505 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Table of Contents for this Episode

Discussed in this Episode

Palais Garnier
Paris Ballet
Bateaux Mouches dinner cruise
Eiffel Tower
Parc des Princes (Paris Saint Germain Stadium)
Perfume making class in Nice
Jardin des Plantes
Ménagerie at the Jardin des Plantes
Rock and mineral exhibit at the Jardin des Plantes
Montmartre
Marais
Louvre Museum
Napoleon Apartments (Louvre)
Gare de Lyon
La Taverne de Zhao (restaurant near the Eiffel Tower)
Le Grand Tour (hop-on hop-off bus in Nice)
Via Frances Sumères

[00:00:16] Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 505, cinq cent cinq.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:31] Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a trip report with Julie Cozens about ballet, food and fun, exploring Paris and Nice with kids.

Julie and her husband, and their two boys, ages 11 and 8, came from Vancouver and embarked on a memorable spring break adventure in France.

In Paris, the highlight was a ballet performance at the Palais Garnier, beautiful place. It was a dream come true for Julie’s ballet dancing son. They also enjoyed the Saint Germain Stadium Tour, an Easter egg hunt, and delightful culinary experiences. From escargots to steak frites, the family indulged in Parisian delicacies and embraced the city’s vibrant atmosphere.

Julie shares practical tips for navigating Paris with kids, including visiting the Louvre, with a game to keep the young ones engaged.

They explored Montmartre and the Marais, they discovered quaint shops and local treats along the way, despite a minor hiccup with weather, and a few closures, their time in Paris was filled with exploration and wonderful experiences.

Then they went to Nice by train, where Julie and her family had wonderful adventures in the sun, they made perfume, they went and created their own colognes, they had a olive tasting experience, and they liked the hop on hop off bus, which is a very relaxed way to see the sights.

So, Julie’s reflections on this trip offers great insights for families considering a similar journey, and she tells a wonderful tale of family fun. Stay tuned. It’s a great trip report.

Podcast supporters

[00:02:13] Annie Sargent: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the Southwest of France in my electric car.

You can browse all of that at my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

And Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ads free for as little as two bucks a month. If that sounds good to you, be like them, follow the link in the show notes.

This episode is going to be a little short, unlike the last, the one last week that was a little long, but there won’t be a magazine part of the podcast today because I was away all week visiting Lille. I hope you’re following me around France on patreon.com/joinus or on Facebook.

Tip Your Guide

[00:03:02] Annie Sargent: And I want to share my thanks to Leigh Budd for their one time donation done using any button on joinusinfrance.com that says ‘Tip your guide’. Leigh wrote, we are not traveling to Paris until June of 2025, but I am learning so much from you already. Thank you for fantastic podcasts. Well, thank you, Leigh. Keep listening and thank you for tipping your guide.

Food Tour Review

[00:03:26] Annie Sargent: Somebody left this review of one of my tours that I want to comment on. This person wrote: ‘Great suggestions. The food tour starts a little later than you expect. A lot of restaurant recommendations, so it wasn’t as much stop and go eating as I thought.’

Yes. My food tour doesn’t, I mean, you don’t really get to buying the stuff until the second half of the tour.

And I did this on purpose because I didn’t want you to be buying stuff and dragging it along for an hour. And also because of where I chose to take you on the second half of the tour, that’s where all the fantastic food shops are. So when you take my food tour in Paris, the first half, you’ll see a lot of wonderful stuff here about the history, et cetera, and then it’s in the second half that you do all the shopping and all the food tasting.

Thank you very much for those reviews. And podcast listeners get a big discount when they buy these tours from my website. I’ll be back at my desk next week, in the meantime, check out my updates on patreon.com/joinus, and on Facebook, and on joinusinfrance.com as well, of course.

I hope you are enjoying the Olympics as much as I am.

Annie and Julie – Paris and Nice with Boys

[00:04:40] Annie Sargent:

Bonjour, Julie Cozens, and welcome to Join Us in France.

Bonjour, Annie.

Lovely to talk to you today about your trip to Paris, and you also went to Nice, didn’t you?

Yes, we did.

So tell me about who was traveling with you and the purpose of your trip and things like that.

Yeah. So this was a family trip. It was myself, my husband, and our two boys, they’re 11 and 8.

Excellent.

And we’ve been trying to do an international trip with them once a year for the past few years, and we’re hoping we can continue doing this.

