we bought sandwiches from a café and had a picnic lunch in the Tuileries. One thing that I really love about the parks in Paris is that there are hundreds of metals chairs that anyone can grab and use. Some of them have reclined backs (for laying back and letting the sun warm your face), but most of them are perfect for dragging around a concrete bench for a family picnic.
I can neither confirm nor deny that Parisian pigeons see me as an easy mark.
“Flap your wings a little harder, Bertie, I think you can get her to drop some more crumbs.”
After lunch, we met up with our guide at the Musée d’Orsay. I think this is one of my favorite museums in the world. Our guide showed us how the flower details in the roof are noise traps. Maybe that’s why I love it so much? Museums are often places of serious sensory overload. The Musée d’Orsay is large and open (it used to be a train station after all), but it’s quiet.
They built the original Orsay train station as part of the Universal Exhibition of 1900. And also because the Orléans line had an “unfavorable” location. Because they were putting it into such a schmancy location (it’s located right across the street from the Legion of Honor), they made it super nice. We saw a pretty cool video of luggage getting loaded onto a super modern (for the time) conveyer belt to take them up to the attached hotel. When trains got bigger, the station could no longer handle the traffic. So, the site sat empty for decades. They eventually turned it into a museum, peeling off some of the collection from the Louvre.
How big is the Louvre? You can take enough paintings to help created the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world and it’s barely noticeable.
We followed our guide like obedient ducklings and managed to see most of the museum (he was smart about what path we followed!). He pointed out major and important works, but also gave us time to wander and look at the paintings that appealed to us.
After he left us to our own devices, we went in search of my favorite sculpture of all time, Aurore by Denys Puech. Hair is almost impossibly hard to sculpt, especially the curly kind. I remember going to the Musée d’Orsay as a young’un and being impressed with Aurore’s flowing mane and playful smile. I loved it so much that, years later, I made Kristian go back and find her with me. We took a picture of me demonstrating the similarities between our hairstyles.
Lilian was super excited to recreate another photo, so we were pretty sad when we realized that Aurore’s ballroom had been cleared out for a temporary exhibit. Even if said exhibit was pretty cool (they were doing some really neat stuff with sensors and projection mapping). We asked a docent where the statue might be, and we got lucky! She was hanging out in the hallway.
Check out all this lovely curly hair!
The statue’s hair looks nice, too.
After we got back to our Airbnb, I snuck out to get some macarons from Maison Ladurée. They’re kinda pricey and definitely tourist-y, but they’re also a classic for a reason. The flavors are fun (I had the bright blue Marie Antoinette/Tea special!) and the macarons themselves are perfect. That took care of the second item on Lilian’s long-time Parisian wishlist.
For our last night, Jack had booked a boat tour of the Seine. I love a good boat tour, because you get a completely different perspective of the city (literally!). Also, no traffic.
Lilian and Nina were, unfortunately, not feeling so great. But, the rest of us made our way over to get on the boat. There are quite a few tour options, but I highly recommend the Vedettes du Pont Neuf. Their dock is a little more off the beaten track (read: not as crowded). Even better, the tour narrations are live and in two languages (English and French). If your French is good enough, you can sometimes catch the guide being a little extra snarky in the French version (pro tip: the word “moche” means ugly.”
If you time the nighttime cruise just right (and Jack sure did!), you sail by the Eiffel Tower just as it lights up and starts to sparkle. The boat operators milk the moment for all it’s worth, but I must admit it’s a pretty cool sight.
All good things must come to an end. We woke up on our last day in Paris and said goodbye to our Airbnb. We then wandered around aimlessly while looking for a place to get breakfast. What can I say? The French tend to not be all that into breakfast to begin with, and Sundays in France are pretty hit or miss in general. We met up with some of Nina’s friends from her foreign exchange student days. Everyone enjoyed catching up/meeting.
We weren’t sure what to do with our extra time, so I dragged everyone over to the Petit Palais. I figured that Kristian and Nina would love seeing the furniture (it reminds me a lot of being in their parents’ old house). And I figured correct. Score another point for Hope the Guide.
It was definitely a whirlwind trip, but a good time was had by all. I think we made a lot of smart choices about how we approached it:
- We had a few set plans everyday, which helps a lot when you have 7 people and could end up hemming and hawing all day long about what to do
- But, at the same time, we had plenty of downtime built-in so that we didn’t feel rushed or over-scheduled
- We had a communal place (our Airbnb) where we could eat dinner together. This let us have some family time and also saved us some money.
- We didn’t stress too much if not everyone wanted to do every activity. Lilian and Nina skipped the boat tour and that was ok. Not everyone is going to want to do every activity, and not everybody has the same amount of stamina for walking 20,000 steps a day. The point was to enjoy the time that we did spend together.
- We checked in with each other about how hungry/tired/thirsty everyone was feeling. If anybody was in need of sustenance, we stopped. No hanger-induced meltdowns!
- We were realistic about the Paris Metro (even when you take the train, it’s still a lot of walking). We planned our days around staying in one general area. We also splurged on an apartment that was near most of the stuff that we wanted to see.
- We were realistic about what we could see in one trip. At one point in our planning, someone floated the idea of going to Versailles, But, that trip is a giant time commitment (it involves a long-ish train ride and getting up early to beat the crowds).
I’m sure there are some things we could have done better, but all in all I’m quite pleased with the fact that our large family group had such a great time together. Nina and Jack, if you’re reading this, you’re welcome to come back and stay with us anytime!
