Munich and Paris with Kids

I wanted to write this three months ago when it was all fresh. But you know how it is after a trip: it's unpack now or never, everyone's drop-dead tired and jet-lagged, and - since it was summer - time to set a new routine in motion. Summer was eventful for us, with a couple of important guests, but I wanted to write in chronological order presuming that my memory also fades in chronological order. 

Munich

I was last in Munich fifteen years ago during study abroad in college. It was January, and I was flying in from relatively balmy Barcelona and underdressed for winter in Germany. My roommate and I stayed with her Spanish cousin, who lived and worked in the city for one of the German auto manufacturers. We hit all the major tourists sites in less than three days. 

That was a different time and place. This summer, while we flew into Munich, we spent most of our time in a town west of the city. The day of our arrival the fire brigade was holding their annual safety demonstration, which sounds dry but was something like a festival. The kids got to climb onto fire trucks and operate hoses. M was most interested in endlessly throwing small sticks into a brook. There was of course lots of Leberkässemmel, the traditional Bavarian sandwich made with a ground meat loaf (leberkäse) on a roll (semmel). 

The beer garden was the highlight of the town. It's one of the oldest in Germany, and besides the nice relaxed ambience you might expect, the food was good - definitely not just sausages and pretzels. The kids playground was the best thing. There were a lot of families with kids, who flitted between the playground and their parents for a bite here and there. A warm summer's evening spent outdoors drinking and eating with friends while the kids play - there is no better way to spend summer. 

Most of our time in Germany was spent outdoors. Summer weather can be fickle in Middle Europe, but we were lucky with only one day of rain. We picked strawberries (last of the season!), went to the zoo, walked in the forest, visited the neighbor's new German Shepard puppy, went to a neighborhood barbecue, and hiked (more like "walked," as we took a lift more than halfway up) in the Alps. It was all truly as wonderful as I had hoped it would be. 

Paris

Paris was a different story. I knew Paris would be a challenge for a three-year old. While M has not been in diapers for over year, the time you have to find a toilet once she realizes she has to go might be 15 minutes...or it might be 5 minutes. And Paris is not the best city for public toilets. M is also at an age where she can go around without a stroller in daily life, but she cannot walk an entire day exploring a city. Husband did not want to travel with a stroller; I could not envision surviving a day without one. I mean, it's Paris. If nothing else, you go there to eat pastries and walk. We ended up borrowing and bringing my friend's supremely compact stroller. Turns out, even the six-year old could use it at times. The stroller was rarely left vacant. 

I have to digress here to comment on how different stroller culture is in the U.S. and Japan. I've written about this in my post about childhood in Japan. Here you almost never see a toddler over the age of two in a stroller. If they can walk, they will walk. My Japanese friend once joked that American kids go from riding in a stroller straight to driving a car. I guess I fall somewhere in between while the husband falls squarely in the Japanese way of thinking, thus our contrasting opinions about bringing a stroller to Paris. But even he would admit in hindsight that the stroller was well-appreciated by both the kids an adults. 

I will only say that the first half day was a struggle and that it was uphill from there. It just took some time to get used to navigating Paris with kids. We had lots of picnics, went to a lot of parks, took the metro everywhere. We couldn't afford to chase widely acclaimed restaurants all over the city, so we ate at places we knew and loved and places close to us. If there ever was a city where you can do this and still be dazzled, it would be Paris. We didn't go to all that many places, but spent a lot of time in each place we visited.

Off to breakfast in the city of croissants light

The place that topped them all was the Jardin d'Acclimatation. It is one of the oldest amusement parks in France. It was established by Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie and has a storied past, but was recently renovated. The rides were perfect for my kids. There are also playgrounds and wide open spaces with peacocks inexplicably roaming around. The lines were at most five minutes long. I do wish that we had bought more food at the neighborhood Monoprix to have sustained us a little longer. There were not many food stands and restaurants, and kids are ravenous when they play! 

My precocious E wanted to see a performance at the Paris Opera, but we weren't able to make that work. Instead we headed to the Centre Pompidou, where we visited the works of some artists that E had been studying at school (the modern curriculum is so multidimensional!). We also took a boat tour of the Seine, opting for that instead of squeezing in all the iconic sites. 

In the end, I didn't regret taking the kids to Paris. 3-4 rural days for every urban day was just about the perfect combination of city stimulation (with lots of planning) and easy country living (little to no planning). And there is no replacing the Paris bistro experience! Even my toddler, who leans more towards Japanese flavors than any of us, proclaimed the meal delicious. 

Goodbye, Paris. Goodbye, Munich. See you in a few years when we are stroller-free.