We are going to France in the summer of ’23. This has really been planned since L started school, back when I was still getting over the trauma of my panic attacks and wondering if I’d be able to live life to the full. It’s been planned since before we knew that S would exist and that we’d be taking a preschooler along. A pre-preschooler, actually, since S is still 2 and won’t be old enough for preschool until next year. The school, no surprise to me, have canceled the normal 5th grade fieldtrip to France because of Covid (along with more mundane things, like the annual science fair). But we are going anyway, by God! It’s just as well. Going with the school would have had its pros and cons, and while I am devastated that our friends moved to Paris, it will be kind of convenient for our trip.
We will probably go 6/17 though 7/2 or something like that. There are two direct flights from Seattle to Paris, and if we take the cheaper one, we’d depart at 4:30 PM and arrive at 11:15 am local time, nearly 10 hours later. Have I mentioned that I hate to fly? Jonathan and I had been talking about going to see the French Alps. However, Annecy, the most likely destination that we’d start with, is 5.5 hours by car. (You can actually get there in as little as four hours by train, so maybe that is the way to go? But how hard would it be to get from Charles de Gaulle to the train station? And from the Annecy station to where we decided to stay? Don’t forget, we’ll be traveling with a 3-year-old.
Alternatively, we could stay several days in Paris. I am not really one for big cities, but of course it would be nice (and expensive) to see Versailles, the Notre Dame (if it’s open), and some of the other cathedrals and sights. So perhaps we could take a hotel in downtown Paris, or stay in one of the nearby towns, for three nights or so and then go to Annecy.
Alternatively, for about the same amount of money and only two extra hours, we could fly into Geneva, which is only a 40 minute drive or 50 minute train ride from Annecy. Or we could fly into Geneva and out of CDG. Or vice versa.
The other interesting factor is that we’d like L to be able to spend time with her best friend. Her best friend is out of school on 7/4 and then goes straight to Italy to stay with her grandparents. L is invited to come and stay as long as she likes. We could delay our vacation and let L go off to Italy. Or we could take L with us and then leave her with her friend and either let her fly home along (direct, obvs, dropped off at the airport by her friend’s mom) or one of us could come back, spend a day or two in Italy and then fly back with her. However, they stay midway between Nice and Genoa, nearly 10 hours drive from Paris. So that would be quite the journey.
So much planning. It feels intimidating, but I’ve come down with some annoying bug, and it’s passing the time as I convalesce.
Fly to Geneva and ditch the car.
No car for the first week in Geneva? On my last trip to France, I had no car and it was great. But a lot of the little towns in the Alps are only accessible by car, so I thought it might be convenient for the first week of this trip. My current thought is to rent a car in Geneva for the first week, return it at the end of the week, take the train to Paris, and spend the second week taking trains in the Paris region.
Why do you advocate for no car?
Sounds to me like the flight to Geneva makes the most sense.
I think outside of Paris and the major metro areas having a car and driving for a family of that size is easier.
As for L, that sounds like an amazing experience, figure out a way to make it happen. You can also fly between Paris and Italy.
That’s a particularly warm time to be in that part of the world, you might want to tack on some time near the Med which might be easier to wrangle than trying to take a pre-schooler to Paris museums.
Yes, interesting point about S and museums. I figure we’ll spend maybe 2 days in Paris looking at churches and museums and otherwise just check out various towns and sites near Paris. But we’ll have to think about what might work.
Paris has a park every half block. The Versailles gardens would be great to explore for kids. There is a high speed train from Geneva to Paris in 3.5 hours. Purchasing early enough and first class is often 10 CHF more than 2nd class.
You can probably find a little town in the alps only accessible by cable car. We explored a number of Swiss alpine villages without a car. Some do require a car, but most of the Swiss resort areas are accessible by public transit.
So our current thought was to rent a car for the first week, then return it (to Geneva) before we took the train to Paris and relied on public transportation for the rest of the trip. Do you think we should avoid renting a car altogether? When I backpacked around France before, public transit was awesome and I didn’t miss a car. However, with a 3 year old, I thought it would be handy. Also, I had wanted to go to the Alps on my last trip and concluded it was too hard to get to a lot of the interesting villages without a car.