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Paris, France with Kids: Gardens of Versailles & Eiffel Tower at Night

Everyone slept so well! Paris nights are breezy and cool and we left the windows wide open all night! Perfection! C and kids go out to walk through Père-Lachaise, Paris’ famous cemetery near our Airbnb. See Chopin’s grave and Jim Morrison’s grave. V meets up with them at Jim Morrison’s grave later that morning. We walk from the cemetery to a boulangerie. C speaks French to the lady. She is so sweet! We buy croissants, pain au chocolate, and baguette. Walk home. Breakfast outside on the patio surrounded by Parisian rooftops. SO LOVELY! Bread is out of this world! Clean up, plan our day, pack our bags, take Metro to train to Versaille. Walk to Versaille Palace. Free admission to gardens. Last entry at 7:00pm and open until 8:30pm. Such a beautiful evening! Sunny and blue skies. Walk through courtyard around back of palace, walk by the fountains, down steps, toward the canal, walk through gardens, kids run and play and love picking up rocks. Exit the gardens near the canal and find Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon. Try to exit Versaille Park so we can get a taxi to see the Paris France temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the gates are all locked and no way out! Luckily a guard drives by and tells us we have to walk back to the Queen’s Gate to exit the park. We walk back and exit the park and find a bench where we wait for a taxi. Kids did so much walking and they were so good! No complaints or whining with all the walking and change of plans and they just kept on walking so much! The bench where we waited for the taxi outside the park was located outside the Waldorf Astoria hotel. While we wait, a caterer walks by with an enormous box of the most beautiful pastries. He says something to us in French and lets us each pick a pastry and gives some to all the other people nearby. Everyone says “Merci Monsieur!” And the pastries were all so good! By now it’s already too late to see the temple and we need to get back to the train station before the last train leaves for Paris. We hop in the taxi, drive back to the station, board the train to Paris, a troubadour sings and plays guitar on the train, we give him some American quarters, it’s nighttime by the time we arrive back in Paris, and we want to see the Eiffel Tower’s twinkling lights. We take the Metro to Champ de Mars, walk and see the Eiffel Tower and the kids cannot believe their eyes! It was so cool to see their faces. Walk through the park and find a good spot. Take pics and then the Eiffel Tower starts twinkling! The boys love the lights as well as all the street vendors selling miniature twinkling Eiffel Towers, lasers, lights and glowing balloons. Stay until the twinkling lights stop. Walk back to the Metro and C carries H who falls asleep on his shoulder. Ride Metro home and put the kids to bed! We all walked about 12 miles in total today! The kids are troopers and it was an awesome day!

Things to Know:

*Père-Lachaise is Paris’s largest cemetery with 70,000 tombs, and with 3.5 million visitors each year is the most visited cemetery in the world. Admission to the cemetery is FREE.

*The Gardens at Versailles are FREE, except on Musical Fountains Show and Musical Gardens days. 

*The Eiffel Tower is lit up every night from sundown until 1 AM.

*The Eiffel Tower twinkles on the hour every hour for 5 minutes.

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