Paris is Cheaper than Visiting the Mouse

Culture, people, places, and environments, global connections. All of those are a lot easier to understand when you have something to compare it to. Also, travel is super fun.

It’s just super fun. The kids really love it. But when we went on our first international trip, just the four of us, in 2022, we found out that there is a huge misconception about the price of such travel. And this was from people who go to visit the mouse like every year.

In fairness, we have not done that trip for a full week. We’ve gone for a day with one of my sons and we did a full week with just the two of us a while ago, but we haven’t done the, you know, the full family trip. So I used a calculator to do a price comparison, and this was assuming that we would go for a week, we’d do a park hopper pass for five days, we’d stay in a mid range resort, we would be mostly eating there, so not cooking, like, back at the hotel and bringing it back.

It does not assume, I don’t think it included, like, genie passes or lightning passes or anything like that. And it assumed that the flight was about 2. 75 from Massachusetts to Florida. No, I know the mouse also lives in California and it can do that as well. So the calculator said that it would be around 8, 500 to 9, 000.

And that is in line with, like, talking to friends about, that’s approximately correct. When we went to Paris, we went Flew out Monday night, returned the following Wednesday, and our total cost was 6, 400. Caveat, We were super lucky, which I will talk more about in a bit,, because we were able to stay with a friend for a good portion of that time.

We had previously had an Airbnb rented that we then canceled after this thing happened,

So, assuming we didn’t cancel that Airbnb, a more realistic cost is like 7, 900. That includes everything from the second we walked out the door of our house to the second we walked back in. So, it does not involve the emergency door dash burgers that we bought when we got home like at six o’clock at night.

But it does involve the gum that we bought at the airport.

Could you spend more in Paris? Oh, yeah, baby, like, I think you can spend as much money as you want in Paris, but we are not influencers dancing on the rooftop of Le Girafe or anything like that. We went with, we went with a four year old and a seven year old and we spent a lot of time at playgrounds and a lot of time eating crepes and gelato.

And we were very, very happy with our itinerary. So let’s break it down. Thank goodness for credit card statements and Google, because we’ve got a pretty accurate breakdown.

The most expensive thing, we’ll go from most expensive to least expensive. The most expensive obviously was the flight.

That was 2,353. I do have it down to the cents, but I don’t know about you, but in audio format, I cannot, I can do dollars. I cannot do cents. So I’ll put it on the website with the actual amount, but it was, 2,353 for the flight for all four of us. One thing that you might not know about flights is that most European airlines offer a discount for kids, usually under 11.

So I think it was like a 10 percent discount for their seats. When we flew, we flew Iceland Air. We had a layover in Keflavik in Iceland, and it was about an hour and a half. We liked that airport so much that the next year we had purposely picked Iceland Air and purposely picked a longer layover in Iceland.

The next most expensive category would have been the Airbnb category, if you include both air and B& B. So what happened was, I have a friend who lives in Paris, and that was one of the reasons why we chose Paris as where to go. And we had reserved a, an Airbnb in Paris. in Paris. We had that reserved and then we were going to go to Obernai, which is out near Strasbourg for a couple of days, over the weekend.

And, , about a month before her neighbor, she was talking to her neighbor and her neighbor offered her apartment. So my friend went and stayed in the neighbor’s apartment and then she was able to let us use her apartment, which was great because obviously we could see her a lot more being in the same building.

So that was there. But this Airbnb cost includes Both Airbnbs, including the one that we ended up cancelling. And so that was 19. 59 for that. It was 4. 58 for the one in Obernai. And that one we had reserved from Sunday to Wednesday. Do that math. That’s like, 89 a night or something like that. It was super cheap and it was gorgeous and it was so cute.

We picked this place specifically because it looked like you just opened the doors to Beauty and the Beast. It was so cute. The next most expensive category was Food. That was 13. 42. So that includes everything from like, stopping for gelato, to stopping for crepes, to going out to restaurants.

We also love going to the grocery store. So like, if you were going to visit the Maus, going to the grocery store is not that exciting because you have almost exactly the same grocery store at home. But, going to the grocery store is like an activity when you’re in France. So that was very fun, and we went to a couple of different grocery stores.

Heh. near the apartment in Paris, to pick out different flavored fig flavored yogurt. Never seen it before. It was so great. , so it includes like the grocery store. It includes going out to dinner. , now like here’s going out to breakfast was like 56 at like kind of a bougie place where I know we got a lot of drinks because like orange juice and coffee and hot chocolate and another orange juice and then a wasp flew into my orange juice.

