abranz

love your trip report.
please don't stop.
for being only 10, cj is quite a food critic.
i am taking notes on all his recommendations esp. the creperies as dd and i will be in paris the 1st week of april staying in v.i.p. #122 on
st. andres

Samsaf

laughingd2, I am really enjoying your report and am looking forward to the rest.

BlueSwimmer

Wow! I love your report, and especially CJ's restaurant reviews. I am so impressed with your kids' great attitudes to food and travel, clearly a reflection on their cool parents. More please!

fourdowns

Hey, laughingd2,

just want to tell you that your report couldn't have come at a better time. My husband and I are taking our kids (11 and 14) to Paris for a week in March. I've been doing most of the planning myself up 'til now, but have been wanting to get the others involved and excited too.

Yesterday, I read part of your family's posts out loud after dinner.

Hope you'll keep it coming. My kids loved hearing your kids' comments!

tod

What an interesting report all of you! I loved hearing about Polidor as we want to try it in May. Did any of you use the loo's at Polidor(toilets)? In one guide book they are described as "oriental style" which means a hole in the floor type.

Louie_LI

A great book for understanding how they built the cathedrals is "Cathedral - The Story of Its Construction" by David Macaulay.

laughingd2

It was a blast cleaning up our journal and posting it, and to receive such nice comments. Have to work today despite the holiday, and will try to post a day or two each of the next few evenings.

Tod - You know, we did not use the loo at Polidor. I think the kids would have loved to see that. I recall from an earlier trip that the bathroom at Tour de Monthlery still has (had) a similar hole in the floor.

Louis - Thanks for the book recommendation. We will definitely track that down, because I remain totally flummoxed at how these things went up so long ago.

Laurel61 - Hmm, all over 18 just seems so different. We're barely keeping up with them at 10 and 12! I would imagine museums could be more of a focus, but there's also nightlife to consider, which we are completely clueless on now that we are pushing 50 (not quite there yet). Although we did sneak my 16 year old nephew into the Pub St. Germain on a trip a few years back, by insisting he was my son. He didn't want any booze - it was just fun to see some live music in a bar. As I recall, the band's singer came around to patrons to let them sing verses of "Dock of the Bay," (in what sounded like phonetic English - "sitting here resting my bone&quot and when they got to my wife, it was unfortunately the whistling part, and she insisted on singing!

laughingd2

So with the new format, it only took me 10 minutes to find this. Can anyone explain to me how to "tag" this as a trip report, since I'd like to finish it, hopefully this weekend?

Thanks for any info!

rosetravels

Hi laughind2 -
email the URL to [email protected] and it sounds like they'll tag it for you as a trip report.

fourfortravel

Please continue. We leave for Paris on Saturday with our children (7 and 12), and your report is certainly helping fuel the excitement!

kerouac

Great report. Even though there are too many of you, I still appreciate it when people love my city.

A word about Chartier -- all of the waiters appreciate it when you write your own bill on the paper table cloth and add it up yourself. It is a Chartier tradition. Don't worry -- they know immediately if the total is correct or not.

dina4

I really love your report!
thanks so much for sharing it with us.

i think it's so great that you took your kids with you. We take our kids everywhere, and it makes the experience so much richer. we first took them to europe when they were your kids' ages, and now they're 16 and 19, and we still love traveling with them.

We still get questions and looks, though: "you're taking the kids?!"

i don't get it...

sf7307

We've also always taken the kids with us, since the dark ages before there was a Fodor's forum LOL! They're 21 and 24 now, and just this past summer, we traveled together, along with my son's girlfriend and another friend of their's in Egypt and in London -- what's not to like when your young adult children actually <i>enjoy</i> traveling with you (and you with them)?

MomDDTravel

We were in Paris at the same time! With our children as well. We had our 11 year old daughter, 15 daughter, 18 year old son and his friend with us. It sure was COLD! We stayed in an apartment in the 5th - it is wonderful to read your trip report and get to re-live so much!

LCBoniti

What a wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable trip report!

I have a "CJ" as well (that really is what we call him). He is now 28 and away at college, but I loved traveling with him and his sisters when they were younger.

Looking forward to more . . .

LaurenKahn1

Just to join the chorus of kudos for your trip report. I took my two kids to Paris when they were 11 & 13 (now 27 & 29 and they don't travel with me anymore). We home exchanged north of Paris in Montmorency. We were there 3 weeks and covered everywhere from the Isle of Jersey, Mont St. Michel and Bayeux to Disney. The Wild West Show at Disney was a huge hit. If there is anything funnier than French people cheering "yee haw" for their team and trying to eat corn on the cob (They take corn off the cob in France), you tell me.

laughingd2

OK, here we go with day 4. Warning: it's 98% Disney Paris!


Day 4, Monday, December 29: Disneyland Paris! (Work with me here)

Our decision to go to Disneyland at all was controversial in and out of the family. The pros and cons are pretty obvious: why go all the way to Paris just to spend a day at Disneyland; how can you take a full day out of a Paris trip for Disneyland, etc. on the con side. And for the longest time, that was our strong feeling. Then one day we – OK, Deb – just said, why not? We don’t go to Disneyland here in the U.S., and the kids would love it as a break, so why the heck not? And she was right.

