France
- seanick9
- Aug 27
- 17 min read
We made a trip to France in August, spending most of our time in Paris (our most visited city), but also staying in Quincy-Voisins and Dinan to experience more of the sights France has to offer, as well as celebrating Emily’s birthday at Disneyland Paris!
For a number of reasons we didn’t try to fit in as many of the tourist sights here as we might have otherwise. We have seen many of the sights already such as the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Musee d’Orsay, Musee de l’Orangerie and Palace of Versaille so we did not visit those on this trip. Many restaurants also shut down in August as their proprietors go on their annual holidays, and it was a bit of a heat wave so we didn’t want to be out walking the entire day when it was really hot. That said, we still saw many sights, ate a lot of good food and were able to celebrate with Anna’s sister’s family.
Musee Rodin
We visited the Musee Rodin one day as it had some interesting art from Auguste Rodin that Anna and I were interested in seeing, but also a really interesting grounds to walk around that we thought would keep Emily entertained. This was interesting, I recognized some of the works and also enjoyed Emily trying to recreate some of the silly poses of Rodin’s sculptures. The Thinker is the most obvious piece but it was also interesting to see his different styles, mostly with bronze as well as carved marble sculptures, but he also had many other mediums on display. The part of the museum that Emily loved most was the kids play area on the first floor of the gift shop building, where they had a variety of arts and crafts for kids to play with, such as some textured boards that you place a piece of paper over and rub a crayon across to make a relief of the texture.
St Germain Chateau
We visited the Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which used to be the royal palace before the Palace of Versailles was built. We first spent some time at the great playground near the gardens, where Emily climbed to the top to be queen of the rope castle, and afterwards discovered some beautiful agate rocks in the gravel around the Chateau, before progressing to the Chateau itself which is turned into an archaeological museum. We did go into the museum, though we didn’t really get much out of the museum itself, mostly so we could see inside the building and the central courtyard. There was a special exhibition in the chapel, which required separate tickets which we hadn’t purchased so didn’t get to go inside there.
Chateau de Monte Cristo - We had taken the day trip from Paris out to the St Germain Chateau, and while we were here we also took an Uber to see the Chateau de Monte Cristo, the house of Alexandre Dumas that he had built as a retreat away from Paris. I have to admit I never got around to reading any Dumas until now, so I didn’t have much knowledge about him or his characters, but it was fun to visit his Chateau, gardens and separate house Chateau D’lf that he wrote some of his books in. The main house has a museum in it showing many artifacts of his life there, such as his collected art and personal writings. The gardens are fun to walk around as well. They have a gift shop on the way out and of course Emily wanted one of the dress-up dresses that they had so Anna got one for her for a birthday present. I’ve since started reading The Count of Monte Cristo and I am definitely enjoying it thus far!
Food
Le Récamier
Souffle’s to me sound like the dessert course. This place, we went and ordered both a main Souffle and a dessert souffle. And while the dessert one was delicious, (and came with its own bottle of Grand Marnier to drizzle as you please, dangerous for those of us who like to drink it,) the savory Souffle with cheese and mustard was the absolute star of this meal.
Baillotte
Baillotte may have had the best prix fixe lunch I’ve ever had, every course was delicious and the price was quite reasonable for what it was (39 Euros I think). Anna had found it and made the reservation, and when we went, we were pretty hungry so I didn’t take many photos of the food. I wish I had, though, as afterwards we agreed it was the best food we ate anywhere in Paris, easily outclassing places that were more expensive.
Brasserie Rosie
We visited Brasserie Rosie for one of our date night dinners. It was pretty empty when we arrived though by the time we left it was nearly full. The food was good enough, but the poor server seemed overwhelmed and it took a long time between courses, and especially after having gone to Baillotte previously, did not really stack up so I would give this one a miss.
Le Floreal
This restaurant near our AirBnB won our business two more times after we visited it for breakfast one day. For starters, it had giant teddy bears all around and Emily was all about it. The croissants and the fruit juice were all freshly made and delicious. The omelet’s were not quite as amazing but the overall value was great- $10 Euros each for the croissant, coffee, juice and omelet breakfast.
Other
LudoJardin
Luxembourg gardens is a beautiful park near the left bank that we’ve visited on almost every trip to Paris, including getting professional photos taken with Emily when she was just 2. This time, we made the trip so we could check out the new kids playground LudoJardin. It does require a fee to enter but it was like $2 so still basically free, and had many structures for kids to climb on, swings, sand pits, a zipline and more. One of the most novel installations was actually just outside the playground, the jousting carousel! The outermost seats on the carousel can hold a small wand as a lance, and try to capture rings that are hanging from the structure as you spin around by sticking the lance through them! Some of the kids were coming up with 10+ rings each on the ride - Emily was able to capture 4 but it was her first try and they weren’t being quick enough to restock the rings. Pretty fun!
