I can’t tell you how many times people have told me they can’t wait to take their kids to Europe. “A few more years, and she’ll be able to appreciate Paris,” is how the conversation usually goes. “It would just be a waste to go now.” How Paris could ever be a waste is beyond me. When we travel, we learn, we grow. It doesn’t matter whether we’re 8 or 80.

Traveling with a child is a different, not impossible. Check out my recent post on getting creative when sightseeing with kids.

Most people think of Paris as an ideal city for a romantic weekend, a quick gastronomic getaway or a ten day cultural odyssey. It’s not a destination that particularly screams “6 week family vacation”. However, last summer my husband, 4 and 6 year old daughters and I had the enviable opportunity to park it in Paris for most of July and August.

We exchanged homes with a French family and got to live like locals in a chi chi Parisian apartment on a quiet street a short stroll from the hustle and bustle of the Champs Elysées.

Let me first say that of all the cities that we’ve visited with our kids, Paris is my favorite and the easiest to explore. Yes, I love Rome and London, and the many other cities for that matter, but Paris is what I always recommend to families looking to go to Europe.

Because Paris is better known as a romantic adult destination, it shouldn’t be dismissed as a family vacation venue. Actually, Parisian families have quite a nice thing going.

Paris is famous for romance and culture, not necessarily as a child-friendly city. I remember when I first moved here, I wondered how I would be able to bring up two kids in a city where the only places I found to take them were small parks for smokers where kids were not even allowed to walk on the grass!

In fact, with a little bit of research there are tons of things to go with kids of any age. For the older children, the museums and children’s theaters are fabulous.

I LOVE Paris and have been traveling there since I was 20 years old. Now that I have a daughter, my goal is to introduce her to the city of light, and hope she falls in love with it just like I have, and these locations and events have helped me cast a spell on her so she’ll want to come back again and again.

Le Parc de la Villette

On the Eastern side of Paris, this park is chalk full of wide-open space for toddlers …

Yes, our farmhouse rental worked well (Excellent Experience with VRBO Rental), and yes, we had a blast exploring the area (Zip-Line Adventure In … France?), but the real star …

On our way to our zip-line excursion featured in yesterday’s blog post, we passed through a little town called Beaumont du Perigord. This 13th century village had their town festival the day before …

Go figure that one of the highlights of our trip to France (yes, France, not Costa Rica) was a visit to a zip-line park called Parc-en-Ciel.

It’s hard to choose just one, but this might be my favorite photo from our recent trip to the Dordogne region of France.

Because we live in New York City, we tend to avoid city vacations as a family. We want to spend as much of our free time in nature as possible. However, there are some cities we can’t resist and Paris …