Ne regrette rien: a family guide to Paris with kids

When it comes to deciding what to do in Paris with kids in tow, you’ll want to take the same approach to dipping into the city’s museums, monuments and galleries as you would to family dining: include something for everyone and don’t expect to clear every single ‘plate’. Finding family-friendly hotels in Paris (thanks to Smith’s abundant collection) makes all-rounder getaways that much simpler.

City breaks with children are best tackled when they’re robust enough to have the requisite energy levels. Paris, sadly, is not especially baby-friendly with a scarcity of lifts, changing areas and restaurant highchairs. But our children, aged 12 and 10, are in the travel-hardy zone, so we took them, over a crisply cold and sunny three days in February, to discover the City of Lights.

Family-friendly arrondissements

Paris’s numbered districts coil out from the stately 1st arrondissement, where you’ll find Place de la Concorde and the Louvre Museum, all the way to the 20th in the capital’s eastern outskirts. Our Paris neighbourhood guide gives you the full lowdown, but we opted to base ourselves in the 6th, between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter on the city’s Rive Gauche. It proved to be a convenient launchpad for walking to sights along the Seine (15 minutes on foot to Notre-Dame, for example) and is surrounded by little boutiques, pavement cafés and bistros.

Culture with kids in tow

Child-placating tactics are your friend. We began our starter-kit Paris trip with an ascent of Tour Montparnasse and its 360-degree cityscapes from the roof (there’s no need to book ahead; it’s better to see what the weather is doing). To sample Musée d’Orsay’s trove of masterpieces while avoiding child insurrection, skip straight to the fifth floor to prioritise the Renoirs, Monets and Van Goghs. (Note that even with timed tickets, you’ll need to queue for entry, and how enjoyable you find that will depend on your tolerance for Edith Piaf’s crucifixion by keyboard busker.)

The Louvre can be positioned as a king’s palace packed with classical treasures, or — for the less gullible — target galleries of particular interest: head to the family-friendly Studio in the Richelieu wing with the littlest of Smiths, and use the Tuileries Garden for fresh-air breaks and picnic stops as needed. The Louvre Kids website makes the museum accessible for younger art lovers. For tweens and teens, bolster its appeal by heading to the Tunnel des Tuileries, which runs the length of the Louvre between the galleries and the river.

Balance out the parent-led, cultural drag-around with more obviously family-friendly attractions: curation at the near-Louvre Musée en Herbe is more visually geared to appeal to children and has interactive exhibits, too. Or head out to the 19th and don your figurative lab coats for the futuristic Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, where rotating exhibitions cover anything from cats and dogs to the night sky. Jardin des Plantes is a botanical garden with a zoo and natural-history museum attached.

Budding emos are well catered for in Paris too. Gothic giant Notre-Dame Cathedral is once again extremely popular since its reopening, making either end of the day your best bet for manageable levels of queueing (we were there at 9am, no regrets). Or opt for Sainte-Chapelle by the Palais de Justice, which has hand-painted, mediaeval stained glass that’ll impress all ages. And intrepid tweens and teens will enjoy the subterranean tour of the Paris Catacombs.

Tours for step-free sightseeing

Sore feet are often the cause of child rebellion on a family city break — turning the journey into the entertainment is a winning formula for bypassing step-count. We opted for a private family trip à vélo with Bike About Tours: their ‘Paris Monuments’ route took us along the Seine past all the classic sights — including a pedal down the Champs-Elysées — largely on a network of (flat) bike-only lanes with an English-speaking leader. Although the private tour costs a little extra, having your own guide and being in control of the pace is a decent return on investment.

You could also take to the river: our pick for a low-commitment option with built-in flexibility (great if you have restless younger Smiths) is the Batobus. This hop-on, hop-off service — delivered with one- or two-day passes — runs between the Eiffel Tower and Le Jardin des Plantes and stops every 15 minutes.

Open spaces for untethered time out

There are plenty of gardens to explore on a family trip to Paris. Counter the rigidity of navigating Metro stations and marching along boulevards with downtime and boulangerie-sourced picnics in the capital’s pretty parks. As well as Le Jardin de Tuileries, with a Rive Gauche base you’re nearer to statue-studded Le Jardin du Luxembourg, which has play areas and a boating pond with remote-control sailboats for hire. Further north, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is a lesser-known, wilder spot of hilly terrain (built over old quarries) with grottos, ponds and waterfalls, and sweeping vistas across Montmartre.