Flash Invaders
Another interesting activity we did was to download the FlashInvaders app and looked for the space invader art that’s all over the city - in the end we caught over 50 of them! It made walking around with Emily quite a bit more interesting for her as she was always on the lookout for “Invader cubes” as she called them!
Quincy-Voisins and Disneyland Paris
About the last 3-4 times I’ve been to Paris, I’ve had the idea that it would be fun to visit Disneyland Paris (which used to be called Eurodisney), but Anna isn’t really into theme parks, so it’s never happened - but when we started planning this longer Europe adventure, I had roughly penciled in having Emily’s 5th birthday there. Lizzii and her family were also going to be on a summer vacation adventure in Europe around the same time, and our plan ended up coming together where that seemed like a good time to be in France, so we planned a joint visit, and booked a big AirBnB near Disnelyand Paris in Quincy-Voisins to use as a home base.
I knew from experience that theme parks can be very busy, and overwhelming, and that it’d be impossible to get to see everything in one day with a 5 year old, so we decided to do 2 days, with a day in between - Anna, Emily and myself went there first a couple days before Emily’s birthday to start the party, going on a few rides and whatnot, then going again on her actual birthday with the whole group. We were pretty excited about this, planning a few things ahead such as booking a couple of restaurants ahead of time and planning out a couple rides and other side activities to make it special for her (and for us!).
Auberge de Cendrillon
Anna suggested we book Auberge de Cendrillon for lunch as she read that it was a great way to see many of the Disney princesses in person. We went there the first day as it was mainly for Emily and it didn’t seem like it made sense to bring Lizzii’s boys along. The restaurant does a 3 course meal with optional wine pairing, 100 Euros for adults and half that for kids, and while you’re dining the princesses come by to meet each of the kids at each table. It was great, Emily was so excited to meet each of the princesses and actually smiled in the photos! Though she did get a bit frustrated having to wait while the princesses visited kids at the other tables. The food itself was pretty good food, maybe not the highest quality French cuisine we’d had on this trip but impressive for a restaurant at a theme park. Highly recommend this, especially if you are bringing along a little girl.
The rides
We rode a few rides (Pirates of the Carribean, Mad Hatters tea cups, It’s a small world, Pinocchio’s journey, Phantom Manor) with Emily and she enjoyed them all, even wanting to repeat a few of them. I also went with the boys on a couple more (Hyperspace mountain, Big thunder mountain). I was surprised how well Hyperspace mountain holds up, it’s still quite a good ride - a zippy coaster with drops in almost complete darkness and decently fast. Pinocchio was not very interesting but most of the rest were worth the wait.
Princess Package aka “My Royal Makeover”
We knew we were doing Disneyland Paris (nee Eurodisney) ever since we started planning this trip, and we also knew that we wanted to do the princess package (now called “Royal makeover”) but when I looked online, it seems we can only book the princess package a month out, so I dutifully noted it on my to-do list and calendar, and went ahead with the rest of our trip and bookings. However, when the day came to actually book the Royal Makeover, there were no time slots available! I was quite confused, and when I went to look on the website in the fine print it says that if you book the Disney Hotel, you’re able to book the Royal Makeover at the time of your booking, which is up to a year in advance. I was still a bit skeptical that I was reading things correctly so I called the hotel and they confirmed, yes, these have all been booked out for months. We’d booked an AirBnB near the park big enough for us as well as Lizzii and her kids, 7 of us, so we didn’t really consider a hotel since that would have been quite a bit more expensive and we also would have had multiple separate rooms (and not actually had our own bedrooms!). However, it seems that if you want the Royal Makeover, booking the Disney hotel is really the only option.
A month later we were ready to go to Disneyland Paris in a couple days, and we wanted to go book the Princess breakfast, which is supposed to open up 3 days before, but guess what, it’s the same story! This seems quite unfortunate. I mean, I understand from Disney’s perspective, they want to push their own hotel option, but what really makes this confusing is apparently you don’t even need to pay a deposit when you book in advance with your hotel booking - so there’s no guarantee they will even show up! The least they could do is offer a waitlist.