It’s a really great experience for my husband and I. We didn’t get to do a lot of traveling when we were younger. And it’s also something that I think I really want the boys to experience. I see them being very curious about the world, I like taking them to places where things don’t look and sound like home.

Uh-huh. And where is home for you?

Home is in Vancouver, Washington, and it’s just across the river from Portland, Oregon.

Excellent. All right.

And you’re fairly young. I mean, obviously, you have young kids. Sometimes on the podcast, the guests tend to skew a little older. So you’re one of the young’uns. I don’t feel like it every day, but yes, we’re a young family.

I found your podcast a few years ago before my first trip to Paris that I did with my girlfriends, and have been listening since. And some really good airfare came up for spring break and we decided, why not? Let’s do it.

Right. So your trip was March 29th through April 11th. So you didn’t have a ton of time, but you had enough time, right?

Yeah, we extended their spring break and pulled them out of school for a couple extra days just to make it worth the travel.

Alright, so what’s the overall thing that you learned from this trip? Tell us about the things that you loved and that made this trip special for your family.

Palais Garnier ballet live performance

[00:06:48] Annie Sargent: Yeah, I think one of the things that was really fun to do for my 11 year old son, he’s a ballet dancer, was take him to the Palais Garnier for a live performance.

So we got to see the Paris Ballet perform, and that was a really incredible experience for him. And you know, through your suggestions, we also got to do some things that really checked a lot of boxes for his younger brother. And we didn’t really have an agenda for the trip, it was really just to explore a new place.

And for me, that was also the nice part about visiting Nice because I’d been to Paris before. It was great to explore a new city in France in addition to Paris.

How did you split up your time between the two cities?

So we ended up doing five nights in Paris, four nights in Nice.

Mm hmm. And was that sufficient? It probably would have been, we had a little bit of a hiccup on the trip. My older son got sick the very last night we were in Paris, he came down with a pretty bad cold, sore throat and the like. And so that definitely changed the pace of our time in Nice. We definitely took some things off the itinerary that we otherwise would have gotten to.

Right. So what did your son think about the, of your sons, both of them, as a matter of fact, what did they think of the Opera House? Was it at the Garnier, this performance that you saw?

Yes, it was at the Palais Garnier and it was just the awe in their faces, I took some pictures of them just staring at it. And we talked a lot about it beforehand, you know, kind of the history of a lot of the opulence in the buildings in Paris, and then to see it in real life, I think it was just bigger and grander than they were expecting.

Yeah, yeah.

And the dance? We don’t have things like that at home.

Yeah. Well, a lot of cities do not have this at home. A lot of countries do not have this at home. It’s pretty special.

This is true.

Yeah. So did this encourage him to continue his ballet, you know, interest in the ballet and to pursue this?

Oh, yes, he’s been at it for about six years, and I think I’ve noticed a change in how he’ll respond to questions about, you know, what do you want to do when you’re older, it used to be like, oh, well, I’ll always dance, but I don’t know what I want to do, and now he tells everyone he wants to be a professional dancer.

What do you do in Paris with kids?

[00:09:10] Annie Sargent: Yeah. It’s a wonderful, very demanding, extremely demanding kind of aspiration. But hey, if that’s what he wants to do, then that’s what he wants to do.

And what did you do for your other son that in Paris? Because a lot of people ask me, what to do kids in Paris? So what did you do with your children that they really enjoyed?

Yeah, I have the benefit of having little foodies for kids, and so part of the fun, I think, really for the, especially the eight year old, he loves to cook, he loves to try new things, was to try all the food. He wanted to try escargot, he wanted to have a steak frite, he wanted to try the chocolate mousse, and all of the things, and so it was really fun to just explore around a lot of the restaurants and boulangeries.

Egg Hunt at the Paris Saint Germain Stadium

[00:09:56] Annie Sargent: And your recommendation, you know, he’s gotten into soccer the last couple of years. And so we were able to visit the stadium where the Paris Saint Germain team plays. They do a tour and we actually went on Easter Sunday. And so they had this whole Easter egg hunt kind of thing going on. Which was fun.

It wasn’t actual Easter eggs. It was these little stickers that looked like an Easter egg. But if you took pictures of all of them, then you got a prize at the end. It definitely made them look around very closely in every room. And that was a very neat tour, they got to see all the behind the scenes rooms and everything at the stadium.

It was a very cool experience.

