Paris with a toddler: top tips

I visited a brand new city this weekend. Oh, I’ve stayed in Paris half a dozen times in the last 15 years but my latest trip with my daughter felt like discovering the French capital all over again.

Instead of the Louvre, we hit the parks. Rather than Montmartre, we spent time in the north-east around the Canal St Martin. And as well as seeing the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, we spotted monkeys and jugglers…

There’s going to be plenty more posts to come about our adventures (and occasional misadventures) but in the meantime, here are my tips for exploring Paris with a toddler.

Walk if you can

The metro system is fantastic – and significantly cheaper than London with singles costing around 2 euros in the centre – but if you’re pushing a buggy, it’s not much easier or always quicker for short journeys.

And if we’d have headed underground, I’d have missed classic Parisian buildings, roads with poetic names like the Rue des Belles Feuilles (beautiful leaves), shops selling fresh oysters, spotting a skating rink outside the Hotel de Ville, wandering along the banks of the Seine, and ambling through the Ile de la Cite and Ile St Louis as I made my way from the right to left banks.

If you do need to rest your feet, the hop-on hop-off Tootbus tours are a great alternative – try the Paris Discovery or Must-See Paris options, with 25% off using my code MUMMYTRAVELS25 if you book before the end of August 2026.

For more suggestions on walking Paris with a pushchair, check out this post

Don’t go on a Monday

It’s a well-known fact that if museums or attractions close on any day in Paris, it’s likely to be a Monday.

My free time meant I couldn’t avoid a long weekend from Saturday to Monday and there’s still plenty to do, but it did mean trying to cram a lot into the first part of the trip. Outside school holidays, most kids’ activities are focused on Wednesdays and weekends too.

Politeness goes a long way

Forget the Parisian’s reputation for rudeness – I quickly lost count of the number of people ready to chat about how ‘mignonne’ my daughter was, as well as helping us up and down the stairs in Metro stations. And I do mean everyone: young, old, male, female, black, white.

Mostly, they’d politely enquire if I’d like any help before lending a hand carrying the buggy before wishing me ‘bonne journee’ afterwards. And manners, I’ve found, are key – start conversations with ‘Bonjour Monsieur/Madame’ and don’t stint on the mercis, and you’ll get a much better reaction.

Having studied French, however rusty it might be, I had a head start but I’d recommend at least a few basic words before you go.

Lunch on the run

Worried about finding a child-friendly café? Don’t be. Not only are there plenty, you needn’t actually restrict yourself to sit-down meals. From crepes and gaufres (waffles) at stalls around the city, there are endless fantastic boulangeries with sandwiches as well as pastries and croissants.

It may depend on the kind of toddler you have, but having packed some easily snackable food Minnie was perfectly happy to nibble her way through our provisions supplemented by extras bought en route.

Download the RATP app

I’d loaded this app onto my phone before I left and it was fantastic – not just for route suggestions (because frankly the Metro is pretty self-explanatory) but also for the map of the city, which seemed to be better than Google maps most of the time.

It does not, however, suggest avoiding the major interchange of Chatelet les Halles if you’re swapping from the RER to the Metro – something I strongly recommend! I’m only sorry I didn’t download a free bus map app as well as I only belatedly realised just how useful line 75 could have been.

 

Images copyright MummyTravels