Booking a “Character encounter” at Princess Pavilion: You need to be QUICK to get into the queue for this. They open the queue at 9:45 AM and again at 2:00 PM. We missed this on the first day, tried the 2:00 PM one but it was fully booked at like 2:02 PM. So on the second day, I set an alarm for 9:43 AM to make sure I could book it, and I had people counting down the seconds before it opened up, clicking “Join Queue” and through the menu of character encounters as quickly as I reasonably could the very second that it opened, and still we ended up in line for 11:55 - 2 hours later! But at least we booked it. When the time came, we were watching the parade from 11:30 to about 11:45, then rushed over to get into the line at the Princess Pavilion. There is a door and a hallway before you see which princess it is, and it’s just one- ours was Tiana. Anna, Emily and Lizzii went in, and Emily was able to meet Tiana and talk to her for a few minutes before getting a photo shoot. Then, after that was the line for viewing and purchasing the photos, which also seemed to take a long time- the folk in front of Anna and Emily were taking their time. Anna ended up giving up since we had a lunch reservation at 12:15, but was able to buy the tickets later with the card and code they gave her.
Overall, we’d say the Princess Pavilion Character Experience wasn’t really worth the hassle, since we had gone to Auberge de Cendrillon for lunch on the first day, where Emily was able to meet and get pictures with 7 princesses while we were eating our lunch, with just as much interaction, talking to them for a few minutes and getting pictures. Of course the tradeoff is that while the Princess Pavilion meet and greet is free, except for a bit of hassle, the Auberge lunch was decidedly NOT free at $100 a head for adults and $50 each for the kids.
Other thoughts we had about Disneyland Paris
Not surprisingly, since the park is in France, the rides were all in French! For instance, it was quite interesting to hear Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride singing “pirates life” in French! They did mix in songs in English as well, and all the signage is good so we had no problem getting around.
The parade through the park was a lot of fun! I think we were in line for a ride the first day so we missed it, but made a plan to see the parade the second day and it was worth it, the floats are quite high so you can still see them over the mass of people lined up, just not the dancers that are on the ground between the floats. We took turns letting Emily sit on our shoulders so she could see better.
Skipping the line via the premium pass
On the first day, when we hadn’t yet gotten our bearings for the park or the app, we booked a fast pass for Pirates our first time through since we didn’t really feel like waiting in line for an hour on our first ride with Emily. When finally reached the line, it actually wasn’t that long, so we just went in the regular line the first time through (not using the premium pass) then going and using the premium pass to skip the line on the second time, when more people had lined up, and it worked out pretty well! The pass is anywhere from 5-15 euros per person per ride, so it ended up being about 20 for the Pirates ride and 70 for Big Thunder Mountain the second day, which given the amount of time, money and effort it takes to get to Disneyland in the first place, seemed worth it to me. The park was completely sold out and at capacity on both days, so maybe this isn’t a normal thing, but we noticed most of the big thrill rides had hour long waits after about 11:00 AM. If you don’t want to do the premium pass, try to ride as many things between 9-11 as you can before the lines get too long!
Meaux
On the day between Disneyland park visits, we took a day trip to visit Meaux, including visiting the Meaux Cathedral as well as the Musee Bousset and gardens behind it, which were designed by the same gardener that made the gardens of the palace of Versaille. The museum was entirely in French, which I didn’t speak but had lots of interesting art as well as some historic exhibits from the region, ancient artifacts and drawings of the cathedral grounds, plus the building itself was quite cool. The cathedral is massive, with gorgeous architecture and artwork. We were there during a service so just walked quickly through as to not disturb the locals.
Driving on the highways
Most of the major highways outside of Paris are toll roads. We spent 34 euros on the tolls between Quincy and Rennes. They had little gas station / rest stops every 30 miles or so. Pretty nice easy drive though, not a lot of sights other than farmlands on either side. It was a 4 and a half hour drive to Dinan, but it would have been 7 hours without the toll roads, so you basically don’t have much of a choice.
Dinan old town
The main street in Dinan’s old town had many Tudor style buildings that had been around for over 500 years including the old Governors house. We walked the long, steep road down to the river and back, taking many photos of the old interesting buildings along the way. We only had a couple days in Dinan so didn’t explore too much, but would definitely be interested to come back through here when on a slightly longer trip through France.
Emily and I also walked through the Dinan church Basilica of Saint-Sauveur. I am always amazed how large some of the churches are in otherwise not massive towns in France, these must have taken decades to build.
Dinard / Saint Malo
On August 19 we visited the St Malo “Island” which is fortified by a castle wall around the center of the city, which has a 3 mile path around the top of the wall. St Malo has been somewhat independent for much of its history and was at one point the home of the corsairs. In World War 2, American forces almost completely destroyed St Malo city, but it has since been restored as much as possible to the original look (it looks pretty old but apparently everything is only 71 years old!)
