My weekend guides to London and Paris, with Kids!
In 2022, while living in France, we celebrated my twins 8 year old birthday in London in July and then in September we headed to Paris to celebrate my 5 year olds birthday. It was such a magical time to be able to celebrate them in such amazing cities, so I thought I would round up my favorite (kid approved!) things to do in both cities. In this blog post, I will be sharing…
our detailed itineraries
Where we stayed and why I picked the areas to stay in that I did
How we celebrated our kiddos
How to get around the city
A couple of notes before we get to the good stuff.
These are clearly not meant to be full guides to both cities, you could spend months in each place and not see everything! I am going to share why I picked to see what we did when we only had a few days in each place and why it was important to us.
We love slow family travel, where we focus more on experiencing the place we are in at our families unique pace, while leaving lots of time for picnics in the park and taking it slow. This guide reflects that! You could fit in wayyy more than we did in our few days if you so choose!
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of these places and don’t know how it will be on your trip, so do some up to date research. Read the latest reviews, check opening times and do your research!
Ok lets get to it, London is up first!
We were celebrating our twins birthdays and we only had a weekend (one full day) in London as we drove up to Scotland. (We also had a day in London planned for our drive back down to France, and I’ll share why in a little bit!)
I decided to pick two things to really focus on for our Saturday and stay within walking distance to both.
The Natural History Museum was first on our list and it did not disappoint! We have a dinosaur obsessed girlie and her face when she saw them was CORE MEMORY. We signed up on line for free tickets for the first slot of the day and got there right when it opened. It was so much fun and the architecture of the building is worth seeing just for that! We ate lunch at the museum in their T. Rex Restaurant and it was really good, and the dinosaurs were very exciting. They each picked something at the gift shop for a birthday present and we just had a really good time!
After lunch we took the tube over to see Buckingham Palace from the outside while we waited for our next reserved spot, Harrods High Tea!
We wanted to splurge and take the girls to high tea for their birthdays, and I landed on Harrods. Classic tourist London and it was DELIGHTFUL. I signed up online for our slot about a month in advance, I could even put in my daughter’s food allergies and they created her a custom tea spread with all food she could eat! I bought the girls fancy twirly dresses from H&M and we made an afternoon date out of it. Harrods is fancy and fun and they were so kind to the girls. I had put it was their birthday in the reservation and they had made them a special birthday dessert and gave them each a stuffed Harrods bear. We stayed for a long time and pretended to be very fancy and ate amazing food. It’s a memory I will cherish, the girls felt so special and it was lovely. And the food was SO GOOD.
Each girl got their own special harrods bear full of treats and they picked hot chocolate as their drink and it was delish!
After Harrrods tea we shopped their amazing toy section and then we shopped around Harrods some while we headed back to our hotel for takeout dinner, Nando’s. Nando’s is my favorite London fast takeout place, their Peri Peri chicken is soooo good! We got it twice while we were there. :
Ok so London is obviously huge. And we had been before so we weren’t as interested in seeing as much as we could. So I decided to focus on one neighborhood and make it walkable, Kensington. The Musuem and our hotel were in this neighborhood, about a 10 minute walk away. Harrods was a 25 minute walk from the hotel and you walked right past the museum to get it Harrods.
You can also take the tube to get there and its fast and easy.
Lodging:
We ended up staying at the Park International Hotel which I found on booking (you can see in the background of this picture above- the white building). It was great for what we needed but there are a lot of other hotels right around there which looked good too. We did have to stay in two different rooms (3 people and 2 people) because they didn’t have a 5 person room. This happens to us a lot around Europe and we just ask that the rooms can be as close to each other as they can be. London is expensive so the hotel isn’t cheap. I was bummed that they didn’t have room service for breakfast (maybe they do now? I’m not certain) so we got Starbucks for breakfast.
We headed out early the next morning for our 9 hour drive to the Highlands of Scotland, and then after 2.5 weeks in Scotland, we headed back down to London. Watford, actually. Can you guess why??
