We are booked for two weeks in Paris in the Spring with my husband and 2 girls. But as I was planning our itinerary for Paris, Disney, Versailles, Giverny, Loire Valley, Fontainebleau, I see that we have about 5 days to explore the other cities in France. We would especially want to visit Lourdes and Nice. Please advice if this is a good idea to take the TGV from Paris to Lourdes. Do you recommend that we pass by Bordeau since its on the way, then from Lourdes to Nice and back to Paris. Or is Nice is very far already?

Wow! That is alot for 2 weeks..IMO,Nice is way too far south for that time frame with that many places in between. Maybe it's just me.

Do you mean 2 weeks IN Paris and then add in the other places. Or do you mean 2 weeks total? Seems a bit rushed to me

I think that you are trying to do much to much in a 2 week period. It seems as if you are not really visiting PARIS itself but using it as a headquarter to go elsewhere.
Why not spend more time in Paris and try to get the feel of the city and enjoy its beauty.
How old are your children? I am assuming very young since you are going to Disney. There are many child oriented atractions that the family could visit and enjoy in Paris.
I would not suggest going to Nice. It definitively is not a 1 day trip.
Enjoy your trip

The places you list before adding in Nice and/or Lourdes are more than enough for two weeks, but maybe I don't understand your total timeframe. I would not try to do it all in two weeks. Do you have a total of two weeks or more?

I don't get the timeframe, either, but if it's only two weeks, you've already got too many plans. You will likely need a good 5 days just to explore Paris itself. Versailles and Fontainebleau and Disney and Giverny can be day trips. That leaves you with 5 days if this is a 2-week trip. If that's the case, no, it would be folly to try to visit Nice and Lourdes (have you consulted a map?), and I would never recommend a first-time visitor go to Bordeaux.

Okay so Nice is out of the IT. But we really want to go to Lourdes even if its a 5-hr train ride. My girls are 11 and 15. Any shopping outlets in Paris? We have about 16 days total. Would appreciate all your travel tips since this will be our 1st time in Paris.

There is a shopping outlet adjacent to Euro Disney, so you might plan shopping the day you go out there. That would be a full day.

As you consider going to Lourdes, be prepared that trains don't leave every hour, on the hour. You may not be able to leave as early as you like or return as late as you like, so it will likely turn into a multi-day trip. Given that this is your family's first trip to Paris, and it is such a grand historic city, you might rethink spending more time exploring there.

There is a two-day hop on, hop off bus tour that will give you the highlights of the city. You can then return to some of the sights to explore further.

I live an hour's drive from Lourdes and find it highly over-commercialized but I know an individual's personal reasons for going aren't generally influenced by others' opinions. It is indeed 5 1/2 hours from Paris by TGV. There are many, many hotels but I wouldn't leave it too late as people come by the bus and planeload.

Three months before you go, the TGV web site will put very low cost PREM's tickets on sale. The Pyrenees, the Basque country, Pau and Toulouse surround Lourdes. You can take a gondala up to the Pic du Midi through Sept and a funicular up the
pic du Jer. www.lourdes.fr

gondola

I also think people should know before they visit Lourdes, perhaps especially with children, that sickness and dying is very much on display in Lourdes. Many of the lodgings are essentially hospitals and hospices, except that the patients and the dying are wheeled from them, down the streets, for events at the shrine. I found it heartbreaking, and the further commercialization, making money off all this, was hard to take.

Perhaps some people go expecting a beautiful shrine commemorating an apparation, or a sacred spring. It's really a town of illness and desperation, riddled with people hawking plastic souvenirs.

Cocoray, could you post an preliminary itinerary. It would help to clarify where and when you are planning certain acitivities.

As others have stated, you may be short-changing Paris. There is "seeing" a place, and there is "being" in a place. Too many places and the only way to remember what happened is by looking at the pictures. Slow down, enjoy more.

While I have never been to Lourdes, I can understand how very devoted Catholics must go there for pilgrimage. Last year my sister and her family took a painful 10 hour train ride to visit Lourdes for their second visit to give thanks for all the blessings they have recieived. They never complained about the dying, sick or crippled in the long line. She thought it was very good for her son to see the less fortunate to better appreciate what they have.