That’s great. So that’s what they enjoyed. What did you enjoy?

Perfume Making Class in Nice

[00:10:40] Annie Sargent: I think there was a family hit down in Nice actually. We did a perfume making class and, you know, it just checked a lot of boxes for the kids. It was super interactive and the host there was lovely and she was great with the kids.

You start out by smelling all of the different scents for the base notes and the mid and everything and then you pick your favorites along the way. And then they come and help you come up with your own blend at the end. So the boys got to leave France with their own cologne that is their signature sense.

And they just thought that was the funnest thing. And actually my husband and I really enjoyed it as well.

That’s great.

And how did you find this experience? I mean, hopefully we can link it in the show notes for people who are interested. Yeah, I actually had heard somebody else kind of briefly mention it on your podcast in a trip report, but it was on like Viator is how we booked it.

Okay. And it seemed popular, we were able to get reservations just the day before, because I wasn’t exactly sure if we’d be able to do it. But I saw folks showing up to the store during the day and being turned away because it was full. So, it was definitely a popular thing to do there.

Yeah, were French kids on vacation that week perhaps?

Because we were in Nice through the weekend, they were just starting their vacation. And it was a little early for spring vacation for French kids while we were in Paris. So, I would say it was busy, but not too crazy really anywhere. We didn’t have any trouble getting into places for the most part.

Favorites in Paris

[00:12:18] Annie Sargent: So let’s see, I’m looking at your ranking of favorite things. So the first thing you list is Paris. You just like Paris. Do tell.

Oh, so I think I organized the favorites by city is what you’re saying.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, our favorites in Paris, and I’m trying to pull it up now. We really enjoyed, of course, the Paris Ballet.

I think that was a highlight for the trip.

Right, and you saw La Fille Mal Gardée, which I do not know anything about. Oh, it’s a really great one, especially to bring young people to, because it’s a shorter ballet. With intermission, it’s not even, it’s maybe two hours, and so, the other really fun thing is, it’s very theatrical.

It’s about this girl and this boy, they’re falling in love, the girl’s mother is sort of trying to keep her on track to marry this other guy, and so there’s a lot of, you know, failed interventions by this controlling mother. And it just, you know, there’s dancing chickens, it’s set out in the country, and it’s got the peasants, and it’s just a very entertaining, and I think a good introductory ballet for a lot of young people.

Wonderful. Wow. That sounds good. That sounds good. Then the next thing you list is the Baton Mouche, of course. That’s always, that’s always a highlight.

Yes, and we did the dinner cruise. We had given the boys a choice. You could go up the Eiffel Tower or we can do a dinner cruise where we go by the Eiffel Tower from the river and have dinner and get all dressed up.

And that’s what they picked. And we had a great time. Even though the river was too high, it couldn’t go the normal route past a lot of the monuments. It was still a really lovely time.

Hmm, oh, sometimes that happens. If the river is too high, the boat won’t go under the bridges and so they have to divert.

So they have to divert you to a different direction.

That’s right. So from their dock, instead of going, you know, you’re on the opposite side of the river from the Eiffel Tower, so instead of going left toward the center, you go to the right toward of the financial district area. But you still go by the Eiffel Tower and by The Lady that’s the sister to the Statue of Liberty. Yes. You still see that one.

L’Ile aux Cignes. Yeah, she’s on the Ile aux Cignes, she’s by the Montmartre area, 14th, 15th, she might be on the 14th, I’m not sure. Anyway, I know exactly where she is.

Very nice, yeah, you enjoyed the Parc des Princes, you enjoyed all the food, and you enjoyed walking around streets of Paris, because of monuments everywhere.

Yes, we spent a lot of time walking, depending on the time of day, they might have reported it was a bit too much, but everyone did really well. And we found a good balance of exploration and downtime, I would say, and hopefully they agree.

I think one of the comments that my husband made was that the Arc de Triomphe was bigger in real life than expected. There were things like that, where it’s like, you see pictures or you see scenes in movies and television shows. And I think the grandeur of it doesn’t really translate as much, until you’re really there.

Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s very impressive to see, honestly. Did you up the Arc de Triomphe?

No, we took the tunnel so that we could walk around it, but we didn’t actually take the time to get a ticket and go up.

Mm hmm. Okay. Excellent. What kind of weather did you have in Paris, that time of year, like, late March, early April?