Mont Saint Michel
While in Dinan, we did a day trip to see Mont Saint-Michel. The legend about this island goes that the bishop Aubert of Avranches had a series of dreams about the archangel Michael instructing him to found an abbey on the island of Mont Tombe, leaving a mark on his skull on the third such visit so he would remember when he woke up. So then around the year 1000 they finally began to build the current monastery on this rock, coming up with the idea to build stone buildings up against the rock at the lowest level, followed by another layer of buildings above, with some crypts and chapels and storage vaults, followed by yet another layer with giant cathedral rooms above that, to culminate in this giant monastery on the top that took in total over 500 years to build.
We went on August 18 to Mont Saint Michel, with tickets for the monastery tour at 10:15 AM, thinking getting there at 9:15 would be plenty of time to get there. When we parked in the parking lot the sign said it was a 35 minute walk, or a 20 minute wait for the shuttle, so Anna and I thought we’d just do the walk to be safe, while her sister Lizzii and Emily took the shuttle (since they didn’t have tickets for the monastery tour, they would just do the town walk and didn’t have a time constraint). It was a pretty sight, walking along the beach and over the bridge to get to the island, and it was a good thing we walked because we ended up beating Emily and Lizzii to the island. Once we got there, the lines were pretty long already, and we had to walk 20 minutes up the stairs to get to the top which is where the tour started from, so we only just made it, at 10:15, perfectly on time for the tour to start. (I will also note that the tour was advertised as a 45 minute tour, but we were on the tour for almost 2 hours before we went down to meet Lizzii and Emily afterwards at around 12.) When we left, the lines for both the ticket office, and to get into the monastery, took up almost all available space on the stairs, and the town itself was completely packed to the point where it was quite difficult to make our way off the island. They did say it was peak season, but this island felt quite a bit more crowded than Disneyland was and Disneyland had sold completely out of tickets!
The Monastery tour
We started out in front of the church at the very top of the island, where the guide started talking about the Bishop who initially conceived of putting a monastery on the island in the early 8th century, the timeline of when it was constructed, the pilgrims who came to the island, and how various events such as fires and collapses had caused parts of the construction to be rebuilt in different styles. The main part of the church used to have 7 bays of pillars on either side, but 3 burned down which she pointed out the foundations for those 3, and the new wall was built in place where only 4 main sections remained (before reconstruction and improvements, such as the spire with the statue of Saint Michel on the top).
There are many different structures discussed in this article of the Mont Saint Michel Abbey along with some of its history. The architecture of the structure is mostly Romanesque, with early Gothic rib vaults, and Flamboyant Gothic windows on the Choir that spans hundreds of years of development. As with many large structures that took hundreds of years to complete or which have been rebuilt after disasters, many of these architectural styles live side by side in the same structure which gives it a unique look and appeal.
Below that, the Great Pillars Crypt was pretty interesting - giant pillars to support the upper levels. Apparently in 1421 the choir of the church collapsed and it was rebuilt with even larger pillars in the latest gothic style of the time to support the additions at the top of the church, and only in the last 20 years did they realize these pillars had cladding around inner stone pillars that was almost 200 years older.
The “Treadwheel crane”
This was set up so that prisoners could walk in it like a giant hamster wheel, and it would slowly pull the rope up, which due to the pulley ratio a single man could lift thousands of pounds of cargo up the side of the hill to the church.
The bay surrounding Mont Saint Michel is massive, and in fact spans ten kilometers of beach - the tides rise as much as 12-16 meters at certain times of year, completely covering the bridge that goes out to the island, and traveling up the shore at a rate of one meter per second at its peak. We were there close to low tide and really couldn’t see out to the sea, there was sand and rivulets all around as far as the eye could see. Apparently in the past, pilgrims had to hire guides to get them to the island, using poles to test for quicksand to keep them safe on their journey - and if they made it safely they would receive a scallop shell insignia to wear to prove they completed their pilgrimage.
Final thoughts on this France trip
I would say that being here in August was a bit challenging, as Google Maps often did not have data about which restaurants, trains, stores etc were not running due to August closures. Many restaurants were shut for a week or two, including the crepe place downstairs that we had been excited to try. There were also not many kids camps open in August (I found lots in July though, but that didn’t work for us!) In addition, there was definitely a heat wave, and many places don’t have AC, even the AirBnB’s we booked that advertised having AC were mostly a portable unit in one room that didn’t really help the bedrooms much! I’d reconsider coming here in August again, although it was nice to have the city itself not be so busy.
Overall we had a great time in France, and we’re already talking about how we could spend more time here next year. Lizzii told us about her various stops on one of her trips, through Carcassone, Beynac-et-Cazenac, Rocamadour and around there, which sounded really beautiful and interesting.
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