One of the reasons I wanted to move to Spain was its proximity to the rest of Europe. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy traveling Spain, which is why it took almost two years for my family to travel outside of the country we now live in, not counting our U.S. visit in April of this year.
Last week, we were in Paris—just a two-hour direct flight from Valencia. The last time I was in Paris, Will and I took an eight-hour flight from Chicago. Two hours and no time zone change is, well, luxurious by comparison.
Travel is a huge motivator for me. There are reels on Instagram that joke about planning “a once-in-a-lifetime trip every four months.” It’s funny but also kinda true.
We have five school years left before our son graduates high school, and our daughter has seven. It sounds like a lot of time, but the older I get, the more I recognize how quickly it all goes and that time is finite.
So I’m packing in the trips, budget be damned (not really, but also yes).
My kids had never been to Paris, and the last time Will and I visited, we were 26 years old. I wanted to revisit some of the places we’d been and appreciate them as a grown-ass adult. I also wanted to show the kids some of the most famous sites in the world and introduce them to yet another language and culture so very different from ours.
In short, I wanted to see Paris through their eyes.
I planned this excursion for months. Disneyland Paris was a must since my son had been asking when we would go since moving to Spain in August 2024. There was never any question that if we made it to Paris, Disneyland would be waiting.
There were some must-sees on my list:
Eiffel Tower
Arc de Triomphe
Louvre
Catacombs
You get the idea. All the highlights of a great Paris trip.
We had a week, and I wanted to fit in more than we could do. My TripIt app had a running list of places to see, stores to wander, and restaurants we just had to try.
In reality, it was too much for a week, and it gives me a good excuse to return for yet another dose of Paris.
The thing is, as a twenty-something visiting Paris for the first time—and taking my first trip overseas—I had a checklist of places I needed to hit, pulled from guidebooks and travel magazine articles. I had no idea how to travel or how to not pack in too much and spend time just sitting at a café with a cup of coffee while watching the world go by. It was a whirlwind trip by any standard, with other cities and activities tacked onto it, leaving little time to just enjoy Paris for the unique city that it is.
At 45, with a lot more years of travel under my belt, I’ve learned one big thing that made this vacation more enjoyable than the last.
If you’re going to put in the time, effort, and logistics to go somewhere, really go. Stop checking boxes.
A long-standing regret was not taking the time to savor Sainte-Chapelle, a gothic church full of soaring stained glass windows. I fully intended to see it again and show my kids this special place.
Dear reader, we spent almost an hour in that church this time around, taking in the colorful glass that depicts more than 1,100 stories from the Bible.
And that was just one place.
Paris still wasn’t what I’d call a slow trip, and I want to point out that we definitely hit all the major highlights, in addition to a Montmartre food tour and a haunted Paris walking tour. We also saw the famous Galeries Lafayette, which was stunning and well worth the trek on the metro.
By the time we finished with all the Paris “must-dos,” we were all kind of ready to go home. But Disneyland still awaited us. And it was, after all, the biggest reason for the trip.
In 2022, we visited Disney World in Orlando. I was almost 42 years old before I finally set foot on Disney soil. As a kid, we didn’t have the resources to go, and Will’s family didn’t either. Quite honestly, it wasn’t a place I was dying to visit anyway. I’m not really a theme park kinda gal, and if it weren’t for wanting to take our own kids, I doubt Will and I would have ever put it on a list of places we needed to visit.
Despite all of that, Disney does a great job of putting you in “the bubble,” and once you’re in it, I can’t deny that it’s a bit magical. It’s enticing—that place where you can leave all your worries behind, ride fun rides, eat theme park food, and disappear into a fantasy world for just a little while.
And like all kids, ours loved it.
So when we first started talking about moving to Spain, Disneyland Paris was a carrot—a way to get the kids on board with the idea of another Disney park in a different part of the world. It worked so well that my son continuously asked when we were going until I booked the trip.
We spent two days at the Disneyland Paris parks. One more day would’ve been better, but two was sufficient, especially with older kids who want to do the “big” rides rather than the rides focused more on small children. And one big benefit of Disneyland Paris was its size. It’s a lot smaller than the Orlando campus, making it much easier to navigate and taking less time to take it all in.
Did Disney live up to our kids’ expectations?
I think so. While there were certainly moments of frustration (what family hasn’t experienced that on vacation?), I saw bright smiles, excitement, and, perhaps best of all, joy.
And for my part, I loved hearing the characters and announcements in French with some English sprinkled in.
We returned to Valencia last Friday exhausted, happy, and ready to settle in back home. I’m done with Disneyland Paris (for now anyway), but Paris?
While I didn’t intend this to be a “checklist trip”—and in many ways avoided it—it was still a jam-packed itinerary. If I’m honest, I didn’t mind and have no regrets, but the next trip to Paris will be all about gardens, slow museum walks, Versailles, and people watching. With Paris so close now, this trip’s checklist doesn’t have to look like next time’s checklist.
Our Paris itinerary
Accommodation: Courtyard Marriott Gare de Lyon
A couple of notes:
The Catacombs and Eiffel Tower top floor are two of the hardest tickets to get in Paris. There really isn’t a trick to getting either of them. You just have to be online at the time they’re released, put your patient pants on, and fight the good fight. That’s it. I was up until 1:00 a.m. the night I purchased the Eiffel Tower tickets because the website crashed several times in the process of purchasing and navigating to the tickets. The Catacombs tickets went much more smoothly, but the timing still had to be right.
The Courtyard Marriott Gare de Lyon isn’t in the city center, but I strategically placed us there for easy metro and RER access, knowing we would be at Disney the last couple of days. It is an easy ride on the metro to almost anywhere you want to go.
Not much in Paris can be done spontaneously these days, so if you’re planning a trip, buy as many of your tickets early as you can. If not, you’re risking not being able to get in.
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