Yeah, it was a little chillier than the weather reports had said when I was planning and packing. In fact, we ended up buying one of the boys a new jacket because he was sort of perpetually a little bit cold. I’d say it was a damp sort of week. There were a couple days where we hit some rain, but as the days progressed, it got a little bit sunnier.

But the whole time, I would say it was in about the fifties during the day. So, not bad. Same as home, really.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paris can get wet and cool and it usually doesn’t freeze very hard, but especially not in March, April, but it could.

It wasn’t super cold. It was just a little chillier than we expected. And we had only brought really lightweight rain jackets for the kids. And so they needed just an extra layer.

Yeah, something underneath. Yep. That’s always a good idea.

Ménagerie at the Jardin des Plantes

[00:16:49] Annie Sargent: You went to the Ménagerie at the Jardin des Plantes. Tell me about that.

Yes, that was one of your recommendations. And so our first full day in Paris, I didn’t want to have any big plans in case we were just super tired and couldn’t get going, so we went over to the park.

It’s humongous, really. It’s quite big. One of the appeals is that within the Jardin du Plant, there’s the different museums. And the younger one is very interested in rocks and minerals, and they have a museum there. So we went and visited the rock and mineral exhibit. It was quite crowded and I didn’t think to look ahead.

There was a special exhibition going on. It was this like virtual reality dinosaur or something or other. So a lot of the museums were pretty full. But we were able to get into the rock and mineral exhibit, no problem. And then, as we entered the park, you know, you see all of a sudden there’s a kangaroo and some wallabies and it really caught the kids’ attention.

And so we made kind of a decision on the spot to go to the zoo. And it wasn’t something I think that was high on my list to seek out when I’m in a different city to go to a zoo. We have a really wonderful one in Portland, Oregon. But it was a fascinating zoo and a lot of displays that, or exhibits that we don’t have back home, they really enjoyed the flamingos and also seeing an axolotl in, or oxolotl, in person in the reptile room.

So it was a very fun zoo. The setup is different than what I’ve seen back home, so that was how we spent kind of our first morning in Paris before we went to lunch.

So you did two of the five or six things you could do at the Jardin des Plantes.

That’s right. They have other museums there that we skip.

Yeah. We just did the two. Yeah, no, that’s great. With kids, you don’t really want to overdo. I think that’s in general, good parenting, like, let them make some choices, you know, supervised choices obviously, but those are very fun things to do.

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Montmartre

[00:19:04] Annie Sargent: You went to Montmartre.

Yes. We spent one of our days first in Montmartre and then in the Marais for the second half of the day. So we took the Metro up there as early as we could get out the door, and walked around Montmartre. We had breakfast up in, kind of the top of the hill there where all the artists are. Yeah. yeah.

And when we first arrived, there was hardly anyone there. And by the time we were done eating breakfast, it was very busy. And we found a man who was doing sketches, and he did a portrait of the boys, which was fun. He took us to a park around the corner that was much quieter. And that was a fun experience, the boys got to talk to him for a while and hear his story about being an artist in Paris.That was a nice little 20 minutes really, it didn’t take very long, before we kept, kept on walking. And there were a few places I really wanted to stop there. There’s a really, tasty, shop that sells choux pastry filled with different flavors of cream.

Oh yeah. And I’d been there. Odette? No. It was another one. Yeah, I think I added the name to the list. Les Choux Pâtes des Chouchous. Okay. I’m terrible with the pronunciation there, but it’s in Montmartre and it’s very, very tasty. So, we went around finding little treats like that.

There’s another one that does these, it’s hard to explain, it’s kind of like a meringue, and then it’s got a cream filling. We got a couple of those from different shops and then found a park to enjoy them before we got back on the metro and headed over to the Marais for the afternoon.

Uh huh. How many crepes did you buy for your kids? Did you buy any? No? No crepes?

We did, one time, but I feel like I didn’t encounter them other than, like, in restaurants. I didn’t see a lot of, you know, crepe stands. We were maybe not in the right places. Yeah. We had really lovely crepes for breakfast in Montmartre, but it was at a sit down restaurant.

Yeah. I was expecting to see at least some, but perhaps because it had been kind of a drizzly week, they weren’t really out.

Yeah. We’re not very motivated to get out in the rain sometimes, French people.

Yeah, we had introduced them though to crepes. So, you know, we try to do some things to get excited about what’s coming. And so, for Christmas, we got a crepe pan and practice making them ourselves at home ahead of time.