Or target the tree-lined waterways of Canal Saint-Martin in the 10th: from Place de la République you can wander its banks, then branch off to find bijou indie cafés and boulangeries — storied bakery Du Pain et des Idées proved a great find while we were en flânant in this residential area. Or step up the entertainment with a trip to trad amusement park Le Jardin d’Acclimatation in the 16th.

Where to eat en famille

Dining spots in Paris number in the tens of thousands; family-friendly restaurants are in ready supply, too (our bistro guide to Paris eateries will give you a flavour). Where you choose to dine will be dictated by geography mostly. We stuck close to our hotel in the 6th, where just one pedestrian arcade, Cour du Commerce Saint-André, served up historic Le Procope, trad tearoom and bistro La Jacobine, family-friendly Pub Saint-Germain and polished Brasserie Des Prés (with queues around the block, so book ahead). For our final evening, penguin waiters and art nouveau interiors brought winsome charm to bavette-frîtes and glacées profiteroles at Brasserie Lipp.

If you’ve maxxed out on family time for the evening, book a babysitter through your hotel or try an agency such as Baby Langues and head à deux for wine and grazing plates of cheese and charcuterie to storied café-bistro Les Deux Magots; for artful plates, bag a table at contemporary fine-dining spot, Le Colvert.

Where to stay with kids in Paris

We based ourselves at Hotel Saint André des Arts in the 6th: it’s the kind of sweetly authentic boutique hotel that Mr & Mrs Smith built its foundations on. The staff are friendly, knowledgeable and helpful; thoughtfully curated interiors are characterful, with kooky Sixties furnishings and popping colour; and its location — surrounded by eateries and boutiques with the Seine and Île de la Cité in walking distance — is utterly child-friendly. The hotel has a family apartment and a choice of connecting rooms; our eaves-level duo of rooms felt tucked away and apartment-like.

Hotel Saint André des Arts (left) and Mob House (right)

On the Rive Droite, Grand Powers in the fashion-forward Golden Triangle goes above and beyond for little Smiths; babysitting and a kids’ concierge give the green light to stays at super-central Nolinski Paris; and a Duplex Suite and connecting options at Maison Breguet lend a stylish family edge to this upscale hotel in the 11th. A little further out, in Ouen, Mob House is a laidback, sustainably minded stay with design pedigree and connecting options that’s lighter on the budget.

Getting around

The Metro is king in the French capital, and, while you can buy single-journey tickets, not all stations sell them; topping up a Navigo card is a more foolproof option. We took the bus one day for a little overground scenery en route (get your tickets from a Metro station before boarding). Vélib is your city-wide, bike-rental option, with affordable 24-hour passes for pedal-powered and e-bikes; or lean into the touristy associations of a chauffeured tuk-tuk, hanging around at many of the main sights.

Paris with children is a very different experience from the trad romantic weekend away. Of course our stay made me wistfully eye the couples enjoying leisurely lunchtime glasses of wine at pavement tables, and resignedly forgo more experimental cuisines for child-pleasing Continental fare. But to introduce our kids to such a significant European metropolis and stretch their cultural horizons with a few galleries and monuments was an enjoyable privilege that has us already planning our next trip.

For more inspiration, browse Mr & Mrs Smith’s entire collection of hotels in Paris

Images of Paris by Michaela Watkinson and Hannah Dace

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Stacie Harris

Stacie Harris is a local resident and reporter of the Maple Grove area. Stacie reports on medicine and science for the Maple Grove Report.

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Trump plans his tariff ‘Liberation Day’ with more targeted push

President Donald Trump’s coming wave of tariffs is poised to be more targeted than the barrage he has occasionally threatened, aides and allies say, a potential relief for markets gripped by anxiety about an all-out tariff war.

Trump is preparing a “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on April 2, unveiling so-called reciprocal tariffs he sees as retribution for tariffs and other barriers from other countries, including longtime US allies. While the announcement would remain a very significant expansion of US tariffs, it’s shaping up as more focused than the sprawling, fully global effort Trump has otherwise mused about, officials familiar with the matter say.

Trump will announce widespread reciprocal tariffs on nations or blocs but is set to exclude some, and — as of now — the administration is not planning separate, sectoral-specific tariffs to be unveiled at the same event, as Trump had once teased, officials said.

Still, Trump is looking for immediate impact with his tariffs, planning announced rates that would take effect right away, one of the officials said. And the measures are likely to further strain ties with allied nations and provoke at least some retaliation, threatening a spiraling escalation. Only countries that don’t have tariffs on the US, and with whom the US has a trade surplus, will not be tariffed under the reciprocal plan, an official said.

