Hot take: The main attractions in Paris are not necessarily kid-friendly.
Hear me out. The Eiffel Tower is INCREDIBLE. I LOVE seeing it sparkle. And, that requires my children being up until 10pm in order to see it sparkle.
The Louvre hosts incredible works of art. And to be honest, my kids don’t give a flying FLIP about the Mona Lisa (and it is super tiny and hard to see) or Winged Victory.
The Champs-Elysee is a bunch of stores, and a shopping street.
Notre-Dame is a big cathedral, and my kids typically last about 5 minutes in cathedrals before saying “OMG are we done yet.”
SO. When I was researching museums that would be appropriate for our trip to Paris this summer, I struggled to find the right things for our family.
In addition, I have visited Paris several times in my life, so I knew the vibe and style of many of the museums, and I knew which ones my kids would ABSOLUTELY not thrive in.
I’m not naming names, I’m just saying that if you know which museum this is above, we did NOT go to it on this visit.
All of that being said. We DID skip some of the big museums, and we actually went to smaller museums, and some that I had never been to before.
Here was the itinerary of our heaviest museum day:
| Early AM (9:30-11:00) | Late AM/Lunch (11-1pm) | PM (2:00-3:30) |
| the Grand Palais | the Petit Palais | Musée d’Orsay |
The logic behind this day (and EVERY day that I planned) was two-fold. 1, kid-friendly, and 2- geography.
In case you have never visited Paris before, it is a HUGE city, and Google Maps will fool you into thinking it is walkable. For two adults, yes there are some attractions that are walkable.
Add in kids, and the whole game changes.
The plan:
The Grand Palais has several different exhibits, but the one we are really interested in is the “Palais Des Enfants” (kid’s palace), specifically geared towards children ages 2-10.
The Petit Palais is free, and it is right across the street. It has beautiful art (so if we can get them looking at art for even 5 minutes, this ends up being worth it), AND has a great café in the courtyard inside for lunch.
Best case, we look at a bit of art for free and grab a bite to eat. Worst case, we pop in for 5 minutes, and head out.
The Musée d’Orsay is what I’m most concerned about for this day. It will probably be crowded, and it is jam-packed full of art. We will try to focus our time mostly on the kids room that is available in the summer time, and then maybe pick 1-2 rooms to see some art.
The tickets:
The Grand Palais kids section requires a ticket and timed entry. We booked these 2 days in advance, and secured a 9:30am time slot. Not my first choice time slot, but it’s what was available.
The Petit Palais does not require ticket nor timed entry. That’s why I put this in the middle, so whenever we finish the Grand Palais, we have flexibility to meander across the street whenever works for our schedule.
The Musée d’Orsay does require tickets and timed entry, and I couldn’t get a time slot for this day. I bought a ticket that allows me to enter whenever I want in the span of a 1-month time frame, but my concern here is the kids, who are free but are supposed to have a timed reservation. I’m going to try to tackle this in the afternoon, and we’ll see what happens.
The reality:
Well, this was the first morning after we flew in from the United States (and had a travel day from hell), so we missed our 9:30am time slot. We did our best to get there as quick as possible, and the staff were very kind and let us in at 11:00am, even though that was not our reserved time.
(Facepalm. I should have known better than to book a 9:30am reserved entry.)
The Palais des Enfants (the kids’ section in the bottom floor of the Grand Palais) was INCREDIBLE. This basically acted as a “kids museum” for our very first activity here in Paris. It is all at kids-level, with hands-on activities and art, and the kids absolutely loved it.
The exhibit itself does rotate every few months (we saw the Transparency exhibit), but I would be fully confident in whatever exhibit they have and telling a family they will enjoy whatever it is.
When we finished, we literally crossed the street to get to the Petit Palais. The hardest part of entering here was finding the stroller entrance on the ground floor, the lift to get back up after, and bag check/security. The signage wasn’t great and the language barrier was a bit of a challenge (I speak fairly proficient French as well, but could not understand what they were saying).
