Paris with kids
 

Just graduated for my executive MBA and looking to travel with my family to Paris. I've been there but as a couple and this was 10 years ago.

I want the kids to experience the culture, have fun and stay in a nice (not extravagant) hotel in an arrondissement that is well located ... not outside the city.

Any suggestions as for a hotel ... good price, safe and a nice place in a convenient location?

Merci,
Genevieve

What do you consider a "good price"

He just got his executive MBA, so probably around 300-50 Euro per night.

*500

Why don't you try renting an apartment. try vrbo.com or airbnb.com. I would think it would be so much more convenient with kids. I am doing that with my granddaughter.

Ideally would be under $250US a night/room x2 rooms (we are 5 of us: me and my son, my husband and his two daughters).

Location is important ... so no CDG. I want the kids to experience the culture. We don't mind taking a 20 min ride in the RER to get to where we need to go.

Here are some of the places we'd like to visit: Versaille, Le Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, Tour Eiffel, Notre-Dame de Paris, Disneyland Paris, and other things to do w kids.

Any ideas on which Arrondissement I should look into? Names of hotels?

How old are the kids?

I second the suggestion to get an apartment. We did that last spring and it was nice to have a bit more space.

My son is 11 and my husband's daughters are 15 and 17. I think that's a great idea! Thank you. Will try to find one. We were wanting to leave next week ... :)

Any other suggestions on things to visit when we are there w kids?

I speak french and my husband and his daughters are english but understand french.

Should we do Paris only or London as well? We would be there for total of 9 nights.

When we went last spring my daughter was 6, so quite a bit younger. I would guess at the ages your kids are, they don't require stops at playgrounds. Here is my trip report. You might find something worthwhile in it:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...and-london.cfm

I don't know how Fodors feels about links, but I find booking.com has good listings of holiday apartments or hotels with unusual-size rooms suitable for larger families. We are only 4 (2 boys) who were about the ages of your stepdaughters when we were last there: one apartment at one of the Citadines with bedroom and sofa bed worked well. You would need two. 10 minute walk to Metro plus 15 minute Metro ride to tourist-land, but the feeling of staying in a real neighborhood was pretty good too. Bakery, grocery, bars…

I use booking.com all the time.

Fodors doesn't care if you have links in posts, people do it all the time. In fact, you can't talk about a place like that without it turning into a link, if you use the real name.

There are 20 arrondisements in Paris, so there isn't any reason to think only one would do. Any in the center would be fine, and even some of the outer ones if you're in a convenient part of it (ie, the 13th-15th start right on the borders of the ones north of them, of course, so are fine in the north part.

If you plan a trip for 9 days, I would think you might want to visit both Paris and London. The teens especially probably have some opinion as to whether they'd like to visit London or not (I would guess they do). I think 9 days is actually a long time for someone to visit a city without a real goal or language study. But if you want to rent an apt in Paris, you should make it the longer stay and then maybe add about 3 days at the end for London.

That's great advise! Thank you so much.

Since you've mentioned it, I've been looking into those apartment rental sites. For us, that will be the way to go for sure.