Stray observations on Paris

At two months, FDR still sleeps a lot. So we could get away with a 9pm cocktail in the beautiful atrium at the Westin because he was fast asleep in his stroller. He also didn't mind the 10pm boat cruise followed by the walk back to the hotel (zzzzzzzzzz). As long as we fed him and let him sleep in his stroller, he was fine.

He did not, however care for the hotel crib. If you have a Sleep Sheep or similar white noise device, bring it with you.

My French is very basic - I took it through high school and some college and have been refreshing myself with a great podcast called Coffee Break French. It turns out that if you start out an interaction at a restaurant or wherever with a cheery "Bonjour" and attempt French, most people (even Parisians) will be enormously helpful and will probably switch to English.

The kids/baby section at Le Bon Marche is bananas. If you need a €1200 Dior dress for your two year old daughter though, it's the place for you.

All in all, this was a perfect gentle introduction to traveling with bébé. I love Paris and hope to come back when he's older.

Bon voyage!

Seeing Paris with a baby in tow

Take long walks. Central Paris is beautiful for walking. Saturday evening, we walked from our hotel, through Place de la Concorde, across the Seine, stopped for dinner at Le Petit Thiou (where they happily made room for us and our stroller, on a Saturday night at 8pm), and then to the Eiffel Tower.

Take a cheesy boat cruise on the Seine. We'd already been up the Eiffel Tower on a previous trip, and figured FDR at 2 months wasn't very interested in that. The Bateaux Parisiens leave from the foot of the Tower, and are a nice way to see a bunch of the sights, especially at night when everything is lit up.

Eiffel Tower, lit up, as seen from the Seine

Explore the gardens. The Tuileries Gardens are just across the street from the Westin, and right in front of the Louvre. There are a few outdoor cafés where you can feed your little one while enjoying a glass of wine. How civilized!

The Tuilieries Gardens 

The Luxembourg Gardens are beautiful too, and are an easy walk, just south of the river. 

Note that many of the gardens in Paris are meant to be enjoyed from the path! In other words, don't count on enjoying a picnic lunch on the lawn...

Finally, if you find yourself in Paris on Bastille Day (the 14th of July), note that much of central Paris will be closed for the parade in the first part of the day. This includes many Metro stations and even pedestrian access to certain streets. Plan ahead if you need to be somewhere. Also, make sure to get your baby's photo taken with some cute French "soldiers".

Mangeons!

Food, like diapers, depend on your preference and what your baby is used to. For this trip, this was relatively easy because we've weaned him off breast milk and onto formula, and he isn't eating solid food yet. And since it was a short trip, we just packed enough formula for the weekend. Buying food is an option in many places of course, but if you or your baby are particular about brands (and we had a good thing going with him and HIPP Organic), bringing your own means one less thing to worry about. Are you sensing a pattern here??

It's also a good idea to buy some kind of container where you can pre-measure the formula you'll need for the day, so you don't have to lug a ton of formula around and then measure it while you're trying to eat at a restaurant or in a park. We use this one from Avent, and it's perfect.

Bottles take up more space in your luggage than you think they will, but the more you take, the less often you'll have to wash them. And there won't be a ton of room to wash them in a hotel bathroom sink (especially in a standard room in the Westin Paris). You may want to pack your own dish soap and bottle brush; these are annoying things to have to buy when you're on vacation.

I imagine in some ways it's much simpler if you are breast feeding! And I'm sure it can be more complicated too.

At two months old, our schedule did have to revolve around FDR's mealtimes somewhat. But we adapted, and the French love babies.

Our last afternoon in Paris, just before we had to catch the train back, Tom wanted to go to a restaurant he had been to on a business trip, Avenue. They were delightful, but slightly baffled when we asked for some hot water to heat FDR's bottle. The solution? A champagne bucket of course:

And here is Tom, multitasking:

How we roll in Paris!

We have the Bugaboo Cameleon and FDR still uses the cot, but decided to travel with the Maxi Cosi car seat + adapters for this trip so we could use the car seat in a (Paris) taxi if necessary.

Note - in London, you can just roll your stroller right into a London black cab and still have room for 2-3 adults, which might be one of the most awesome things ever. Not so anywhere else in the world as far as I'm aware.

London cab

I love the Bugaboo but it's not well suited to travel. It doesn't fold up into a super compact state, and has to be broken down into two parts. Still, it's what we had and was good to have the car seat attachment. FDR didn't seem to mind! 

I also think he was too little at two months for an upright umbrella folding stroller.

On this trip, we mainly walked everywhere because the Paris Metro is not at all conducive to those who travel on wheels, and also because we were slightly nervous about installing the car seat in a Parisian taxi. We're over that now - as lovely as walking through Paris can be, the walk from Gare du Nord to the Westin was not!

We did however make sure to take a photo at the Metro stop named for FDR. 

If you are planning to take the Metro, prepare for lots of stairs (don't try it alone). Also, don't try to rush onto the train after you've taken an adorable photo. The doors close fast, and hard, and Tom had a bruise to show for it - not a good look when you're carrying a baby. All was not lost though, there was a male model in workout gear there to pull me to safety.

The raison d'être of this blog!

So, the million dollar question - how many diapers did we need for a three day trip? How many did we bring, and how many did we use????

Well, we didn't need 24. And the truth is, we could have bought them at any grocery store. So on one hand, taking up all that space with diapers probably wasn't necessary, not least because you are schlepping your bags on and off the train.