So then they were of course comparing how good ours were versus the ones from the restaurant. Well, of course, of course. They’re good young critics already. Yes.

Take the Kids to the Louvre?

[00:22:07] Annie Sargent: And you took them to the Louvre Museum. So I want to hear about that because a lot of people hesitate. Do I take my kids to the Louvre or not?

So, you know, I had been to the Louvre, and so I personally probably wanted to go to a different museum, but when we talked to the kids, they really wanted to go. They’d heard about it, in school and from friends, so we decided to book tickets. We got tickets very early in the morning. It was a bit of a challenge because that was the day that the older one wasn’t feeling so well.

But it was also our last day in Paris and we didn’t really have any other choices because we were checking out of our Airbnb and we didn’t have tickets for the train to Nice until the evening. So that was the plan for the day. And we went and we try to visit museums with them, especially when we travel, at least one, one if not two.

We have a little game we play to make our way through the museum. We go through it pretty quickly, and so you don’t see everything. So it’s not going to be the visit that, if you’ve got adults in tow, they’re going to be maybe very happy with. But every time we enter a new gallery,I want the boys to quickly kind of walk the room and find their favorite piece, and then my husband and I will come up to them, they’ll tell us why it’s their favorite piece, we’ll take their picture with it, if that’s allowed in the museum, and then we move on.

I just really want them to learn how to engage with the art, and think about what do they like or not like about something, but I try not to make it this big drawn out thing. So we move through pretty quick. That’s excellent. I think that’s great advice. That’s great advice. Yeah.

And ask them to pick something instead of you picking like, Oh, this is the famous piece in this room. Let them tell you what they’re drawn to.

And of course, we walked and saw the Mona Lisa, because they wanted to have that experience, and I wanted that for them. They really enjoyed the room with all of the jewels, of course.

And unfortunately, I thought they would have really enjoyed it, but the Napoleon apartments were closed for some renovations. It’s very much like the opera house,it’s going to be spiffy when they reopen it. It’s going to be even redder than red, if that’s possible.

We did go to the cafe that’s there in the Louvre to sit down and have some tea and coffee and a little bite to eat in between seeing kind of some of the Renaissance art and then moving on, we went through some of the Egypt section and then we left. That was what everyone wanted to do and then we went out to lunch nearby.

That’s wonderful. Sounds like you didn’t have any kind of breakdowns or kids fussing or, I mean, maybe they fussed a bit getting started in the morning.

Yeah, getting started in the morning, there was always a, you know, wait, what do we have to do? Occasionally when we’d be walking how much farther, but yeah, no, just like straight up refusals to keep going.

I think they’ve traveled enough now, and they have had really positive experiences. They kind of know like, Oh, she’s going to make us walk three more blocks, but then we’ll get to sit down or we’ll get to have a nice meal or do something fun.

Yeah, that’s good. That’s very good. All right.

From Paris to Nice by train

[00:25:25] Annie Sargent: Let’s hop on over to Nice.

How did you make your way to Nice from Paris?

We took the train. The Airbnb host was very kind and let us leave our bags there at the apartment for the day. So we were able to, you know, go to the Louvre and then kind of just be about town. The train didn’t leave until 5:30 in the evening.

And so around four o’clock we went back to the apartment and retrieved our bags. And took the metro over to the station. It was the Gare de Lyon station. And, gosh, I didn’t realize how beautiful that train station was. It was just lovely. It has that Le Train Bleu blue restaurant, which looks very appealing if I planned ahead.

Tip about taking trains in France

[00:26:09] Annie Sargent: The train was on time. We had a little trouble figuring out which train car to get on, which was probablya takeaway for anyone listening. We had bought first class tickets, and what we didn’t realize was they have these little electronic reader boards on each car that tell you the number of that train car.

So, I knew what what train number to be on, but they repeat the numbers for class two and class one. So we walked up to this train and it had the right number on it, but it wasn’t first class. It was second class. And so we actually started to get on and then realized we were in the wrong place. different flavors of cream.

Oh yeah. And I’d been there. Odette? Uh, no, It was another one. Yeah, I think I added the name to the list. Les Choux Pâtes des Chouchous. Okay. And I’m, I’m terrible with the pronunciation there, but, um, it’s in Montmartre and it’s very, very tasty. So, uh, we went around, um, finding little treats like that.

