Paris with an 8 Month Old Baby!
/Craig and I used to travel a lot before we had kids. Actually before we had 2 kids. Actually before Reece was a toddler. Hahaha. After we sold our house in Carmel Valley we moved into Craig’s parents house while we were waiting on our Cardiff house. Craig had a business conference in DC and we decided it would be the perfect time to do a big family trip! Reece and I met him in DC and visited my sister and family and then the 3 of us headed to Boston to see Craig’s sister and family. Since we were already on the east coast we decided to go to Europe and from there we took a flight to Paris with 8-month old Reece!
This won’t surprise a lot of you but I am type A, love spreadsheets, planning, and being organized so before a vacation I make a google sheet with every detail for our upcoming trip. I do this with all our trips! It’s fun for me to do the research and plan everything out. I have definitely become more lenient since having babies that we don’t have to follow the whole itinerary but at least there are options in case we are stranded and need something to do. Since this was our first Europe trip as a family we decided to only do one city and not really have a strict itinerary at all.
The first thing I did was find a family friendly Airbnb. Here is the Paris apartment we stayed at on Ile-Saint-Louis. The owner, Sophie, couldn’t have been more sweet and helpful. She has young grandchildren and had all the baby stuff for us (crib if needed, toys, changing pad, etc) and she put food and drinks in the apartment for us for our arrival.
Something we didn’t expect was how hot it was in Paris!! We took our trip at the end of May and it was 90-100 degrees everyday! We had to take showers morning, afternoon, and night just to cool off! It was totally worth it though and we had the best time.
We kept our activities very low key and easy since we didn’t know if Reece would be jet lagged and also what her schedule would allow. We kept her on a 10am-10pm schedule and it worked out awesome! It helped that we had been on the east coast already and she had adapted the 3 hour time change from California. Our favorite thing was looking at our beautiful view out our window of the Seine River every day and night. Here are some of the things we did with Reece while in Paris:
Food: Berthillon gelato, Lunch at Louise Cafe-Brasserie, Our local corner restaurant became our favorite spot for dinner- Cafe Saint Regis, La Droguerie du Marais for crepes, Wine and snacks at Marcel et Clementine, Steak Frites at Le Relais de l’Entrecote, macarons at Laduree, L’as Du Fallafel for falafel, Grom Gelato (like in Italy!)
Museums: Musee Rodin to see The Thinker and the garden, Musee du Louvre (we didn’t go inside)
Explored: Le Marais, Montmartre (somehow Craig carried the travel stroller up 300 steps!), Eiffel Tower- we had a wonderful picnic and took lots of photos!, Luxembourg Gardens, Shopping
Here are our DC photos
Here are our Boston photos:
