Paris with Kids: A Day Built Around Parks, Not Queues

Paris with children is not the Paris of the guidebooks, and families who try to make it so have a hard time. The famous museums are enormous, the famous monuments have famous queues, and a six-year-old's tolerance for both is measured in minutes.

The city that does work with children is a different one, and it is hiding in plain sight: a network of formal gardens with playgrounds and puppet theatres in them, a science museum with an entire wing built for under-twelves, and a river you can travel on instead of walking beside.

Key facts

• Best for: ages 3 to 12; teenagers will want the monuments as well
• Time needed: one full day
• Getting around: the Métro is fast but stair-heavy; buses are slower and far easier with a pushchair
• Rain plan: the Cité des Enfants and the natural history galleries are both indoors

9:30 — Jardin du Luxembourg

Start here and you will understand the whole idea. The Luxembourg gardens are a formal park in the Latin Quarter that also happens to be one of the great children's spaces in Europe.

There is a large fenced playground, charged for and worth it, with equipment separated by age. There is a carousel dating from the nineteenth century where children are handed a stick and try to hook rings as they pass. There is a puppet theatre — the Théâtre du Luxembourg — running traditional guignol shows; no French is needed to follow them, and the audience shouting is half the point.

And there is the pond, where you rent a wooden sailboat with a stick to push it off, and then walk round and round the water for an hour retrieving it. It costs very little as of writing and it is the single most reliable thing in Paris for a child between four and nine.

12:00 — Lunch, sitting on grass

Buy it rather than book it. A bakery baguette sandwich, a rotisserie chicken from a market street, fruit — and eat it in the garden or on the way to the next stop. Paris restaurants are not fast, and a two-hour lunch is a poor use of a child's good hours.

If you want to sit down properly, look for a brasserie rather than a bistro: bigger, noisier, quicker, and unbothered by children.

14:00 — Cité des Enfants at La Villette

North-east of the centre, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie is a vast science museum, and inside it sits the Cité des Enfants — a set of hands-on exhibition spaces designed specifically for children, split by age band, with a construction site, a water zone with dams and boats, and a body-and-senses area.

Two things to know. Sessions are timed and ticketed by age group, and they sell out in school holidays, so book ahead. And each session runs a fixed length — around ninety minutes — which is exactly the right amount and stops the afternoon from sprawling.

Around the museum, the Parc de la Villette is one of the largest parks in Paris, with themed playgrounds scattered through it, so the visit extends outdoors as long as the weather allows.

16:30 — The Seine, from the water

A river boat is the best way to show children central Paris without walking them through it. The large glass-roofed boats run circuits from several points along the river, take about an hour, and pass Notre-Dame, the Louvre's river frontage, the Musée d'Orsay and the Eiffel Tower without a single queue.

Sit outside at the back if the weather permits. Go late in the day in summer, when the light on the stone is worth the ticket on its own.

The alternatives, if the day goes differently

Jardin d'Acclimatation, in the Bois de Boulogne on the western edge of the city, is a park and small amusement park combined — rides, a small farm, and a lot of green — and it is the closest thing Paris has to a self-contained family day out.

The Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes is a small, old zoo inside a botanical garden, and the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution next door has the parade of taxidermied animals that stops every child in the doorway.

The Eiffel Tower is worth doing with children, but book a timed slot online well ahead, and consider the second level rather than the summit — the view is arguably better, the queue is shorter, and the top is often the point at which a small child decides they have had enough.

The Disneyland question

Disneyland Paris sits at Marne-la-Vallée, east of the city, and is reached in roughly forty minutes on the RER A from central Paris. It is a full day and then some, and it is not compatible with a day of sightseeing. Give it its own day, start early, and do not plan anything in Paris for the evening you come back.

Practical notes

The Métro is quick but many stations have stairs and no lift; with a pushchair the bus network is far kinder, and the routes along the river are scenic in their own right.

Bakeries and public fountains solve most snack and water problems. Paris has free drinking fountains in many parks, and some dispense sparkling water, which children find remarkable.

Finally: pick two things a day, not four. Paris rewards the family that does less of it.