Paris with 17 and 18 year olds

Aside from getting the RS Paris guidebook, have a look at this section of the Explore Europe section of this site. In particular look at the At A Glance page for ideas. See what appeals to you and your teens.

https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/france/paris

And FYI, it's spelled Montmartre.

Well there are lots of free things to do - not sure if your dates , but an early evening stroll along the seine where they set up Paris plage ( fake beach ) is fun - many locals
Take picnics there and enjoy the street performers !

I just got back from Paris in June and am helping my friend plan to take her two 20 year old daughters to Paris. Without knowing what interests you and your teens have, here are a few things that I think that they might like that are outside some of big tourist sites. RS guidebook can help you with some recommended walks and has info on all the major sites.

• Food tour of the Marais with Eating Europe. We just took the tour this June and it provided a great overview of the Marais along with excellent food. Our tour guide, Betsy, was a stylist to some of the fashion houses in Paris before she switched careers, so we got some great recommendations on Vintage fashion as well. Even if you don’t have her as your guide, the Marais is a great place for vintage if that is something that your teens are interested in.
• Seine River Cruise: there are many options, all very similar. We took the Vedettes du Pont Neuf because it was closer to our hotel. It has a live guide as well. Go towards sunset when you can see the Eiffel Tower sparkle.
• Since you are staying in Montmartre, rather than going out to dinner, you may want to have a picnic on the steps of Montmartre at night. It is still busy, but not as hot and it was magical. We had wine, cheese, baguette, and wine on the steps and view in the evening is spectacular. Also, if you want something other than French food, we had the best Pizza at Bobby’s in Montmartre, a Neopolitian-style pizza that was amazing.

If you provide more on interests, happy to provide more recommendations.

I am looking for suggestions on how to spend the remainder of our stay - while on a budget .Any itinerary suggestions are welcome.

Your greatest costs for Paris are the flight and the hotel. After that, sticking to a reasonable budget is fairly simple, but really depends on your and your children's preferences.

My wife and I are active travelers, so we spend a LOT of time walking in places like Paris. So much can be seen and experienced by giving you and your kids a nice bit of time to walk from Site A to Site B, and while so many of the great things in Paris are museums (Orsay, Louvre, Rodin, etc.), so much is also free or inexpensive - the parks, MANY restaurants/bakeries/cafes (surprisingly inexpensive), the river walk & beach, people watching, walking tours, or even the shopping (window shopping or wandering a massive department store).

What are your and your kids' interests? If you all are fit and ready to wander, that can easily fill your days with inexpensive adventures interspersed with tasty food or interesting museums. A little tougher to do this if there is a sudden heat spike while you're there, but my wife and I were there for her birthday in late July a couple years ago, and we had great weather, relaxed meandering, and just a general wonderful time - with, to me, a relatively low cost despite doing a ton of things.

Thank you . My kids are active and we do love walking except ofcourse if it gets " too hot " . Interests include visiting the major attractions without spending too much time in museums ....still debating on whether to take them to the Louvre and Versailles . We love food but are budget conscious

Most of the municipal museum network is free (except temporary exhibits), and it includes some excellent museums. Places like the Louvre and Versailles are justly famous and popular, but they also require a lot of time and come with costs. So if you aren’t big museum people, sampling some of the smaller ones might be a good option. The only one I’ve been to recently is the Carnavalet city history museum — spectacular. When we return next year I plan to check out several more, starting with the Cluny.

https://www.parismusees.paris.fr/en/les-musees-de-la-ville-de-paris

I would never do a food tour with kids -- they are expensive and it is so easy to walk around and visit bakeries and choose things to try and visit cheese shops and pick out a few things -- or markets etc. Some cheese shops and markets have prepared small cheese platters with 5 or 6 small cheese offerings which can be fun to try if you don't know what to pick. Get a baguette for 1.20 and a cheese tray or a couple of interesting looking cheeses and there is lunch for almost nothing. Get pastries for dessert.

With kids this age i would put Eternelle Notre Dame VR experience on the list -- you walk around Paris in the 13th century as Notre Dame is being built; it is quite wonderful. It is located underground in front of Notre Dame -- reserve of course ahead and there are instructions for finding the site.

Get Eiffel Tower tickets 7 days out at 1 pm Paris time if the kids want to go to the top which most do.

If you're not sold on Versailles, I would skip it since your stay in Paris is short.

What are the kids interested in? They are old enough that you could split up if 1 person wants to see the Louvre or Invalides while the others do something different.

Paris Walks has daily 2 hour walking tours in different areas and with different themes. Excellent guides and very informative.

If you're planning to go inside Notre Dame and are unable to book ahead, try to get in the unreserved line early in the morning for the shortest wait times with least amount of crowds inside.

Book an evening boat tour on the Seine to see Paris lit up at night and the Eiffel Tower sparkling. I like the smaller Vedettes du Pont Neuf with live commentary. Arrive early to get seats on the upper deck.

brygill,
They would probably enjoy seeing Notre Dame, and doing the Notre Dame Eternelle virtual experience. Seeing the cathedral is free. This day could also include a stroll along the left bank of the Seine across from Notre Dame and perusing the bouquinistes for inexpensive souvenirs, a classic free Parisian experience. Finish up this day with a boat ride on the Seine with Vedettes de Pont Neuf when the Eiffel Tower lights up for the evening. The ride is narrated, inexpensive, about an hour, gives an overview of parts of Paris and is very relaxing after a day spent walking around. Get in line early enough to get a seat on top for better views. Depending on your reservation times for Notre Dame and the Eternelle experience, you could see Ste. Chappelle beforehand. Trust me, the kids will be impressed, no matter their age. Eternelle and Ste. Chappelle have fees but are worth the cost.

