The path less travelled
With all the incredible delights on offer you could quite easily spend a month in Paris. That’s before you have even conquered the shopping.
So with only ten nights to play with the decisions we have made about what, when and how to spend our time have been crucial to our overall experience. Which seems to go against your very intention of being on holiday: Less pressure, less rush, no hassles, no consequences. Every time we choose to go somewhere we are crossing some amazing opportunities off our list.
Add to that is the ever present reminder that this holiday is about the children, and the family unit, rather than mine or Jamie’s desires. Which experiences are going to be more enriching for a three, five, nine and eleven year-old?
Some of our decisions have been stellar. Some not so. So far some of the best moments of our holiday have happened purely by chance - luck rather than design.
Disneyland Paris seemed like a turning point in our experience. It represented that dreaded half way point in your time somewhere where you suddenly change from having the whole world at your feet and endless opportunities to a looming deadline of departure and a sense of pressure to fit far too much in to far too few days.
Decisions since then could have been better. Walking had been our main mode of transport. On Rue Mazarine our apartment is incredibly central and well placed to get us quite far. But faced with a to-do wish list further away we needed to finally embrace public transport.
Every major city in the world has hop on, hop off buses. Paris has a vast range of options. What a great idea. That would suit us perfectly. We could get everywhere with ease, not worry about timetables, handing over cash each time and trying to corral our children through crowds of Parisians. We would be masters of efficiency.
How wrong we were. We have since spent hours of our precious time waiting for green and yellow buses to turn up and, once boarded, taking outrageously long routes to get from point A to B. Not only has the method of transport let us down but we have realised the very reason we are on the bus in the first place is that we are going to the big ticket tourist items in Paris: Following hoards of American tourists thirty years our senior to places with terrible eating options, street pedlars and horrific entry prices.
It’s not my Paris. And it’s not the Paris I want my children to remember.
As we walked in the snow down the slopes of Montmartre (yes, it really did snow - exciting but not so good in our summer regalia) we decided our three-day hop on hop off bus pass could go straight to the rubbish bin. We would take the metro home and reclaim our holiday. And we were done with the high traffic tourist destinations. Our final two days would be about ‘absorbing’ the city. Taking the path less travelled.
Oh and to finish on an incredibly positive note. Our best decision ever - late night at the Louvre. We entered the museum at 6:30pm, no queuing, no waiting. We went straight to the Mona Lisa where we were able to get right up to the rope (I have heard horror stories of people not even able to enter the room it is so packed). Three hours of paintings and statues were just the right amount for us and we walked home in the darkness over the Pont des Arts with the Eiffel Tour lit up to our right, the Pont Neuf lit to our left and the Seine sparkling with all the lights like it was full of stars. Pure magic. Pure Paris.