There’s another one that does these. It’s hard to explain. It’s kind of like a meringue, um, and then it’s got a cream filling. So we, we got a couple of those from different shops and then found a park to, to enjoy them before we got back on the metro and headed to, um, over to the Marais for the afternoon.

Uh huh. How many crepes did you buy for your kids? Did you buy any? No? No crepes? We did, one time, but I feel like I didn’t encounter them other than, like, in restaurants. I didn’t see a lot of, you know, crepe stands. We were maybe not in the right places. Yeah. We had really lovely crepes for breakfast in Montmartre, but it was at a sit down restaurant.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because often when you have, I mean, it depends if they weren’t out, then there’s nothing you can do about that. But sometimes you run into so many of them and some kids, they want one every time they run into one. Yeah. I was expecting to see at least some, but perhaps because it had been kind of a drizzly week, uh, they weren’t really out.

Yeah. We’re, we’re not very motivated to get out in the rain sometimes, French people. Yeah, we had introduced them though to crepes. So, you know, we try to do some things to get excited about what’s coming. And so, uh, for Christmas, we got a crepe pan and Uh, practice making them ourselves at home ahead of time.

So then they were of course comparing how good ours were versus the ones from the restaurant. Well, of course, of course. They’ve, they’re good young critics already. Yes. And you took them to the Louvre Museum. So I want to hear about that because a lot of people hesitate. Do I take my kids to the Louvre or not?

So, you know, I had been to the Louvre, and so I personally probably wanted to go to a different museum, um, but when we talked to the kids, they really wanted to go. Um, they’d heard about it, um, in school and from friends, so we decided to book tickets. We got tickets very early in the morning. It was a bit of a challenge because that was the day that the the older one wasn’t feeling so well.

But it was also our last day in Paris and we didn’t really have any other choices because we were checking out of our Airbnb and we didn’t have tickets for the train to Nice until the evening. So that was the plan for the day. And we went and, um, We, we try to visit museums with them, especially when we travel, um, at least one, one if not two.

We have a little game we play to make our way through the museum. We go through it pretty quickly, and so you don’t see everything. So it’s not going to be the visit that, if you’ve got adults in tow, they’re going to be maybe very happy with. Um, but every time we enter a new gallery, um, Um, I want the boys to quickly kind of walk the room and find their favorite piece, and then my husband and I will come up to them, they’ll tell us why it’s their favorite piece, we’ll take their picture with it, if that’s allowed in the museum, and then we move on.

I just really want them to learn how to engage with the art, and, and think about what do they like or not like about something, um, but I try not to make it this big drawn out thing, so we, we move through pretty quick. That’s excellent. I think that’s great advice. That’s great advice. Don’t try to. Yeah.

And ask them to pick something instead of you picking like, Oh, this is the famous piece in this room. Let them tell you what they’re drawn to. And of course we, we walked and saw the Mona Lisa. Um, because they wanted to have that experience, and I wanted that for them. Um, they, they really enjoyed the room with all of the jewels, of course.

And, um, unfortunately, I thought they would have really enjoyed it, but the Napoleon apartments were closed for some renovations. Well, it’s very, it’s very much like the opera house, um, and they are, it, they’re, it’s going to be spiffy when they reopen it. It’s going to be even redder than red, if that’s possible.

And so we were, and we, we did go to the cafe that’s there in the Louvre to sit down and have some tea and coffee and, and a little bite to eat. Uh, in between, um, seeing kind of some of the Renaissance art and then moving on, we went through some of the Egypt section and then we left. That was, that was what everyone wanted to do and then we went out to lunch nearby.

That’s wonderful. Sounds like you didn’t have any, any kind of, uh, breakdowns or kids fussing or, I mean, maybe they fussed a bit getting started in the morning. Yeah, getting, getting started in the morning. There was always a, you know, wait, what do we have to do? Occasionally when we’d be walking how much farther, but yeah, no, no, just like straight up refusals to keep going.

I think they, they’ve traveled enough now, and they have had really great positive experiences. They kind of know like, Oh, she’s going to make us walk three more blocks, but then we’ll get to sit down or we’ll get to have a nice meal or do something fun. Yeah, that’s good. That’s very good. All right. Let’s hop on over to Nice.

How did you make your way to Nice from Paris? We took the train. And so, um, the Airbnb host was very kind and let us leave our bags there at the apartment for the day. So we were able to, you know, go to the Louvre and, and then kind of just be about town. The, the train didn’t leave until 5:30 in the evening.

