Paris and Venice with Children: Part 1

Over the Easter break we embarked on the kind of holiday we haven't done with children before; the (slightly extended) city break. We traveled overland to Venice - first by Eurostar to Paris and then after four nights in Paris by the overnight Thello train from Paris to Venice.
Overall the holiday was great - probably better in retrospect in some parts (as I think things involving children sometimes are...). But I think Coco and Henry had a pretty good time and it was lovely to get almost a full two weeks together just the four of us.

I thought I'd just do an overview of the holiday and what worked for us. I've optimistically called this post 'part 1' as I intend to gradually go through what we did (but my blog is getting a little neglected at the moment so that might not happen)!

We didn't try to cram in lots of activities, in fact we hardly did any 'culture'. Almost as soon as we got to Paris we decided not to charge around trying to do a million things but instead to make sure we just go there more often... it is so easy!



Setting off from home on a Monday morning  - we left early enough to be in Paris for lunch. The major drama of the trip happened as soon as we were in the queue for security at St Pancras and Coco realised she'd left Teddy at home. There were lots of tears and she missed her throughout the trip too, "Teddy was so looking forward to seeing the Eiffel tower" etc etc.



On our first day we checked into our perfectly located airbnb apartment and then headed out for a bite to eat. We ended up in the not so French Frenchie, a kind of French/American deli, but it was delicious, hit the spot perfectly and fueled us for an afternoon of wandering.



Rue Montorgueil - right near our apartment, perfect for food shopping and people watching. 



We walked through the courtyard of the Louve... Coco was intrigued by all the people taking just these kind of photos so we jumped on the band wagon and had a go too.
I was intrigued by the sheer number of selfie sticks we saw. Slightly unreal.



We made our way through The Tuileries Garden where the children spent a good hour in the playground while we sat with take away tea perusing our guide book and admiring all the immaculately dressed French children.




Eventually we coaxed the children away with the promise of a carousel ride...



More wandering... Paris was starting to bloom, we didn't really get the best weather, it still looked pretty stunning.



Then we shopped for supper, taking home a medley of gorgeous quiche, salad, cheese and bread (not actually a supper of sweets as Coco and Henry would have liked).

After a busy day of travelling and walking and a nice bottle of French wine for me and Hugh we all slept very soundly ready for the next day of our adventure...