The first day, Paul took the boys to an incredible playground inside the Bois de Vincennes, a massive wooded park near our house, while I took the metro to pick up our Paris passes. (I warned the boys we’d be seeing a lot of museums, but at least with the Paris Pass we got to skip the queue and wouldn’t feel guilty about going in to make a quick visit just to see the most famous pieces of art.)
In the afternoon, we met up at the Atelier des Lumieres, a revamped foundry which now houses amazing digital art exhibitions. Lucky for us, Van Gogh and Japanese art were the current exhibits. The boys were quite familiar with a lot of the art and I’m a big fan.
The next day was a marathon museum day. First up, we visited the Musée d’Orsay where I probably went a bit overboard talking about art nouveau and Cezanne, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse. What can I say, this is my favourite period of art and Paris was the place to be during the time. I could have spent all day at the museum, but we pushed on.
After a quick stop for sandwiches in the park, we continued on to Rodin’s museum where we all pretended to be The Thinker and ran around on the grass in the beautiful gardens before being told off. Apparently, grass isn’t something you walk on in Paris. We made a note of this and made our way to the metro.
Next stop, the Arc de Triomphe. We climbed up the steep spiral staircase and admired the amazing views from the top. The boys were so excited to have such a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower.
After a deep breath, we were on the go again, this time to the Musée de l’Orangerie to admire the colossal Water Lily paintings by Monet in a space designed specifically for them. It was pretty awesome to see them up close and see all the individual brush strokes. After so much art, it was time for ice cream and a bit of a break in the Jardin des Tuileries. The boys found a playground and met some French and English kids to play with.
Finally, it was time for the Louvre where we beelined straight for the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory. It was pretty neat to see these famous sculptures up close, but what we were really interested in was the Mona Lisa (just like everyone else). She wasn’t very big and we couldn’t get very close, but we can all say that we’ve seen the most expensive and most famous painting in the world.
We had a bit of a mellower morning, but set off for the Picasso museum before lunch. Oliver was very excited to learn that there was an exhibit by Alexander Calder on there and he proudly told us about Calder’s use of shape and colour in his mobiles. It was very cool. Next up we went to the Centre Pompidou which I was so looking forward to, but was honestly a bit disappointed in. The building was cool, but we weren’t in love with the art on display. Maybe we were all just arted out by that point.
We switched things up a bit the next day and went to watch a movie about the history of Paris before we hopped on a hop-on hop-off bus tour. We hopped off in Montmartre to see the Moulin Rouge, climb the hill to the Sacre Couer, and to make what was mean to be a quick stop at the Dalí museum. Turns out Elliot loves Dalí as much as I do and didn’t want to leave.
The next day, we took the free boat tour included in our Paris Pass and got to see the damage to the Notre Dame a bit closer up. It’s so tragic that such an iconic building has suffered so much damage. The boat dock was at the foot of the Eiffel Tower so we had a picnic dinner and waited for 7pm when we could finally get our turn to visit the highlight of Paris for the boys. We took the elevator up to the 2nd floor and toasted the view. (The boys toasted with macarons.)
Thanks for an amazing visit Paris. We’ll be back.
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