Paris

Paris With Kids: What We Did, What Was Worth It, and What We’d Do Again

Five nights in Paris with three kids, a surprisingly good airfare, the Mona Lisa, the wrong Starry Night, one very large clock—and luggage that decided to extend its vacation without us.

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Paris had been on our family travel list for a long time.

In October 2025, during our daughters’ autumn school break, we finally went. We had five nights, three kids, a long list of things we wanted to see, and the usual challenge of planning a city trip that adults would enjoy without making the children feel as though they had been sentenced to five consecutive days of museums.

It worked remarkably well.

We paid extra for faster or guided access in a few places. Sometimes that was absolutely worth the money. Sometimes it merely saved us a little time. We walked a lot, used Uber when we didn’t feel like walking anymore, discovered a neighborhood café we preferred to our hotel breakfast, bought bread and cheese at the grocery store, and deliberately made room in the itinerary for playgrounds and carousels.

We also learned an important lesson about Van Gogh.

Before promising your children that you are taking them to see The Starry Night, it is worth checking exactly which Starry Night is in Paris.

Getting to Paris: A Qatar Airways Fare We Haven’t Seen Since

We got our first break before the trip even started.

We found one-way Qatar Airways tickets from Bangkok (we had to be in Bangkok already for this trip) to Paris, connecting in Doha, for under $1000 per person.

For one traveler, considering the flight is usually several thousand a person, this was a steal. Same route later in the day on Qatar Airways was almost $4000 per person!

For a family of five, every airfare decision gets multiplied by five, so finding a reasonable long-haul fare makes an enormous difference to the cost of a trip.

We haven’t seen the same fare since.

The routing through Doha worked well for us. Obviously airfares, routings and circumstances change, so what worked in October 2025 isn't necessarily what we'd find today. But for this particular trip, Qatar gave us a comfortable way to get the whole family to Paris at a price we were happy with.

Our journey home was considerably more adventurous.

We'll get to that.

Where We Stayed: Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile for all five nights.

For our family, one of the biggest advantages was the room arrangement: two connecting rooms on the 17th floor.

Connecting rooms can be one of the best solutions for families traveling with older children. Everyone gets more space, there are two bathrooms, and the kids can have their own room without actually being separated from you.

And then there was the view.

From our room we could look across Paris toward the Eiffel Tower, which was particularly beautiful at night. Paris has plenty of hotels closer to individual tourist attractions, but we found the Hyatt's location worked extremely well for what we wanted to do.

There was another advantage that turned out to be surprisingly useful: the hotel is connected to a small shopping mall with a very good grocery store.

That may not sound like an important hotel amenity.

Travel with three children for a few days and get back to me.

We stocked up on drinks and snacks, discovered that the girls really liked Brets potato chips, and bought bread, cheese and ham to make little sandwiches in the room.

There is a point on a family vacation when nobody needs another carefully selected restaurant.

Sometimes everybody just wants a sandwich.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile for all five nights and would happily stay there again.
→ Check current rates and availability for the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile on Expedia.

Skip the Hotel Breakfast and Walk a Couple of Blocks

Breakfast wasn't included with our rooms.

We ate breakfast at the Hyatt on our first morning. It was perfectly good, but then we discovered Le Hameau, a café just a couple of blocks away on Avenue des Ternes.

After that, we had our breakfast spot.

It was close enough to the hotel that going there didn't require planning another excursion, and it gave us something we generally prefer when traveling: a neighborhood place that became part of our routine.

That's one of the things I increasingly appreciate about family travel.

You don't need every meal to be an event.

Sometimes finding a café you like, going back the next morning, and recognizing the walk there is more enjoyable than working your way through somebody else's list of “10 Paris Breakfasts You Can't Miss.”

The Eiffel Tower: This Is Where Paying for Help Was Worth It

We booked our Eiffel Tower experience through Klook. As the trip approached, we received instructions telling us that the local operator would be Paris City Vision, along with the meeting address and information about bringing our booking barcodes.