And so around four o’clock we went back to the apartment and retrieved our bags. And took the metro over to the station. It was the, um, Gare de Lyon station. And, gosh, I didn’t realize how beautiful that train station was. Um, it was just lovely. It has that Le Train Bleu blue restaurant, which looks very appealing if I planned ahead.

Um, the train was on time. We had a little trouble figuring out which train car to get on, which was probably, um, uh, a takeaway for anyone listening. Um, you know, we had bought first class tickets, and what we didn’t realize was they have these little electronic reader boards on each car that tell you the number of that train car.

So, I knew what what train number to be on, but they repeat the numbers for class two and class one. So we walked up to this train and it had the right number on it, but it, it wasn’t first class. It was second class. And so we actually started to get on and then realized we were in the wrong place. And it was very confusing and there were, there’s not like staff on the platform to answer questions. You kind of need to know where you’re going.

Yeah, because I mean, most people do know where they’re going.

Yeah, right.

Fortunately, this very kind woman saw the disgust look on our face and she spoke English and helped us, point us in the right direction. So we’re able to find our train car.

On trains, on the side of the train, you have big letters. It’s either a one or a two, that’s the class. And then you have a small kind of screen that displays the train number, the car number, and things like that. You have to look for the small screen that shows you your car number and then whether in first or second, and that’s a big number on the side of the train.

I don’t know why they did it that way, but that’s how they did it.

Yeah, we figured it out, and we got on the train with plenty of time to spare, got seated. And is very comfortable. We had the seats where it’s like two seats facing two seats. So we have a table between the four of us, places to plug our electronics into.

The train ride went pretty smooth until one of the stops down in the South, the train came to a stop, and we were sitting there for quite a while, and then a conductor came on the loudspeaker speaking in French and, well, yeah, try to prepare, of course, right? And I tried to prepare before the trip and try to learn a little bit so I could tell he was apologizing and that the train was delayed about 20 minutes.

And then he said something I didn’t understand about an animal. 20 minutes went by and he came on and said basically the same thing, 20 more minutes. Sorry. Third time came on and he apologized at least 20 more minutes. Thankfully then a woman working with the train came through the car and saw us and was able to explain that the train ahead of us on the line had hit a flock of sheep.

Oh dear.

And so they had had to power down the lines to take care of that. All in all we were delayed just under two hours, we sat at that train station, which was a little rough after a long day in Paris.

Yes.

Yeah we got in after midnight. Yeah. The last tram in Nice that leaves the train station is at 12:15, and we got in after that. So I had to call an Uber, which worked out fine. He was a little nervous our luggage wouldn’t fit in his car, but it did. Thankfully, the owner of the apartment met us quite late, we were originally due in a little before 10 and we’re there well after midnight.

So he met us and gave us the keys. And we had a very slow start to our next day.

Right. So, lesson of the story is always make sure if you’re going to stay at an Airbnb, that you have the contact number handy somewhere really easy. Don’t go digging through emails and whatever, because you might not find it, you know, you have to have it saved somewhere where you’ll know where to find it.

Yeah, they had reached out on the WhatsApp before the trip. And so I was able to just text with them. Yeah.

Yeah. French people do WhatsApp. Almost everybody does WhatsApp in France. So that’s, that’s very common.

Yeah. It made it easy. And I already had it downloaded on my phone from a previous trip.

And so that’s how we communicated.

Nice, highlights

[00:37:38] Annie Sargent: Very good. So what did you enjoy in Nice?

Well, I already mentioned the perfume class. We did that our first full day actually, it worked out really well. I think the other highlights in Nice, we went to this really lovely shop, the owner was delightful. He sells olive oil and he does a lunchtime tasting menu.

And it was delicious. You know, each dish features a different kind of olive oil. So he brings it out. You can taste the olive oil and then taste the dish. He was just a character and very proud of his product, and happy to talk about it, and that was a really wonderful meal.

We hadn’t made reservations and just showed up right when he opened and he had a table available. But there were definitely a lot of folks coming in that had reservations, so I think we were quite lucky.

Uh huh. Yes, and all of these things are going to be in, I see that you’ve added them to the notes that you sent me, so if you look at the show notes, you will find all of these specific recommendations. That’s great.

Yeah. I think two of the other highlights from Nice were the hop on, hop off bus the Le Grand Tour.