Regardless, we got inside and found our way to the courtyard. Everyone is READY FOR LUNCH. And then, the line for the café is about 20 people deep. And our kids literally will not be able to wait for food that long.
Sigh.
Did I mention the Petit Palais is air conditioned?
With STUNNING art and it’s for free? But the kids are melting down, and we’ve got to put food in them.
So we leave after spending 10 minutes here (we ALL wish we could have stayed longer, literally all of us), cross the Pont Alexandre III (famous bridge, it’s been in just about every movie or show about Paris, you’ll recognize it when you see the gold ornate architecture), and head towards a highly-rated restaurant on the other side of the river, Au Canon des Invalides.
If you go nowhere else when you’re in Paris that is on our list,
GO HERE. FULL STOP.
I cannot say this enough. What an incredible restaurant with AMAZING food, and they were so kind to us, and found room for our stroller, and spoke to our kids, and were patient with us…
They had amazing kids food (my daughter thinks this is the best chicken tender she has had in her entire life), and the salmon tartare was life-changing (even my son couldn’t stop eating mine). The server admitted that the salmon tartare was his favorite thing they have on the menu, and that it is incredible.
Need a cup of coffee? Go next door to The Coffee (that is the actual name). Hubby grabbed a quick coffee for a pick-me-up, and we headed to the last museum of the day.
Musée d’Orsay
The Musée d’Orsay, also known as my literal favorite museum in the entire world. Because it is chock-full of incredible art, and also one of the reasons why I was quite worried to take the kids. Would it be TOO overwhelming, and honestly, would we even get to see anything at all?
Upon entering, we immediately sought out the “kids” room, which was on the second floor (seriously, stop and ask for directions, it is hard to find) tucked away in a corner. Our oldest immediately set off to start coloring and making art, while our youngest was content just to make noise and be a kid.
I actually used this opportunity (while hubby was with the kids) to go sneak away to see my favorite works in this museum (the collection they have of Degas here is second to none, iykyk…) up on the 5th floor. I set a timer on my phone for 20 minutes, and then came back to the kids room and swapped with my hubby.
After all that was said and done, we had been there for about an hour, and the kids were almost done. We took them to see one exhibit upstairs on the 5th floor, Neo-Impressionism, which I honestly think is quite accessible for kiddos. Lots of bright colors and BIG life-size paintings, and the subjects are all very kid-friendly (circus clown, beautiful landscapes, etc.). Our oldest got more out of this exhibit than I had expected!
Then it was time to CALL IT and leave while we were ahead (just barely ahead, tbh). We headed out and patted ourselves on the back for a SOLID first day in Paris, and we even saw 3 museums!
If you’ve made it to the end, there’s several morals of the story I want to point out to you.
- Find which museums have kid-specific exhibits or rooms. This might allow your museums to still stay adult-friendly while giving your kids something to do that feels geared towards them.
- Do not attempt the “famous Paris museums” just because everyone else does it. Your family will get more out of the visit if you choose the right museums for your family.
- Plan your museums based on GEOGRAPHY. The total walking for this day was 2.4km, a total of 35 minutes, split up between 3 museums and 1 lunch stop. (If I had been able to get a reserved entry at Musée de L’Orangerie, I would have put that in the afternoon spot for today as it is closer, but there were no slots left for this same day.)
- Some museums have courtyards or gardens, others have cafés. Consider putting one of those into the museum time slot in case you need time outside or food.
- We only did this one day, and we never again attempted 3 museums in the same day.
Would I do this day again?
In a HEARTBEAT. It was actually my favorite day. I would just get a bit of an earlier start and actually be at the Grand Palais at 9:30am, and I would have brought a snack or two so we could have actually enjoyed the Petit Palais.
So there you have it. Mom’s favorite day in Paris, one incredible lunch stop that we still talk about, and how to plan a museum-heavy day with kids in Paris.