We took an Uber to the meeting point.

Finding the group was surprisingly easy. There was a Paris City VIsion representative standing under a large flag. When we approached, he didn't even need to scan our tickets; he confirmed our names against his list.

From there, the value of having someone who knew the process became obvious.

The representative took the group to a dedicated entrance for the Eiffel Tower grounds. You still go through security—it felt a little like airport security—but instead of standing outside wondering where we were supposed to be or which queue we needed, somebody else was handling the process.

Once through the grounds, we were taken toward the elevators and transferred to another guide and another line.

At that point, you are more or less back in the regular flow of Eiffel Tower visitors. This isn't a magic ticket that lets you walk past every person between the street and the top of the tower.

But with three children, removing much of the uncertainty and waiting from the beginning of the visit was worth it for us.

Going to the Summit

We had purchased summit tickets for all five of us.

Once we reached the second floor, however, only one of our daughters wanted to continue all the way to the top.

So the two of us went.

I'm very glad we did.

Access to the summit was tightly controlled. Our tickets were checked before we were allowed into the elevator queue, and then we continued upward.

Paris from the second level of the Eiffel Tower is impressive.

Paris from the top is something else.

One of my favorite photographs from the entire trip is of my daughter, teddy bear in hand, looking through the window across Paris.

If you already have summit access and somebody in the family wants to go all the way up, my advice is simple:

Go.

Would we pay for the guided access again?

Yes.

Not because we skipped every line—we didn't—but because the service removed much of the logistical friction at one of the busiest tourist attractions in the world.

With children, saving time and reducing uncertainty has real value.

Atlas & Altitude verdict: WORTH IT.

We booked this exact Eiffel Tower experience through Klook:
→ Eiffel Tower Summit & 2nd Floor by Lift — the option we used
Prefer Viator? Compare similar Eiffel Tower experiences here.

The Louvre: Even More Worth It

We also booked our Louvre visit through Klook, again with Paris City Vision handling things on the ground.

This experience was somewhat more casual.

The meeting point was off to the side and quite a distance from the famous glass pyramid, so this is one occasion when I would strongly recommend reading the meeting instructions carefully rather than simply arriving at the Louvre and assuming you'll see your tour group.

Once everyone had assembled, we entered through a side entrance and were taken to a meeting room inside the museum.

Several groups were waiting there.

We waited for roughly 20 minutes until it was our group's turn. Then the guide led us through the museum at a comfortable walking pace.

Our destination:

The Mona Lisa.

This is where the service was particularly valuable.

The Louvre is enormous. If you're visiting with children and one of your main goals is to see its most famous painting, having somebody navigate the building and deliver you directly to the Mona Lisa room removes a lot of effort.

The guide took us to the end of the queue.

From there, we were on our own.

We worked our way toward the front, got our look at the painting, took our photographs and moved along so the next people could have their turn.

After that, we were free to explore the Louvre ourselves.

Would we pay for this again?

Absolutely.

This was probably the clearest example on our Paris trip of money spent to make a family experience easier.

Could we have navigated the Louvre ourselves?

Of course.

But we didn't fly five people to Paris because we wanted to spend precious vacation time figuring out entrances, routes and how to efficiently get three children through one of the world's largest museums to the thing they most wanted to see.

Paris City Vision solved that part for us.

Atlas & Altitude verdict: DEFINITELY WORTH IT.

We booked this exact Louvre experience through Klook:
→ Louvre Museum Entry + Mona Lisa — the option we used
Prefer Viator? Compare similar Louvre & Mona Lisa experiences here.

Musée d'Orsay: Useful Priority Access, but Not Essential

Our experience at the Musée d'Orsay was different.

We walked there from the hotel, which gave us another opportunity to simply experience Paris at street level.

Our advance booking saved us some time when we arrived. Instead of joining the regular ticket-purchase queue, we went to the appropriate counter, exchanged our vouchers for tickets and went inside.