And so then we got another orange juice. Like there was just, you know, that was, we were not, we were not budget conscious when we were going out to dinner. Obviously, we did not take them to any like Michelin restaurants because we had a four year old with us. But we went to some very nice places and had some very nice food.

So that was 13. 42 for the food. Next most expensive was the transportation. So that included the high speed rail, the TGV from Paris to Strasbourg. It includes all of our subway tickets. It included the shuttle or the private limo, I guess it’s technically a limousine, that took us from the house to the airport here at home.

I remember it was like a little bit less expensive than just parking, at the airport and obviously a lot easier. It also includes the Uber. The next most expensive category is actually, the next most expensive category is miscellaneous. That was 537. So miscellaneous was all of the cash that we took out.

I think we paid for a couple of taxis in cash. I can’t really remember what else, probably like tips, although tips aren’t really a big thing.

Maybe some souvenirs. It also includes 123 at the Paris airport on the day we left that I just simply cannot remember what that was. I have no idea. The next most expensive category was Souvenirs. We spent, that includes my 135 haul from one of the Paris pharmacies with all, Oh, I had so much fun. , it was, there’s, uh, these, all the French pharmacy stuff.

So, like, , the A313 retinol is only like 7 euro there, so I got like two of those, or three of those because I gave them as gifts. And then, the Biore, Shower oil was like six euro for the super giant grande one. And that’s like 21 here or something. I don’t know. I filled a whole basket. I had a great time.

That was like 135. so that was all of the souvenirs was 290 together. Like toys that the kids got, ornaments. Other stuff. Then after that, fees were 250. that includes, we ended up making a change. So we were supposed to come back around six o’clock on Tuesday from Obernai back to Paris, and we decided that we actually wanted to come back to Paris a little bit earlier.

So we switched that train from the six o’clock train to the 10:00 AM train and that was about a $240 fee to change that. Not necessary, but just a switch that we made. The next category was tickets. So tickets was 149. That was for all four of us. And that was for, we did Versailles. Not the tour of the indoors of Versailles, just the, just the gardens.

The, the tour was pretty long. The line was very long and we were worried about attention span with a four year old and a seven year old. So we did the gardens, which was still very cool. And you can do the outside, of the actual, Chateau. It also includes the Orsay Museum. We did not go to the Louvre.

Again, lines were one concern. Air conditioning in that building was another concern. And just the total size of it was, was the third concern with, two kids.

we also went on a boat tour of Paris. So down this end, we took a boat tour of the down there. It was actually a great way to start off the, it was one of the first days we were there. You know, you saw Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower and the youngest one slept the entire, the entire time. I think it was like a kid’s version.

It was like a pirate version or something. So they got like a little, , box, like a goodie bag kind of box there that had like drinks and candy and chips and all kinds of stuff that came with that too. And there was somebody doing the tour in, I’m pretty sure it was both French and English.

So that was the third thing. And then the fourth one was we did a train tour in Obernai. It’s just one of those little like outdoor train things. It’s like a train car thing. So it goes on the road and it does all of Obernai. And it had the headphones that you could plug in and the You could do the tour in whatever language you want.

The kids did the tour in Chinese. They did not understand any of it, but they did it. And then the last category was the phone. , it’s 10 a day to just use your same phone with the same phone number, abroad. So, that was worth it. We just did one of the two phones, and then I had Google Maps and all of that kind of stuff.

For the whole trip. So that was 9 total days of, of the phone times 10 is 90 there. Alright, so what do you get for that? Like, for 7, 900 we’re calling it What do you get for that? And I know that it’s not apples to apples comparison. The time of year is different. Like what’s peak for going to France is not the same as what’s peak for going school vacation week.

Going to, um, France for 8 days is kind of the minimum, whereas like going for 7 days to a theme park, that’s, you’re probably going to reach your maximum, like, you can’t really do 22, 000, you can’t really do 22, 000 steps a day for more than a week down there. So what do you get from there? Also, you might be thinking, This was 2022 and now we’re planning for 2025. That’s three years difference. Prices have gone up. So I did look up what I was able to easily kind of compare. So the flight is one of the things. Now the calendar is different because the, you know, we start school a little bit earlier and so you don’t have that last week Monday to Wednesday quite as well.

