Visiting Paris With A Teen On A Budget

We travel a lot! My younger daughter is 11 years old and has already visited 18 countries and 5 continents. But we tend to visit off the beaten path type places like Peru, Thailand, South Africa and Zambia. We prefer adventure type vacations to museum type vacations. My older daughter who is heading to college in the fall asked if we could visit Europe and some "normal" places.
So planning started on a 3 week European vacation. We dropped the younger siblings off with cousins in Sweden and headed off for a week in Paris and London.
I have been to Paris quite a few times, but it's been quite a few years. And of course, I have never visited the city with a teenager.
We arrrived in Paris on Bastille Day which made me a bit nervous. But the city had set up security checkpoints on nearly every corner and the crowd seemed subdued so we felt very comfortable. We headed to the Eiffel Tower to see the fireworks show. We chose a viewpoint on the other side of the Seine from the tower next to the Trocadero with easy access to the metro. I highly recommend this because the metro stations near the tower close early to help with security. This means after the show, you will have to walk a long way to get to an open metro station.

The fireworks show was amazing!

Once I secure flights, I move onto hotels. One of my favorite tools is awardmapper.com. You enter the city, choose your hotel brand and the website will tell you how many points you will need and what hotels are in the area. For Paris, I couldn't find any good values for my points. So I chose a bed and breakfast in the Moulin Rouge section of the city. Hotel Moulin Plaza was perfect. Booked through Booking.com 3 nights for 256.60 Euros or $302.12.  The hotel included breakfast, private bathroom, clean, secure front desk, located near a metro stop and centrally located. It was also next door to the infamous Moulin Rouge cabaret. I used Booking.com and used my Ebates.com portal to get cash back. Woohoo! 

So what to do with a teenager in Paris? First stop, crepes. 

We feasted on sweet crepes from shops like the one in the video and yummy, chicken, cheese and mushroom crepes for $6 from a stand. There must have been 4 crepe shops within a block of our hotel. Next stop, pick up our Paris Museum Pass from the Tourism Office. We bought it online before we arrived, but not early enough for it to be mailed before the trip. I highly recommend you order it early and have it shipped to your home. The line at the Tourism Office was long. The pass is about $45 per person. 

The benefits to the pass are FREE admission to the museums. Kids and students are FREE anyway. But you get to cut to the front of the line at all the museums. This is a huge benefit. The lines in Paris in the summer are unbelievably long. 

Paris Museum Pass Line at the Orsay - Yep, empty! 

Line for regular ticket holders at the Orsay - ouch!

 We limited our museums to just the Louvre, the Dali and the Orsay. Of course, there are dozens of museums to check out, but I think even with an 18 year old, you have to be choosy.

Crowds at the Mona Lisa

I'll share one of the best pieces of advice we got, skip the long line to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You will wait hours even if you buy your ticket online ahead of time, trust me. A better view is from the roof of the Gallerie Lafayette and it's FREE. Plus you get to check out the inside of this incredible building.

The center of the Gallerie Lafayette

 After walking in the heat and crowds, ice cream is always a winner. I think we ate ice cream in every city we visited and for a couple of our meals. The best ice cream in Paris is Berthillon Ice Cream. It's located behind the Notre Dame.

 One of the things I love about travelling is the unexpected. We stumbled on this wall of love near the Dali Museum in the Montemarte section  of the city.

There is a memorial ceremony every day at 6pm at the Notre Dame for the fallen soldiers. It's definitely something to see.

To navigate Paris and save money, I highly suggest using public transport and buying either a pass or a book of rides. You will save a ton of money. We ended up buying a 10 pack for 7.80 Euros. Huge savings over spending 1.80 Euros for each ride!

 And then we hopped the Eurostar from the Gare Du Nord for the next part of our trip in London. I'll write a separate post about how to buy tickets on the Eurostar and our experience.
For our 3 day stay in Paris, flights were free, hotel cost $250 and included breakfast, Museum Pass cost $45 each, transport $20 and food. We sat down for one nice lunch that set us back about $50. Other than that, we lived on crepes and sandwiches and ice cream.
That's how we do it at almost free family travel!