That was something we haven’t done in other cities, but with my son kind of feeling a little under the weather, we wanted something pretty bokey. And so we were like, well, what better than, it was beautiful, sunny weather to, by the way, in Nice, it was in the 60s, and no clouds.

So even though it was full sun, it wasn’t hot. So we sat on the top of the bus and went on this tour, and you plug in your headphones and can listen in English. And it takes you all the way to Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Ah, Villefranche-sur-Mer, yep, yep.

By the kind of old ramparts of the castle and it goes all throughout Nice as well.

And they point out a lot of things that you can go explore. And so I think doing that kind of informed our next day we were able to visit some of those places.

And I think the other one was we had a really lovely dinner one night at a seafood restaurant in Nice and that was quite a hit with the whole family.

It was a small little restaurant. The chef is kind of in and out of the kitchen and talking to the customers. So it was a more intimate and, you know, very tasty and a high end food experience, but in a very welcoming and warm and sort of intimate setting, I think.

Well, if you show up with kids in France, usually people are really friendly and they enjoy having families and kids.

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Sometimes I hear people complain, you know, like they would like restaurants where kids are not allowed, whatever. I don’t think that’s ever going to take root in France because we like families. Families are good. And we do understand that sometimes kids, you know, are a little impatient, or whatever, but that’s fine.

Yeah, and I think our boys are definitely at an age where they’re enjoying the restaurant experience, and we do try to not go, we don’t spend every meal at a sit down restaurant, probably for that reason, I think they would get a bit tired of it. And so we do try to mix it up with a meal back at the apartment, we like to stay in apartment style accommodations for that probably very reason. Yeah.

We have to wrap things up because we’ve been talking a while, but I would like to know if there’s anything you wish you had known before you came or things that you want to share with the listeners about what to do, good things to know about.

Absolutely. I think the train logistics is definitely one of them. One of the other things that I should have done a little more of is check for closures. We wanted to go to the Modern Art Museum in Nice, and we actually walked all the way there, and then saw the signs that it was closed for renovation.

And so we had to pivot, and the kids were a little irritated about walking all the way there and not getting to do the thing we had planned. I think similar thing happened at the Jardin du Plant where some of the museums weren’t even available, they were booked up. I didn’t expect them to be on a weekday, but they were.

In Paris, we should have purchased that five day visitor pass for the metro, we used it enough that it was kind of not so economical to keep buying those booklets of ten.

Because you did plenty. Okay. That’s good to know. Anywhere you went that you didn’t think was any good for you anyway?

The Trocadéro wasn’t probably worth the time. You know, the kids didn’t want to go up the tower, there were plenty of places to view it from, and I think that, it was just crowded and there wasn’t, like, anything really of interest, I think, at that specific place, other than, like, trinkets and whatnot.

So I think making the time and effort to walk through there was probably really not worth the effort. We did end up going to lunch at a place you’d recommended, not far from the tower and that I think made up for it. They do the seafood and I am forgetting the name of the restaurant now, but it was very good.

The Fruits du Mer or something like that. Yeah.

Fantastic. So, was it a great family trip? Would you recommend people do this sort of trip? Absolutely. You know, the public transportation, and it’s very easy to get around with a family. You’re not hopping in and out of cabs, which can be kind of a pain in some cities, with kids in particular.

We did stay in pretty central locations in both Paris and Nice, which made that easier. But there’s so much to do, the parks, I’m a little jealous whenever we visit Europe, I think in particular, but actually even in South America, the parks are just superior to what we have back home.

There’s lots of places where the kids can burn off a little extra energy before we move on to something where maybe they have to be quiet, so absolutely, I think traveling with kids is a really fun way to experience a new place. Their little insights and things that they prefer or enjoy are really fun.

I’m definitely getting a lot out of traveling with them. That’s fantastic.

Well, Julie, thank you so much for talking to me and for coming on the podcast, that’s wonderful for you to share your experiences with your kids and all that. And well, I wish you many, many more wonderful trips to France or elsewhere with your kids.

Yes, we definitely see ourselves coming back to France, and I appreciate all the help from your trip planning as well. It helped me really find some things that appealed to the kids, that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of. So thank you so much.

Yeah, I try to really, you know, hone in on what children would like, you know, I mean, I can remember, barely.

Julie, and have a wonderful time.

Merci, Annie. Au revoir.

Au revoir.

Copyright

[00:44:38] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 505: Exploring Paris and Nice with Kids