But I picked out if you did, if you came back the Wednesday before school started. And you left, you know, the Monday before that. We paid 23. 53. And for almost the same flight, it’s 24. 62. I did pick the flight that has a 14 hour layover on the way back in Iceland. We loved our layover so much in Iceland that I actually think that’s an upgrade.

But, about 100 more over four people. That’s not a lot. Terrible. And then the Airbnb that was in Alsace, almost exactly the same price. She’s not renting out yet in August. She doesn’t have that up. But if you look at prices in January, it’s almost exactly the same. And the one in Paris is more expensive.

That one would have been around 1, 500. It’s now more like 2, 000 for the same dates. But, She also has about 200 more reviews than like the six she had when I was looking at it three years ago. So you probably could find another one that was not quite as expensive. So that’s what I have in terms of what I can compare price to price.

It might be a little bit more expensive, but we’re not talking like even 10 percent more.

Now, what do you get for that? What did we do? I know I said that we didn’t go To every museum, but here’s basically what we did. So we got there on Tuesday afternoon and we went to the Eiffel, we, we got there on Tuesday afternoon, dropped our bags, went to the Eiffel tower, got like crepes and gelato and snacks and did a carousel.

And then we came back and had takeout at the apartment. The second day was Wednesday. We started off at the Luxembourg gardens and did the playground, got more gelato. And then. Did a boat tour, walked up to the boat tour, and then from the boat tour, walked back to Tulare’s garden. So we hit kind of a lot.

And then on Thursday, we started off at the Arc de Triomphe and went to a park near there, Parc Monceau, looks like. And then we did dinner in Saint Germain and then, , watched the Eiffel Tower at night when it does its little sparkle thing from the, Alexander Bridge. On Friday, we went out a little further.

We took the subway out to, Sacre Coeur, and then did Montmartre, the artist market after that, and then we walked back through, , like past the Moulin Rouge, and then we did the Orsay Museum just as it was closing, and then we got dinner with our friend back closer to the apartment. On Saturday, we went out to Versailles.

And I will say that pricing was probably a little bit more expensive because the subway station right at Versailles was closed, so I think we had some weird, like, Uber transportation, whatever there. Sunday, we took the high speed train, the TGV, out to Alsace, and we just kind of walked around and had dinner, went to a couple shops.

On Monday, we took that little tour train thing. And We had a failed attempt at family photos that we just did ourselves and we went to McDonald’s. I love going to McDonald’s. I feel like it’s a, it’s a stop. You, everybody should do it. McDonald’s is totally different in a different place. Anyway, that was our McDonald’s day.

And then on Tuesday, because we train, because we changed the train, we came back, did, went back to the Luxembourg gardens and did the toy boats that you can kind of push around there. And then we walked up. to the pharmacy near Saint Germain and got all those fancy beauty products and then went to the very touristy Deux Magots and had drinks and snacks or whatever there and then on Wednesday we went home.

So that’s, you know, kind of what you get for it. We had a great time. There was a lot of playgrounds sprinkled in there that weren’t even included.

And, of course, like, there’s other, aside from just the educational reasons, and then the financial reasons, it’s also a different pace, which, personally, I like. Now, that is a personal decision, and you can obviously completely choose, but we played this all by ear. There was no, like, we had to be at a certain place at a certain time.

At a time that we picked six months ago or a year ago, , all of our reservations we made maybe that day, maybe the day before. So, I like the pace and the flexibility, and especially with two young kids, if somebody needs a nap, you just schedule in the nap and nobody’s missing anything. So, we really liked it.

So if finances are the thing that is holding you back from doing that adventurous, ambitious vacation, don’t let it be. And if you are dreaming about that ambitious, adventurous vacation in 2025 or 2026, and you want to get started planning it,

I will be hosting a workshop in January about planning these types of vacations. We will be covering four main topics, packing, of course, , planning, of course, mindset so that you don’t lose your mind. Stuff while you’re there and how to talk to kids and how to talk to kids and prepare kids for trips in places that are unfamiliar.

So those are the four topics that we’ll be covering. And if you’re on the early bird list, you will get to vote about whether we do this as a multi day workshop or just do everything all in one day and then Q&A the next day. So hop on the wait list that is raising dash citizens. com slash wait list, pop your email in there, and I will let you know the second registration is available.