Babymoon in Paris Travel Guide: All About our Paris Babymoon
Arc de Triomphe in Paris
Back before we had Eliot, we lived in Germany for a little under a year working with refugees. After we found out that I was pregnant and decided to head back to Texas, we knew we wanted to take advantage of being in Germany and go somewhere fun for a little babymoon in Paris!
Paris is one of my favorite cities and Jackson had never been, so off to Paris we went!
We took a 4 hour train from Frankfurt to Paris. You should know that our luggage broke a few days before, so everywhere that we are lugging our 50 pound bags, Jackson is dragging the suitcase that has a broken wheel. It was a disaster.
Getting from the train station in Paris to our Airbnb was a different story. We had two 50 pound bags, my camera backpack and a backpacking backpack that weighed 25 pounds. Also, it’s worth noting that we only encountered ONE escalator in the Paris subways, so poor Jackson is carrying these bags up and down SO many flights of stairs and saying all KINDS of stuff under his breath. Meanwhile, I was doing everything I could not to let him see me laughing because I had no desire to encounter the wrath of a sweaty and tired and hungry Jackson, who is saying words I have never heard come out of his mouth.
We finally made it to the Airbnb and it was the cutest little studio apartment. I’m such an Airbnb fan. It’s so much cheaper than hotels and you get a kitchen and more space and we’ve just always had great experiences. The airbnb we stayed in was exactly what we were hoping for! Great location close to the train station, affordable and we got to pretend we were locals for a few days.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris
We got our bags to the Airbnb and then decided to head into the city. We jumped on a subway and got off right in the heart of the city, grabbed a Nutella crepe and hot chocolate and roamed around for the rest of the evening. Paris is great because so many of the “have to see” sights are all so close to each other. We knew that traveling in Europe in February was going to be cold but that first was pretty cold and rainy. The number of hot chocolates that we consumed was ridiculous. I can’t stress this next point enough- if you EVER find yourself in Paris in the winter you absolutely have to go to Angelina’s. It was the most amazing hot chocolate we have ever had and we drank at least 10 cups while there.
That night, we grabbed a crepe for dinner (because Paris), bought some oreos and milk (because pregnant) and headed back to the apartment at 8 pm. Non-pregnant me would have never been down for such an early night (and such an American snack) in a city like Paris, but pregnant me couldn’t think of a better way to spend the evening.
The next day we did a hop-on-hop-off tour bus, which was surprisingly great. I'm not usually a fan of these, I like to see the city the "local" way, but nothing sounded better to pregnant me than seeing sights without having to walk on my achy feet. Because of the rain, there was hardly anyone else that wanted to be on a half-uncovered 2 story bus so we had the entire thing to ourselves. My feet were so happy with me.
We spent the last two days of our babymoon in Paris leisurely seeing the city, taking lots of breaks at cool coffee shops and creperies. We took so many breaks and Jackson was so patient through all of our stops. I had to remind myself often that it was ok that we weren’t going at our typical pace because I was in the process of creating a child.
Luckily, Paris is definitely not lacking in plenty of coffee shops and bakeries to pop into. A couple of our favorites were Cravan, KBCafe Shop, The Hood Coffee Shop!
We also went to Louvre to see Mona, and got to use our German residence permits to get in free and save 12 euro. We were pretty proud of that.
My feet were killing me at this point so we didn’t spend as much time exploring as I would have prefered, but definitely will go back sometime when not carrying a child!
We definitely didn’t go as hard as we would have in the past, but it was perfect babymoon in Paris. We went to bed before 10 every night and woke up without alarms. We ate tons of pastries and drank a lot of hot chocolate. We roamed around smaller, lesser known areas of the city and got addressed in French enough times that we felt pretty good about ourselves and our ability to be mistaken for Europeans. Maybe all that time in Germany paid off.
It was a sweet time for us to explore one last European city before we became a family of 3 (and now 4!). We also made our first purchase for sweet baby Eliot at a cute little baby store and that made things feel so real. Overall, it was the perfect end to a crazy and sweet season and absolutely loved our babymoon in Paris!
