A realistic, family-friendly guide to planning Paris + the French Riviera with kids
I'll be honest: I am a recovering over-planner. The version of me from ten years ago would have had a color-coded spreadsheet, a laminated daily itinerary, and a backup plan for the backup plan. That person still lives in me, but she's been slowly outvoted by the mom who just wants her kids to have fun — the kind of fun that actually sticks.
This trip to Paris and Nice wasn't cheap, but it also wasn't reckless. It was thoughtfully planned in the places that mattered and intentionally left open everywhere else. One or two things a day, with plenty of room to just be there. To wander down a street because it looked interesting. To stumble into a protest, or a street artist, or a cannon going off at noon for reasons that are completely unhinged and also completely wonderful.
I know my kids may not remember every detail of this trip. But I hope they remember the feeling of it — all of us together, a little lost sometimes, laughing more than we expected, making memories we didn't even know we were making yet.
This first post is the un-sexy one: the planning. But stick with me, because the rest of the series is where it gets really good.
Choosing the Cities: Paris + Nice
Paris was never a question. But we also knew ourselves — if there's an opportunity to see one more place, we're taking it. France has so many regions that feel like their own separate storybooks, so I started narrowing things down by train routes. East toward Strasbourg, north toward Belgium, south toward the Riviera — every direction felt like a completely different adventure, which made choosing almost painful.
In the end, we asked ourselves one question: what part of this trip would be new for all four of us, not just the girls? That made the decision easy. We went south to Nice.
Booking Flights (and Why We Flew on a Thursday)
Once the cities were set, I went straight to flights. After searching every option I could find, I landed on a Thursday departure that saved us a meaningful chunk of money — enough that pulling the girls out of school two days early felt completely justified.
I'll also confess that I briefly — very briefly — considered booking the cheapest Delta option, which would have had the kids seated nowhere near us on an overnight international flight. Greg shut that down with a single look. Apparently "character building" has its limits, and an 8 and 10-year-old sitting next to strangers across the Atlantic is past them. Sometimes marriage is about gentle reality checks.
Choosing Where to Stay: Hotel vs. Apartment
When Greg and I visited Paris years ago, we stayed in hotels through a tour group. It was lovely, but this time I wanted something that felt less like tourism and more like actually living there, even just for a few days. So apartments it was.
My goal was simple: find something walkable to the Metro, in a neighborhood with real life happening around it, at a price that left us enough budget to actually do things once we got there. Greg and I spent weeks sending each other listings, debating locations, and second-guessing ourselves.
We finally found a Paris apartment we loved and submitted a booking request — only to get denied because of a calendar error on the host's end. Back to square one. But honestly? The place we ended up with was better. Great location, exactly the right size, and it felt like ours the moment we walked in.
For Nice, I found our apartment early and never wavered. No matter how many other options I looked at, I kept coming back to the same photos. Some decisions just make themselves.
Booking the Train
The Paris to Nice train was one of the things I was most excited about — and also the thing I almost over-thought. I tried to book it early and discovered I was too far out. So I made a note in my planning doc and came back when the window opened. Easy.
One thing worth knowing: TGV tickets typically open about three months before departure. Set a reminder, book early, and get a good seat. The views on that ride are worth it.
Planning the Itinerary (Without Planning the Fun Out of It)
Here's my honest truth: I can ruin a vacation with a spreadsheet if nobody stops me. So I gave myself one rule — no more than one or two planned activities per day. Everything else was fair game for wandering, exploring, and following whatever looked interesting around the next corner.
I started with a giant list of everything we might want to do in both cities, then grouped things by neighborhood so we weren't zigzagging across Paris like exhausted, confused tourists. Having loose daily clusters meant we could be spontaneous without feeling aimless. It also meant that when we stumbled onto something unexpected — and we did, constantly — there was room for it.
Disney tickets were cheapest on Fridays, which actually became our scheduling anchor and helped the rest of the week fall into place naturally. Sometimes the plan plans itself.
The Tool That Changed Everything: Google Maps
This is something I do for every trip now, and I can't recommend it enough. Before we left, I built a custom map in Google Maps with every single thing we might want to do — restaurants, landmarks, markets, bakeries, parks — saved as green "Want to Go" flags. Our Airbnb went in as a heart, so it stood out instantly.
What this did was make the city make sense before we ever arrived. I could see which apartments were actually close to the things we wanted to do, which neighborhoods had natural clusters of activity, and how to build days around location instead of logistics. Every morning, we'd pull up the map and see what was nearby. It kept things flexible without feeling chaotic, and it made sure we weren't spending half our trip underground on the Metro just to get somewhere.
Simple, free, and genuinely one of the best planning moves I made.
How We Used Credit Card Points to Save $1,902
This was the part of the planning process that genuinely surprised me. So many of the experiences I wanted to book were available through our credit card's rewards portal — and since we put almost everything on that card anyway, we had a solid stash of points ready to use. It turned things I would have talked myself out of into guilt-free yeses.
Here's what we redeemed and what it was worth:
- Bakery experience in Paris: $342
- Private dinner with a home cook in Sanremo, Italy: $405
- Car rental in Nice: $72
- Seine dinner cruise with champagne and window seating: $455
- Dinner at Madame Brasserie inside the Eiffel Tower: $628
Total saved: $1,902
That Eiffel Tower dinner alone would have been a hard sell at full price. With points, it was one of the best meals of our lives and it didn't hurt a bit.
What's Coming Next
This trip was too big, too memorable, and honestly too full of ridiculous moments to fit into one post. Here's what's coming in the rest of the series:
- Post 2: Arrival day, zero sleep, and our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower
- Post 3: Disneyland Paris — and why not having a plan was the whole plan
- Post 4: A bakery class, an unexpected protest, and a Seine dinner cruise
- Post 5: Montmartre, a lost bag, and the most spectacular scam of our lives
- Post 6: Travel day to Nice and falling in love with a new city
- Post 7: Italy for the day, a private home-cooked meal, and a perfume factory
- Post 8: Last day in Nice and the long way home
If you're thinking about taking this trip with your family — whether your kids are little or just starting to be old enough to really remember things — I hope this series gives you the push you need. Plan the parts that matter. Leave the rest open. And always, always budget for croissants.
Bon voyage.