Ok, a little about today. I got up at 6:40 so we could truly be out the door at 8:45, to give us time to get to Disneyland and be the “B team:” Be there when it opens, and be there when it closes. That comes from Deb and her sister, who grew up near Disneyland in Anaheim and went all the time.

I thought I’d pick up a few bites at the Champion, only to find out that they don’t open until 1:00 p.m. on Mondays. Nor was Carton open, and I didn’t feel like getting bread at Keyser – I know I’m in the minority on this, but we thought their bread was just OK, not that we’ve tried all 37 varieties. But not a problem, because we have been busy shoppers in the days prior. So the kids had the chocolate cereal they chose on our first day (but still wouldn’t touch the milk!), and some fruit, and Deb and I had fruit and bread and butter. Along with the Nestle “Special Filtre” instant coffee we’ve been having every morning. Yes, the apartment has an espresso machine and a coffee press. Instant coffee is just kind of a tradition on trips for us.

The amazing thing was, we got out at the appointed time! That never happens on our vacations. Took Odeon to Les Halles to transfer to the RER A to Disneyland, and had some issues (as usual) with the RER: the ticket machine did not take paper money like the machine we’d used a few days earlier for Metro carnets, nor did it take our credit cards (which I knew it wouldn’t). So we found an open ticket agent, who ignored our request for 2 enfants and 2 adultes round trip train tickets, and charged us for 4 adultes, even after I told him our kids were 10 and 12. Later, when buying 2 enfants tickets back home after Disneyland (yes, I lost 2 of the return tickets – not worth a journal entry for that little encounter), I learned that enfants are 10 and under, at least for the RER, so he was half-right. Feh. Didn’t keep me from buying enfants tickets for the ride home, did it? Nope.

The 40 minute ride to Disneyland was crowded but easy. I should say that more and more people got on at each stop, and the crowd seemed consistent with what we had noticed the first few days. Namely, while there were fewer American tourists than we were used to seeing, there were many more European tourists: from Spain, Italy and Germany in particular. We really noticed this later when we got to Disneyland. By the way, if you go to Disney Paris from central Paris, there is a web site that describes exactly how to do it: http://parisbytrain.com/

The train station – Marne-la-Vallee – Chessy – is literally at Disneyland. It’s a 3 minute walk to the entrance from the station. We did have about a 20-25 minute wait to buy tickets, so we weren’t technically on the B team. The line for tickets was a little maddening, what with everyone trying to use this discount or that, or pay with a bottle of coins in one case. The whole scam aspect was not, I will say, the last time we saw this side of visitors this day. But meantime, we made it in by 10:15 a.m. or so, and had a very good, very long day.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the details of our day (oh, who am I kidding?), since Disney Paris is very similar to Disneyland, with a few exceptions. The first exception was immediate: it was COLD! So cold that in the line to our first ride, Thunder Mountain, the water that normally turns the water wheel was frozen! That line was over an hour, and our feet were losing feeling, so we were considering cutting our losses and heading back to Paris to resume the somewhat more authentic part of our vacation.

But then we noticed that the kids didn’t seem to mind the line, and when we finally got on the ride, the line was a distant memory. Aren’t amusement parks funny that way? Maybe that’s why they’re called amusement parks. Ugh. Anyway, we headed over to Indiana Jones, and it had just closed, due to the cold. Back to wanting to go back to Paris. By then we were completely frozen, it was noonish, and we decided to get lunch and get warm. Pizza, café au lait, chocolate chaud.

CJ: Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Palace had good pizza (big surprise there). Dad got a pizza with ham and olives. He says it was great for Disneyland. Mom and I got cheese pizza. We both liked it a lot. CC got a pasta thingy that she didn’t like. The atmosphere there was great. Some real birds flew in, which was pretty cool. The café au lait, Mom and Dad say, was delicious and sweet and helped warm his toes. The hot chocolate was really good. All in all, Colonel Hathi’s was a pretty good place.

Dan: Hey, the main thing is, we got warm and got some nutrition. If I’m using CJ’s food rating scale, I’ll give Col. Hathi’s a 6.5 for food and a 10 for the 70 degree temperatures.

We resumed our arctic adventure, and found that Indiana Jones was still closed, but we could get Fast Passes for it (in a bizarre line from unmarked machines), for 1:30 to 2:00, so we got Fast Passes, and went to Pirates of the Caribbean, and hoped the line wouldn’t be so long we missed Indy. Good news on both fronts – we did Pirates, then we did Indy. Indy was awesome! It’s an actual roller coaster, with two different 360 degree turns – more like a Six Flags ride than any Disney ride I’ve ever been on. From Indy, we went over to Phantom Manor (Haunted Mansion).