I'd estimate it saved us perhaps 20 minutes.

That's nice.

But it wasn't transformative in the way our Louvre and Eiffel Tower arrangements were.

Once we were inside Musée d'Orsay, everything was open to explore. We weren't encountering queues for individual works or needing someone to navigate us to a particular display.

So:

Would we pay for advance/priority access again?

Probably—but mostly for convenience.

If the price difference were substantial, this is the one of the three where I wouldn't consider the upgrade essential.

Atlas & Altitude verdict: NICE TO HAVE.

And then we went looking for Van Gogh.

Dad Discovers There Is More Than One Starry Night

I had told the girls that we were going to see Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Technically, I delivered.

Unfortunately, there is a rather important distinction between Starry Night Over the Rhône, which we saw at the Musée d'Orsay, and THE Starry Night.

The latter is at the Museum of Modern Art.

In New York.

I had some explaining to do.

Fortunately, Musée d'Orsay had something else upstairs that did a great deal to restore Dad's reputation.

The Clock

The giant clock at the Musée d'Orsay is magnificent.

It's also one of those rare tourist photo spots where the experience was better than I expected.

There wasn't a staff member standing there organizing people. Nobody was policing how long each person could spend in front of it. There didn't seem to be any elaborate system at all.

People simply behaved.

Families waited. Someone would step forward, take their photographs, and move aside. The next group would have its turn.

Nobody needed a rope.

Nobody needed a sign.

Nobody needed someone with a whistle telling everyone what to do.

In an age when almost everything seems to require some form of authoritative input, it was strangely refreshing to watch a little spontaneous civilizational order emerge in front of a giant clock.

And we got one of our favorite family photographs of Paris.

Wrong Starry Night forgiven.

Mostly.

And if you'd also like to take your children halfway around the world to show them the wrong Starry Night, you can book your Musée d'Orsay tickets in advance here. →

Prefer Viator: Musée d'Orsay tickets in advance here. →

Luxembourg Gardens: Sometimes Kids Need a Playground

Luxembourg Gardens wasn't something we'd discovered on a list of essential Paris attractions.

A colleague from Paris recommended it.

I'm glad he did.

After museums, monuments and historic buildings, we deliberately gave the girls something aimed squarely at them: the large paid playground at Luxembourg Gardens.

They absolutely loved it.

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make when planning a family city trip. Adults build an itinerary around all the things everyone is “supposed” to see, then wonder why the children aren't sufficiently appreciative of their fourth cultural treasure of the afternoon.

Children need time to be children.

A great playground in the middle of Paris is not wasted vacation time.

It is the vacation.

When the playground closed, the girls rode the carousel.

No masterpieces.

No summit tickets.

No guided access.

Just three kids enjoying themselves in Paris.

It was one of the better recommendations we received.

Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Concorde

We deliberately included several of Paris's other famous landmarks during our five nights.

We visited Notre-Dame, saw the Arc de Triomphe, and walked through Place de la Concorde.

But one of the things I liked most about Paris was that getting from one attraction to another often became part of the experience.

We didn't use the Métro at all.

In retrospect, I wish we had used it at least once simply to experience another part of everyday Paris. Instead, we mostly walked and used Uber when the distance was too far or everyone's legs had decided they'd done enough.

That worked well for us.

A surprising amount of what we wanted to see felt accessible from the Hyatt, and October was a very good time to be walking around the city.

The weather cooperated, and Paris is a city that rewards walking.

Paris Is Better When You Don't Optimize Every Minute

We didn't try to make every moment efficient.

We stopped for food. We went into ordinary shops. We bought clothes at local everyday stores rather than treating Paris shopping as an obligatory luxury experience.

We bought groceries.

The girls discovered Brets chips.

We made sandwiches in the hotel room.

We wandered.

That's probably one of the biggest lessons I'd take from this trip if we did it again.