The surely will want to see the Eiffel Tower. I'm not a fan of the time and cost it takes to ascend to the top and the wait going from the second level to the top one on the two elevators. The view of it from almost anywhere around it is impressive. You could get some food for a picnic on the Champs de Mar below the tower.

I have to say that I always go to the Rodin Museum to admire the sculptures in the garden, and I like the army museum and seeing Napoleon's tomb, but you would have to decide if their fees are worth it to you. They are near enough to the Eiffel Tower to make a nice circuit. (ET, then Army Museum/Napoleon's tomb, then Rodin Museum and garden, then another walk to the beautiful Pont Alexandre III, one of the loveliest bridges in Europe (free to look at, walk across, or descend to the Seine river level walk). Having taken our kids to Paris at ages 8 and 10, and 18 and 20, I can state that they were more fascinated by the art and architecture than I expected. Likewise our grandkids who we brought to the Dordogne region at ages 9 and 12.

Montmartre...be sure to visit Sacre Coeur. The mosaics inside are wonderful. The cemetery on the hill is supposed to be worth a visit too, but I haven't been myself. You can wander in the Tuileries, between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde. You can stand at the Arc de Triomphe and look down the Champs Elysees toward the Place de la Concorde. You can go to Galeries Lafayette department store(on Blvd. Haussman) and look up at this wonderful ceiling, than go to its rooftop for a view of the Eiffel Tower in one direction and Sacre Coeur in the other. All free things (I'm not sure about the cemetery...sorry). Any of the churches in Paris are free and many are centuries old and beautiful. St Denis holds the tombs of many French kings and queens. You can spend copious amounts of time at a cafe watching Paris walk by for the cost of a coffee or aperitif. Skme of the least exoensive eateries are ethnic...Asian, Niorth African, Italian, among others. Having a bigger meal at lunch may be cheaper too. Search formore specific ideas hereon the forum. Lots of contributors have tons of ideas and suggestions!

With so little time until your trip you may be out of luck getting some reservations for sights, but maybe not! Bonne chance!

17 & 18 years old? Ask them what they want to do and let them go do it. When I was 17 and in Paris I wanted to visit museums my parents weren’t interested in. Subway map in hand ….off I went. A 1664 beer at a sidewalk cafe and I was on top of the world.

Totally agree with the above. 17-18 years of age are adults, and need to learn to explore on their own. I wandered all over Europe at that age. Give them 50 euro and tell them to be back in the hotel by midnight. Then find out what they discovered at breakfast.

I agree that a boat trip on the Seine is well worth it, and relatively inexpensive. If they really like being on the water, you could do a trip on the Canal Saint Martin. Versailles is beautiful, but when packed with tourists during hot weather it is more like a torture chamber. The gardens at Versailles are much less crowded, but you do not have to go out there to get good gardens. There are many within Paris itself. As for museums, I would suggest that you try to tailor this to your kids' particular interests. There are so many to choose from in Paris that you should in your limited period here, select only those that fit those interests. Food - a reasonable meal can be had at one of the many creperies. They are especially numerous near Montparnasse train station. If your kids like to hike, maybe find a book (or app) that has a self guided tour through an area that sounds interesting. There are many architectural wonders to see from the street.

My kids are active and we do love walking except of course if it gets " too hot " . Interests include visiting the major attractions without spending too much time in museums.

Weather will be very specific to your time there and nearly impossible to predict even a week ahead. If it is unbearably hot, you will have to pivot to seeking shade (and AC) where able, and it will definitely make EARLY morning and LATE afternoon/evening the best time to be out and about wandering. Paris has many lovely parks and most have shaded places for walking, sitting, or picnicking. The Eiffel tower's park (Champ de Mars) has been our landing spot after dropping our bags at the hotel and then finding a nice spot to relax while getting some sunshine to reset our jet lag - filled with joggers, dog walkers, and folks strolling. But wandering back there towards the sunset - say 7-8pm, and we found the park packed with families and groups relaxing on the grass. Add in the other well-known and less well-known parks like Luxembourg, Palais Royal, Monceau, Tuileries, the walks on the Seine, or even Pere-Lachaise cemetery and there many places to just take a break.

Museum-wise, obviously the top dog is the Louvre and to many simply the Mona Lisa. I shudder to think how that is at the peak of the peak season, so I won't suggest it unless it is your top priority. On the other hand, the relatively smaller d'Orsay or Rodin or Pompidou (being renovated?) or l'Orangerie all offer museums of great quality with lesser crowds (usually).

And staying in Montmartre, you will have a chance for a local walking tour of that famous area and the nearby Sacre Coeur is a sight to behold, plus Pigalle, the Moulin Rouge, and other interesting spots like the Rue des Martyrs make that area fun for exploring.

Weather permitting (and a connected cell phone), it is quite easy to Google map your walking path between meals, museums, the hotel, and other places. In Paris (or most major cities we visit), the true "fun" we have is almost always tied to our walks throughout the day. Many times we've spotted a future place to eat because we walked past it on the way somewhere, and the nearby neighborhood becomes more and more familiar with every journey out and back.

Logistically, it does help me to have a bunch of "saved" spots in my Google maps. At a high level, I can see the various spots - whether museums, restaurants, or shops - that I have saved in my "Paris" list and it reminds me where they are and that they're on my to-do or consider list. For example, walking from Montmartre to the heart of Paris near the Louvre, we'd wander past the Galeries Lafayette Le Gourmet and the Musee du Parfum which might be interesting to explore. Again, easy to see at the Google map level, but easy to miss if just picking a direct path between points or using the Metro.

But four nights in Paris goes FAST, so look at it as a chance to give your children a great TASTE of Paris, but be aware you can (and will) return with options to further explore.