Before and After - avec enfants

Now in all fairness, there are probably a number of you who have read my post Before and After and thought: she was single and had no children, so she could afford to walk and eat all over Paris, both literally and figuratively. I understand, and I share these anecdotes with a great deal of nostalgia. However, this approach to cities is one that I follow even when traveling with our children to this day. Just ask them how they feel about walking in cities with their mother, and you may get an assortment of responses ranging from groans and feigned leg injures to deadpan comments such as, "Oh? Is there really a Metro in Paris, because we certainly wouldn't know." (I do exaggerate somewhat - during evening hours I am the first to jump in taxis or venture in the Metro. After all, as mentioned earlier, my most favorite past-time is eating in restaurants, and I will do whatever is necessary to arrive at said restaurant in a timely manner.)

My point is that I like to see everything. And my view is that when walking you see and learn so much more about a city. You can window shop, read menus posted outside of restaurants, admire building façades, and people-watch endlessly. Feeling tired? Just stop spontaneously for an espresso or jus pressé, and everyone can find something to nibble on from the menu carte. OK, so maybe there won't be shopping for those Robert Clergerie shoes, but I know our family-unit limits and have learned to respect them if there is any hope of enjoying the city. So, instead, we amuse ourselves looking at curios in the souvenir shops in Les Halles or at street performers at Le Centre Pompidou. After all, we are in Paris! And let's just be honest with ourselves: it is not - and never has been - humanly possible to digest the Louvre in one day. So why not just zip in and give Mona Lisa a good eye over with the kids in tow; after all there are a number of treasures and titillating Egyptian sarcophagi you pass in the maze you must walk to view her. With luck you might even get lost along the way and suddenly find yourselves glimpsing the Venus de Milo. The possibilities are endless! As for distances covered, it all becomes relative; a walk may not be across town, but if we can get from one end of le jardin des Tuileries to Ile Saint-Louis during the afternoon (with ice cream, feed the duck, look-at-barges-on-the-Seine stops along the way) then we are way ahead of the game. To me, living and traveling in Europe is about simple pleasures, and successfully navigating Paris with children is truly a very simple pleasure - and a huge victory.