As with many policy processes under Trump, the situation remains fluid and no decision is final until the president announces it. One aide last week referred repeatedly to internal “negotiations” over how to implement the tariff program — and some of the most regularly hawkish signals come from Trump himself, underscoring his avowed interest in sharply raising import taxes as a revenue stream.

“April 2nd is going to be liberation day for America. We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world, friend and foe,” Trump said in the Oval Office Friday. It would bring in “tens of billions,” he added, while another aide said recently the tariffs could bring in trillions of dollars over a decade.

But the market reaction to initial tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China — as well as certain metals — has hung heavy over a West Wing serving a president who has long used major indexes as a measuring stick of his success.

Trump officials publicly acknowledged in recent days the list of target countries may not be universal, and that other existing tariffs, like on steel, may not necessarily be cumulative, which would substantially lower the tariff hit to those sectors. That includes comments from Trump himself, who has increasingly focused his remarks on the reciprocal measures.

It’s already a retreat from his original plans for a global across-the-board tariff at a flat rate, which later morphed into his “reciprocal” proposal that would incorporate tariffs and non-tariff barriers. It’s not clear which countries Trump will include under his more targeted approach. He has cited the European Union, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada, India and China as trade abusers when discussing the matter, an official said.

While narrower in scope, Trump’s plan is still a much broader push than in his first term and will test the appetite of markets for uncertainty and a raft of import taxes.

“There will be big tariffs that will be going into effect, and the president will be announcing those himself,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.

Markets Overestimating

Kevin Hassett, Trump’s National Economic Council director, said markets are overestimating the scope.

“One of the things we see from markets is they’re expecting they’re going to be these really large tariffs on every single country,” he told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, who held Hassett’s job during Trump’s first term.

“I think markets need to change their expectations, because it’s not everybody that cheats us on trade, it’s just a few countries and those countries are going to be seeing some tariffs.”

Trump has also pledged to pair those with sectoral tariffs on autos, semiconductor chips, pharmaceutical drugs and lumber. The auto tariffs, specifically, he said would come in the same batch. “We’re going to do it on April 2nd, I think,” he said in a February Oval Office event.

But plans for those remain unclear and, as of now, they aren’t set to be launched at the same “liberation day” event, officials said.

An auto tariff is still being considered and Trump has not ruled it out at another time, officials said. But excluding the measure from the April 2 announcement would be welcome news to the auto sector, which faced the prospect of as many as three separate tariff streams straining supply chains.

The “liberation day” event might also include some tariff rollbacks, though that’s uncertain. Trump imposed, then heavily clawed back, tariffs on Canada and Mexico for what the US said was a failure to slow shipments of fentanyl destined for the US. The fate of those remains deeply unclear: a Trump pause on swathes of those tariffs is due to expire, but the tariffs could be lifted entirely and replaced with the reciprocal number, officials said.

‘Dirty 15’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that steel and aluminum tariffs may not necessarily add on to the country-by-country rates. “I will have a better sense as we get closer to April 2nd. So, they could be stacked,” he told Fox Business last week.

In the same interview, he said it’s roughly 15% of countries that are the worst offenders.

“It’s 15% of the countries, but it’s a huge amount of our trading volume,” he said, referring to it as the “dirty 15” and signaling they are the target. “And they have substantial tariffs, and as important as the tariff or some of these non-tariff barriers, where they have domestic content production, where they do testing on our — whether it’s our food, our products, that bear no resemblance to safety or anything that we do to their products,” he said.

Trump aides considered, before abandoning, a three-tiered option for global tariffs, where countries were grouped in based on how severe the administration considered their own barriers, people familiar with the plans said. That option was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.

Trump sees tariffs as a key tool both to steer new investment to the US and to tap new sources of revenue, which he hopes to offset tax cuts Republicans are considering.

“Tariffs will make America more competitive. They will incentivize investment into America,” Stephen Miran, Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers chairman, said in an interview, declining to detail the steps.

The White House has also argued that trillions of dollars in pledged announcements by foreign countries and companies provides evidence Trump’s plans are working. Miran told Fox Business last week that talks are ongoing ahead of April 2nd deadline.

“I do think that it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that we could raise trillions of dollars from tariffs over a 10-year budget window and like I said before, using those revenues to finance lower rates on American workers, on American businesses,” he said.

Still, economists have questioned whether the tariffs would meaningfully impact the deficit, particularly considering the risk of inflation or an economic slowdown.

Companies could also adapt, especially if not all countries are subject to the levies. US customs revenues from China surged after the tariffs were imposed in 2018, according a survey last year by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, but then peaked in 2022 and dropped sharply in 2023.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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