Yep. Harry Potter World!
Living my best life. Luke and I had already been but we were so excited to take the girls and it was just as fun the second time. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Watford and it was great. It had a great breakfast ( I think included in our rate?) and was steps from the train station.
Ok here is how it works to get to the Studios. If you are in central London, you take the Tube out to Watford where they have a shuttle (very well marked and covered in HP) when you walk out of the station that takes you to the Studios. The hotel is steps from the train station as well. We had our car so we drove to the studios.
It really is magic for HP fans and our kiddos were obsessed! I had packed HP outfits for them so they wore their robes and were in heaven.
So much to see and do! Make sure you set aside at least 4 hours for the studios, although I think you could stay all day!
Halfway through the studios, there is a great restaurant where you can get butterbeer ice cream and drinks, and plenty of food. It’s a good spot to refuel.
We came home with a HP trunk for me and wands for the girls. Heaven!!
OK, lets switch to PARIS!! Back in September, we headed to Paris to celebrate my daughters 5 year old birthday and to get family pictures done by the talented Katie Donnelly, which was such a DREAM.
We had won a photo shoot with her in a giveaway and it was magical to document this time of living in France with my family. (Photo above by Katie) She and her team did the best job and I’ll treasure our pictures forever! If you want family pictures while in Paris, check her out!
Lodging:
This time, we stayed right next to the Louvre in a hotel apartment and it was such a great location for so many Paris treasures. We were meeting Katie for pictures right near the Notre Dame and it was a 10 minute walk from our hotel apartment. We loved the location and the apartment was very nice inside. Would stay again!
We saw Katie for pictures Saturday morning and then wandered around the Notre Dame and headed across the river to the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Co, which was so fun. The birthday girl picked a book about the Eiffel Tower! We grabbed lunch at a bakery and then headed to our Louvre tickets which I had already booked. There was a long line to get in, even with tickets, but we had a stroller for our youngest and there was a place for anyone with a stroller to cut the line and get in quickly.
The Louvre is amazing and overwhelming. You could spend days in there! The Louvre website has a great section on visitor trails , where you can see the paths through the museum to hit highlights or special family trails.
So we didn’t get overwhelmed, we did part of the Masterpiece’s Trail so I could see a few favorites and then we cut over to Egypt. My kids were mainly excited to see real life MUMMIES, so the Egypt collection was awesome.
After a few hours, the kids had all they could handle and I had seen my main list, so we headed out and went back to the apartment for a takeout dinner, Chipotle lol (Don’t judge me. I had been living in Europe for over a year at this point and hadn’t had good Mexican in as long).
The next morning was time for the Eiffel Tower and the toy store, the birthday girl’s request. We checked out of our hotel and used a baggage holding store to leave our luggage while we explored for the day. Highly recommend this while traveling! There are a lot of baggage holding stores in big cities around Europe, we have used one in lots of places!
I wanted to see more of the Seine without tiring little legs so I had found the Batobus, a hop on, hop off water taxi that goes up and down the Seine and stops in lots of places. It was great, easy to use and fun to see the river from the boat. We took the Batobus down to the Eiffel Tower and ended up getting walking tickets. The Elevator ones were all sold out even a month ahead of time!
We walked to the first level (our 5 year old did fine!) But keep in mind there is no stroller parking at the bottom so you have to carry it up with you. We managed to grab seats at the cafe and had pizza and macaroons overlooking the city. It was a dream!
After a couple hours in the Eiffel, we grabbed the metro and headed up to Champs Elysées to hit my 5 year olds dream, the Disney store! We came out with more Spider-Man things than you can count and a happy little 5 year old. We grabbed our luggage and caught our 4 PM train back to our home in central France. It truly was a dream weekend!
I hope this helps you as you plan your trips, and don’t forget I have highlights on my instagram (@eileenandco_) with more details and lots of videos of each of our trips, so head there for more information.
Xoxo
Eileen