Paris with kids is one of those trips that sounds romantic in theory and chaotic in practice. Croissants by the Seine, tiny humans running through the Tuileries, a glass of wine at a pavement café while your toddler sleeps in the pushchair. The reality involves more tantrums near the Métro entrance and more baguette crumbs in the buggy than you’d imagined. But here’s the thing — it’s still brilliant. We’ve taken ours more than once, and every time we come back saying we should have stayed longer.
Paris isn’t a city that bends over backwards for families. It doesn’t have soft play on every corner or kids’ menus plastered with cartoon characters. What it does have is parks that put British ones to shame, free museum entry for under 18s, and crêpes on practically every street. That’s more than enough to work with.
Getting There From the UK
Eurostar. Every time. The train from St Pancras takes about 2 hours 15 minutes and drops you right in the middle of Paris at Gare du Nord. No airport security theatre, no liquid restrictions, no hanging around at a gate for 45 minutes. You walk on, sit down, and your kids can move around. It’s civilised travel and it makes the whole trip start well instead of starting frazzled.
Kids under 4 travel free on Eurostar. Ages 4 to 11 get a reduced fare, which is usually around £30-50 each way depending on when you book. Adults pay more obviously, but if you book well ahead you can get decent prices.
Flights take about an hour, sure. But add the journey to the airport, the two-hour check-in buffer, security, boarding, landing, passport control, and the transfer into central Paris — you’re looking at the same total journey time. Possibly longer. And with less sanity remaining.
How Many Days Do You Need
Three nights minimum. Four is better. Anything less and you’ll spend the whole time rushing between landmarks and nobody will enjoy it.
Paris rewards a slower pace with kids. A morning at a museum, a long lunch, an afternoon in the park. That’s a good day. Try to cram in three major sights and you’ll have tired, grumpy children by 2pm and tired, grumpy parents by 3pm. We learned this the hard way. Twice.
Where to Stay
The Marais is our pick for families. It’s central, flat, walkable, and packed with bakeries, parks, and interesting streets. The Place des Vosges is right there — a gorgeous square with grass your kids can actually sit on, which is rarer than you’d think in Paris.
If you’re arriving by Eurostar, staying near Gare du Nord is convenient for that first night. The area around the station isn’t the prettiest part of Paris, but it’s functional and well-connected. From there you can get anywhere on the Métro in 15 minutes.
One strong recommendation: avoid Montmartre if you’ve got a pushchair. It’s lovely to visit for a few hours but the hills are relentless. Cobbled streets at steep angles, endless staircases, narrow pavements. Carrying a folded buggy up to your fourth-floor walk-up apartment while also carrying a sleeping toddler is not the Parisian dream.
The Eiffel Tower
You have to do it. Even if you’re the sort of person who avoids tourist traps. Even if you’ve seen it a hundred times in photos. Standing underneath that thing with your kids looking up at it — it’s a proper moment.
Book tickets in advance. The queues without a booking can stretch to two hours, and no child on earth is waiting that long without a meltdown. Tickets for the summit cost €26.80 for adults and €6.70 for kids aged 4-11. Under 4s are free.
Honest opinion though: the second floor is plenty high enough. The summit sounds exciting but it’s often foggy or hazy up there, and the views from the second floor are actually better because you can see more detail. Save yourself the extra queue and the extra cost.
The real magic happens after dark. Every hour on the hour, the whole tower sparkles with thousands of lights for five minutes. It’s completely free to watch from below and kids go absolutely mad for it. We sat on the Champ de Mars with a bottle of wine and some cheese and let the kids run around on the grass. One of our favourite Paris evenings.
The Louvre
Here’s where we need to manage expectations. The Louvre is enormous. Over 35,000 works of art across a space the size of a small town. Taking kids in there with a vague plan to “see the Louvre” is a recipe for misery.
Pick one section. Spend no more than two hours. Get out.
Everyone wants to see the Mona Lisa. Fine. But know this: it’s small. Much smaller than you expect. And it’s behind bulletproof glass. And there are 200 people in front of you all holding phones above their heads. Your kids will be underwhelmed. You might be too.
The Egyptian antiquities section is far better with children. Mummies, sarcophagi, ancient jewellery — kids are genuinely fascinated by this stuff. The Paintings gallery has huge dramatic canvases that impress even reluctant museum-goers.
The best bit? Under 18s get in free. Every national museum in France offers free entry for children and teenagers, and the Louvre is no exception. That’s a significant saving when adult tickets cost €22.
Musée d’Orsay
If you’re only doing one art museum with kids, make it this one instead of the Louvre. Controversial opinion, perhaps, but hear us out.
The Musée d’Orsay is housed in a converted railway station, which is already more interesting to look at than another marble corridor. The collection focuses on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings — Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh. The colours are vivid, the subjects are recognisable (ballet dancers, water lilies, starry nights), and children respond to them in a way they simply don’t with Renaissance religious paintings.
It’s also much smaller than the Louvre. You can see the highlights in 90 minutes without rushing. Under 18s free, same as everywhere else. The giant clock face on the upper floor is worth the visit alone — kids love looking out through it over the Seine.
Sacré-Cœur and Montmartre
The basilica itself is free to enter, which is always welcome in a city that charges for breathing. Inside it’s cool, quiet, and covered in golden mosaics that catch the light beautifully. Worth a look even with fidgety children because you can be in and out in 15 minutes.
Climbing the dome costs €7 and gives you some of the best views in Paris. It’s 300 steps in a tight spiral staircase though, so not one for very small children or anyone with dodgy knees.