Then over to the other side of the park for Space Mountain in “Discoveryland” – their name for Tomorrowland. The line was supposed to be 70 minutes, and started out long and slow. Then, it seemed like the people working the ride, or at least working the line, all went on break, and we walked/ran through with everyone else, until the line stopped. At that point we learned about the European concept of personal space. More on that later, but Deb was quite startled when a woman was able to share the same step in line with her – while directly behind her! An aggressive teen soccer team made portions of the line very unpleasant, but everyone managed to ignore them and douse their hostility a little. By the way: Space Mountain at Disney Paris? Best ride ever! Then we headed to Star Tours, which is identical to the U.S. version, but, um, in French, non? At that point it was 5:00 p.m. or so, and we needed sustenance. We headed over to the center of the park and found Victoria’s, for crocque monsieurs and hot drinks: 2 café au lait and 2 chocolate chauds ( 2 free with coupon, courtesy of Col. Hathi).

CJ: At Victoria’s we got really good crocque monsieurs. They had a lot of cheese and ham, obviously. We loved them. The hot chocolate and coffee were exactly the same as at Hathi’s. Victoria’s was absolutely great.

Dan: Victoria’s is where I discovered I’d lost two of our return train tickets. Let’s just say it wasn’t just the weather that was frosty for most of our meal. But things thawed quickly.

We had read that Disney Paris kind of empties out after dark, and boy, was that true. Here’s what we were able to ride after our 5-5:30 meal: Autopia, Tea Cups, Indiana Jones again, Indiana Jones again (an absolutely great roller coaster, and no line whatsoever, other than the 5 minutes it took to fast-walk through the line area), Space Mountain again, Swiss Family Robinson treehouse (careful!), then our Fast Pass for Thunder Mountain (another early fiasco – at 2:00, the Fast Pass machine was giving Fast Passes for 8:00 p.m.). I say careful for Swiss Family Robinson treehouse (yes, it’s still Swiss Family, not Tarzan) because Disney Paris at night is significantly less well lit than you could ever imagine. Maybe romantic, but also just really dark! So when you are up maybe 100 feet in the treehouse, and you happen to not see a step because it’s really dark, and you stumble right into a 3.5 foot high rail which is all between you and a death spiral to the ground, my advice is to grab the rail and not flip over. Just my advice, which I was barely able to follow. Autopia is also really dark – CJ had been looking forward to it, but his only comment was that it was . . . dark.

A couple of notes: the Tea Cups are beautiful at night. The ride has a large canopy roof with lit paper lanterns hanging from it, which are just magical. Also, Sleeping Beauty’s castle was lit up with the most amazing lights at night. The last few hours were really quite memorable, and made the first few hours nothing more than an amusing story.

Finally, it was time to go. We made the trek to the train station, which of course seemed longer on the way out than on the way in. At the train station, I bought two more one-way tickets easily, and was approached by a French woman and her daughter for instructions on how to figure out the platform and tickets (although Deb said they must have been Swiss, since why would French women ask me directions. Nice.). But I was able to explain en francais how to read the signs, so I was feeling pretty good.

The train home was fairly full, and something seemed strange. We quickly realized that nearly everyone on our car was eating food they had brought from home, which means they’d been walking around with said food at the park all day! This only made us hungrier than we already were, but we refrained from asking for bites.

CC and CJ tried not to fall asleep on the ride home, with limited success. But we made it to St. Michel, and took the Metro to Odeon because it had just been that long a day. We decided we needed a few provisions for the apartment, and at the checkout discovered that one cannot buy wine in a store after a certain time (which we later learned was 9:00 p.m.). We also creeped around a puddle in the wine aisle which I thought was Riesling but Deb insisted was pee. Hmm. Weird crowd in the store this time of night. Finally, we stopped at our Ancienne Comedie crepe stand for our usual guy and crepes for the kids – Nutella for CC, and a 2 pound fromage and jambon for CJ – enough to feed a family of four or one 10 year old boy after a day at Disney Paris! He had no problem wolfing it down. To the apartment for some late night snacking, and finally bed. A very late bedtime, a fantastic day, and that’s that.

MomDDTravel

Thanks for sharing about Disneyland Paris! We were going to go on Christmas day but the kids still suffered from bad jetlag and ended up sleeping and frankly after that it was just TOO cold for me to imagine being there We have passes and live 20 minutes from DL in Anaheim so we dediced to pass.

framboise_et_rose

Merci Beaucoup! Your TR brought back memories of years past when our 5 year old daughter and 8 year old son took their parents to Paris which is also Mom's maiden trip to Paris. They are now 34 and 37 (that's how long that was!) Like yours, they were troopers and a lot of fun to travel with! It waas a time of discovering new foods and experiencing a different country; a different language and a different culture.

I enjoyed all of CJ's restaurant reviews. He is going to go a long way. All your experiences will encourage more parents to tke their children along on their trips to foreign and exotic lands.

Like the others, you are being asked to keep continuing these lovely reports. Soon we can take our granddaughter on one of our trips to Paris. She loves Quasimodo and Esmeralda already so it will be a treat for her to be at Notre Dame.

Thank you again and waiting for the next episode!

Marianna

I enjoyed your trip report,too! Our son was 9 years old when we first took him to Paris and stayed at the Georges V. He is now married and almost 33. We have many wonderful memories of that trip and all the trips which followed to Paris, Italy and many other places. We still travel with him and enjoy every minute of it ...and now, we travel with him and his wife!

Thanks for sharing your experiences and memories!