Paris has enough major attractions to fill weeks. With five nights, you're never going to “finish” Paris.

So don't try.

Choose the things that matter most to your family, pay to remove friction where doing so genuinely improves the experience, and leave enough space to discover something you hadn't scheduled.

Five Nights Later: Would We Go Back?

Absolutely.

Five nights wasn't enough to make us experts on Paris, but it was enough for me to fall a little bit in love with the city.

I loved that the streets didn't seem determined to travel in straight lines. I loved that most of the buildings stayed relatively low, so the city rarely felt boxed in.

And everywhere we went, there seemed to be another park, another patch of green, or another place where the girls could simply be kids for a while.

Paris also surprised me in another way.

You hear plenty about Parisians being unfriendly to tourists.

That simply wasn't our experience.

The people we encountered in ordinary day-to-day life were fantastic with us.

Well, almost all of them.

There was one Uber driver.

But every city gets one.

Getting Home: When Our Luggage Decided to Visit New Caledonia

Our return journey was unusual.

Rather than simply reversing our route to Paris, we booked Aircalin from Paris to Bangkok, connecting there to Cathay Pacific for the final flight to Hong Kong.

The return airfare was only a little cheaper booked through Aircalin's website, and we flew economy.

We made it home.

Our luggage did not.

The bags weren't transferred to our Cathay flight in Bangkok, and the initial effort to figure out where they had gone was frustrating.

Aircalin communicated with us in English by email, but some of the forms we were sent were in French. After we completed the paperwork, Aircalin suggested that the baggage problem was Cathay Pacific's responsibility.

We disagreed.

Cathay couldn't load bags onto our flight to Hong Kong if the bags had never been transferred to Cathay in Bangkok.

And this is where Cathay Pacific deserves enormous credit.

Their team kept in contact with us and provided updates.

On about the third day, they located our luggage.

It was at Nouméa Airport in New Caledonia.

This was not on our itinerary.

Because flights from Nouméa weren't operating frequently enough to simply send everything straight back, Cathay arranged a route that eventually brought the bags back through Singapore and onward to Hong Kong.

Six days after we arrived home, our luggage finally arrived too.

Cathay even arranged delivery to us.

Unfortunately, we'd packed some food in the luggage to bring home from France.

Several days of an unexpected South Pacific holiday had not improved it.

There is also a funny footnote to all of this. Travel YouTuber Noel Philips had his own well-documented Aircalin baggage adventure several years before ours.

Apparently our luggage wanted a longer holiday!

What We'd Do Again

If we planned the same five-night family trip tomorrow, I wouldn't change very much.

I'd stay somewhere with enough space for the family again. Connecting rooms at the Hyatt worked extremely well.

I'd book assistance for the Eiffel Tower again.

I'd absolutely book the Louvre/Mona Lisa access again.

I'd pre-book Musée d'Orsay if the price were reasonable, but I wouldn't consider it essential.

I'd go back to Luxembourg Gardens.

I'd deliberately leave time for wandering.

And next time, I'd ride the Métro.

Most importantly, I'd go back to Paris.

We went there expecting to show our daughters the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa, Notre-Dame, Van Gogh and all the other things that make Paris one of the world's great destinations.

We did all of that.

Well, except for THE Starry Night.

But some of my favorite memories aren't the famous things at all. They're a neighborhood breakfast café, three girls taking their turn in front of a giant clock, sandwiches made from groceries in a hotel room, a carousel in a park, and one daughter deciding at the second level of the Eiffel Tower that she was willing to keep going with Dad.

That's family travel.

You remember the monuments.

But you also remember everything that happened between them.

And sometimes, apparently, so does your luggage.

We went to Paris to show the girls the world. Our suitcases apparently wanted to see a little more of it.

Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you book through one of these links, Atlas & Altitude may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. We booked and paid for the experiences described in this article ourselves. Our opinions are based on our family's October 2025 trip.

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