Outside, Place du Tertre is packed with portrait artists and caricaturists. Getting a family caricature done is a fun souvenir — expect to pay €30-50 depending on how many faces. The surrounding streets have crêpe stands on every corner, and Montmartre crêpes are some of the best in Paris. Nutella and banana. Always.
Luxembourg Gardens
The best park in Paris for children. Not a close contest.
The Jardin du Luxembourg has a large octagonal pond where kids can rent toy sailboats and push them around with sticks. It costs about €5 and they’ll happily do it for an hour. There’s a proper playground (small entry fee but worth it), puppet shows in a little theatre that have been running since 1933, and pony rides around the paths.
The gardens themselves are beautiful — formal French landscaping, chestnut trees, statues everywhere. There are green metal chairs scattered around that you can drag into the sun and sit in for free while your kids play. We spent an entire afternoon here and it cost us almost nothing. Probably our most relaxed day of the whole trip.
Disneyland Paris
This needs its own day. It’s about 45 minutes east of central Paris on the RER A train, so you can do it as a day trip without changing hotels.
Is it worth it? Depends on your kids. If they’ve never been to a Disney park, then yes — the castle, the characters, the rides are all genuinely exciting for young children. The parade at the end of the day had our lot completely transfixed.
But if you’re comparing it to other Disney parks, Disneyland Paris comes up short. It’s smaller, older, and less polished than Tokyo Disney or the Florida parks. Some of the rides feel dated. The food is mediocre and overpriced even by theme park standards.
Tickets aren’t cheap either — around €62 for adults and €57 for kids aged 3-11, though prices vary by date. Our view: go once if your kids are Disney-mad. Skip it if they’re not particularly bothered and spend the day at Luxembourg Gardens or along the Seine instead. They’ll have more fun and you’ll spend a fraction of the money.
Seine River Cruise
A proper cheat code for sightseeing with children. You sit on a boat, it floats past all the major landmarks — Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Musée d’Orsay — and nobody has to walk anywhere. An hour of pointing at things from a comfortable seat while your kids eat snacks. Bliss.
Bateaux Mouches is the big operator. About €15 for adults and €6 for kids. The boats run regularly from near Pont de l’Alma. Late afternoon is nice because you get the golden light on the buildings. No need to book ahead unless it’s peak summer.
Food
Paris is famously a food city, and there’s a running joke that French children eat everything — foie gras, oysters, blue cheese. Yours probably won’t. Bring snacks. Seriously. A ziplock bag of breadsticks and some raisins will save you from at least one hunger-induced crisis per day.
That said, there’s plenty kids will eat. Crêpes from street stands cost €4-6 and are everywhere. A plain one with butter and sugar is perfect for small children. Boulangeries sell pain au chocolat for about €1.50 and baguettes for under €2 — grab one in the morning and tear bits off as you walk. It’s the cheapest and best breakfast in the city.
For a more organised food experience, the Galeries Lafayette food hall on Boulevard Haussmann is spectacular. It’s pricey but the selection is vast and kids can point at what they want, which removes the stress of ordering from a French menu.
Some restaurants offer free meals for children at lunchtime, especially brasseries. Always worth asking. Lunch is generally cheaper than dinner anyway, and the French lunch service tends to be more relaxed — nobody rushes you, which is exactly what you need when one of your kids has decided they hate all food.
Getting Around
The Métro is cheap and runs everywhere. A single ticket costs €2.15 and under 4s travel free. It’s fast, frequent, and covers the whole city.
But — and this is a big but — it’s a nightmare with pushchairs. Most stations have no lifts. Many don’t even have escalators. You’ll be hauling your buggy up and down flights of stairs, through turnstiles that aren’t wide enough, and along corridors that smell faintly of something you’d rather not identify. Rush hour is worse. Much worse.
Our advice: take the bus instead. Paris buses follow the same ticket system as the Métro but they run above ground, have space for pushchairs, and give you a view of the city while you travel. Route 69 goes past many major sights and is basically a free sightseeing tour.
Walking is the other option. Paris is more compact than it looks on a map. The Marais to the Eiffel Tower is about 4km — doable even with short legs if you stop for crêpes halfway. Which you will.
Practical Bits and Budget
Paris is expensive. There’s no getting around it. Hotels, food, transport — it all adds up faster than you’d like.
The single biggest money-saver for families is the free museum entry for under 18s. The Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Orangerie, Rodin Museum, Pompidou Centre — all free for children and teenagers. That saves you hundreds of euros across a trip. For adults, the Paris Museum Pass covers 60+ museums and costs €62 for two consecutive days or €78 for four. If you’re planning three or more museum visits, it pays for itself.
Budget roughly €150-200 per day for a family of four, not counting accommodation. That covers transport, one sit-down meal, street food, a museum or two, and the odd ice cream. You can do it cheaper if you picnic in parks (highly recommended) and stick to free sights. You can also spend far more if you eat at restaurants for every meal.
One last thing. The loos. Public toilets in Paris are either the grey self-cleaning pods on the street (free, surprisingly clean, children find them hilarious) or the toilets in cafés (technically for customers, but if you buy a coffee nobody minds). Museum toilets are the best option. Plan accordingly, because “I need a wee” in the middle of the Champ de Mars with no facilities in sight is a situation you want to avoid.
Paris with kids isn’t effortless. It requires planning, patience, and a willingness to abandon the itinerary when someone needs a nap. But when you’re sitting in the Luxembourg Gardens watching your children sail tiny boats across a pond while the autumn sun hits the chestnut trees — well, it doesn’t get much better than that.