That said, we're new parents trying to eliminate as much uncertainty as possible, so packing all these diapers helped on that front. Also in France (what we didn't know in advance) is that most stores are closed or have very limited hours on Sunday. Had we run out on our three day trip, we might have been really scrambling and stressed considering that third day was Sunday. And he was two months old, size 1 diapers, so it wasn't a HUGE amount of space.

My advice would be, for a short trip like this, just (over)pack your own diapers. You know they work, and you don't want to waste time running around Paris (or wherever) looking for the foreign equivalent.

Of course, if luggage space is really at a premium, unless you're going to somewhere really far flung, you can buy diapers anywhere. Not to mention, it's probably a terrible idea to travel with a two month old anywhere you can't buy diapers!

Bring a packet of wipes but you can buy those anywhere too (unless there's a brand you can't live without).

As Delicious Baby points out, it's probably a good idea to bring some plastic bags you can tie up poopy diapers in to contain the smell. You won't be traveling with your Diaper Genie!

Coming up - stroller, food, clothes - what else to pack!

Baby friendly Paris hotel - the Westin

Our first time in Paris, we stayed in a lovely boutique hotel in the 17th arrondissement, near the western edge of the city - it was really nice but other than the Arc de Triomphe, we had to get on the Metro to see any of the sights. Our second trip, we stayed in a charming old hotel in the Marais which we loved, but it doesn't have an elevator, i.e. not baby friendly. In the interests of keeping it easy, we decided a big, American chain hotel was our best option and cashed in a bunch of Starwood points to stay at the Westin Paris - Vendôme. 

TIP - when you're searching for hotels on TripAdvisor, you can look for hotels that have wheelchair access. Wheelchair access means there's an elevator, which means you're not carrying a stroller up and down 4 flights of stairs.

The other great thing about the Westin is that it's right in the center of Paris, steps away from the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens. The Paris Metro is decidedly stroller unfriendly. Lots and lots of stairs, and you'll often have to go up one set of stairs and down another while in the same station. No elevators, no ramps, and if you want to push a stroller through the turnstile, it may require human intervention from a Parisian Metro worker who may or may not be enjoying his café au lait at that moment. Given the Westin's location, we figured we could walk to most of the touristy places.

The downside to the Westin (and in fact, most of the hotels in Paris) is that the standard room is TINY. With the bed and then the crib for FDR, there was kind of nowhere to stand other than the shower. Upgrade the room if that's an option.

Pourquoi Paris?

One of the best things about travel in Europe is the Eurostar from London to Paris. It takes you from central London (Kings Cross) to central Paris (Gare du Nord) in slightly more than two hours. Security is a breeze - everything goes through the X-ray, but you can keep your shoes on and your laptop and toiletries in your bag. You can get to the station 30 minutes before the train leaves (they recommend 45) and have plenty of time. You go through immigration and get your passport stamped (if you're not an EU citizen) at the departure end, so once you arrive in Paris, YOU ARE IN PARIS. The first time we did it, we were slightly baffled when we just walked off the platform onto the street and thought we had done something wrong. Door to door from our home in London to the hotel in Paris takes 4 hours, including waiting time - probably faster than if you flew, and a million times less stressful.

So as I mentioned in the previous post, we decided to do Paris as our first trip with FDR because we knew it would be relatively stress free. I realize that train travel is not as practical an option in the US, but perhaps one day it will be!

FDR chilling on the Eurostar

Up next: how to pick a hotel in Paris!

About the blog (and us)

Tom and I moved to London in the fall of 2011, for a job opportunity he had here. Knowing that this wasn't going to be forever, one of our goals was to take full advantage of being able to travel around Europe so easily. And so between December 2011 and April 2013, we visited Marrakech (technically not Europe, but close enough), Paris (twice), Les Houches (France, just next to Chamonix), Prague, Barcelona, Thailand (also technically not Europe), Rome, Amsterdam, and Istanbul. 

Then, in May 2013, our son FDR arrived. He's awesome. And changed everything. We knew that we didn't want to stop traveling just because we had a baby, but we were brand new parents and had no idea how best to travel with a baby. How "baby friendly" are certain countries / cities / neighborhoods / hotels? How much do we need to bring with us? What are the best air travel strategies?

We decided for our first trip with him, at two months old, we would at least eliminate the third question with its infinite complexities and decided that taking the train to Paris was a good baby step (har har).

As for the second question, one of the things we ended up packing was a 24 pack of diapers for a Friday-Sunday trip. After going through 4 before getting to Paris, I wondered if "Paris on 8 diapers a day was too ambitious," and if we would have to buy Les Pampers at Le Monoprix or something.

Thus, the idea for this blog. 

This blog is for parents who travel, to give some tips and opinions on our trips with FDR, with the benefit of hindsight. It's what I wish I had before we, say, packed our giant Bugaboo Cameleon for a weekend in Florence. For all the information on the internet (TripAdvisor is a godsend and also a nightmare), there's not as much of the "DO this. DON'T do that." variety when it involves traveling with a baby. 

So enjoy, and I welcome your feedback!

Note: While the posts are dated when the events or travels approximately happened, the truth is I procrastinated setting this up until FDR's 1st birthday. The goal is to be caught up by the time we travel to Italy in July 2014. That said, forgive any strange leaps in verb tense or spotty details!