PARIS for the Petite

Our twin daughters went to Paris with two promises: They would ride all the carousels we could find, and they would sail boats in the park. A dozen carousel rides into our two-week visit, we headed to the Luxembourg Gardens, the park Napoleon dedicated to children. On one of the few sunny days the city offered this spring, young Parisians were already piloting their craft around the grand basin. Teresa sprinted ahead to the pond and then stopped, stunned.

“Where’s the remote control?” she asked, surprised by the worn bamboo sticks the children were using to launch their boats. “Why are they using sticks?”

“Because they always use sticks,” I replied. It was the best answer I could muster at the time, but in the end it summed up why we were there in the first place. She shrugged but seemed uncertain as to whether this was going to be all that interesting after all.

I paid the equivalent of $2.50 for a one-hour rental, and she took possession of her worn, three-foot-long pole. The young woman handling the concession dropped the boat into the basin, and Teresa gave it a shove. A breeze took it under the cascading fountain, past the family of ducks circling the pond, and the timelessness of the setting quickly worked its magic.

The pleasures of being a child in Paris can be very simple ones. At first, Paris may seem a very adult locale, a most sophisticated and romantic world capital. But its allure works at all ages. That’s why it was so surprising to me that whenever I told anyone of our vacation destination, the invariable response was, “Are you taking the girls too?”

Mais oui.

My husband, Peter, and I had been longing to return to the city, to give Teresa and Claire the gift of Paris at a time when they’re just old enough to enjoy the Musee d’Orsay and still young enough to grab the reins of a wooden horse and pretend to ride it. We took the chance at 8 1/2.

The first day we headed to the Eiffel Tower, which, if at all possible, is even more popular since its millennium fireworks display captured the world’s imagination. It was nearly a two-hour wait to get a ride up to either level, and the girls were just as happy to run around underneath it and look up at the sky framed by the latticework.

But as we started to walk to the Metro (subway), the unmistakable sound of a carousel music box lured us across the street. It was one of the prettiest we would see, a white-and-gold double decker. One spin wasn’t enough.

There are carousels everywhere in the city, especially near many of the major tourist attractions, with rides costing about $1. The city’s best-known landmarks would always have an interesting angle for the kids to appreciate. And then there were the spontaneous street scenes as well.

After the Eiffel Tower we headed off to the Arc de Triomphe, where the girls were impressed that you had to go underground and through a tunnel to cross the street. We skipped the monument’s significance to French military history, instead using its 360-degree view to map out visually all the places we would see. Of course, we had to count to make sure there really were 12 avenues connecting from L’Etoile, the starburst pattern of radiating streets that you can see from the arch’s top.

Next: Notre Dame. And, thanks to Disney and an animated hunchback, very familiar even to those who haven’t yet mastered Victor Hugo. While stained glass isn’t too compelling at the twins’ age, a trip up the steep steps of the south tower to see the bell that made Quasimodo famous was a thrill.

On another day, crossing from the Tuileries to the Louvre Museum, I was so intent on not getting us hit by a tour bus that I strode right by a gold Egyptian statue amid the shrubbery. But Claire tugged on my arms and whispered, “I saw it move. It’s real.”

The incredibly trained mime in gold body paint and Lycra would bow only when a coin was dropped in the small can in front of her pedestal. Stunned both by the discovery and by the skill of the mime, we parted with several francs and almost all the pictures in Claire’s disposable camera before we got into the world’s largest museum.

After much discussion on whether to attempt the Louvre at all, we had settled on a 90-minute time limit and a route that would take us to the “Mona Lisa,”” Venus de Milo,” “Winged Victory” and “The Raft of the Medusa.” We talked about why Leonardo da Vinci’s best-known work was behind glass and where the missing arms of Venus might be. But the hit of the day clearly was the mime mummy at the entrance.

Paris is full of museums that appeal to kids, such as the Science and Industries, on the city’s outskirts at La Villette Park, with its enormous steel globe hovering over a sheet of water; the Museum of the Middle Ages, with its costumes; one dedicated solely to magic (the Musee de la Curiosite et Academie de Magie, in the Marais district); and another devoted to musical instruments (the Musee de la Musique, also in La Villette). But we got to only one specialized place, a small boutique full of dolls called the Musee de la Poupee. Filled with 300 antique dolls in period dress, the simple and charming spot traces the history of dolls and how they were constructed.

It’s tucked away in the 3rd arrondissement, near the Pompidou art museum, and we spent almost an hour trying to find the alleyway that leads to it. As we turned the corner, a little gray tabby cat caught the girls’ attention. We followed the cat to the museum, its home, and went inside.

Wait until evening to take a riverboat ride on the Seine: The beautifully restored bridges are illuminated, and it’s also a nice rest for tired little legs. The commentary may be irrelevant--the girls don’t know who Voltaire was, let alone care where he lived--but they were mesmerized as the boat’s powerful lights spotlighted the city from unusual angles.

While carousels are the sentimental favorite, Paris has its Ferris wheels as well, especially this year. Le Grande Roue de Paris is a giant one erected in the Place de la Concorde as part of the year 2000 celebration. A look to one side is a sweep up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe; the view from the other side is across the Tuileries, the Louvre and the Rue Royale. The kids were even more impressed that the wheel stands in almost the same spot where the French Revolution’s guillotine got Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The Ferris wheel, like the boat ride, is best appreciated at night. For the rest of this year there is a 10-minute light show at the top of each hour that attempts to re-create the millennium fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. It’s the ultimate sparkler: a traffic-stopping dazzler from any vantage point, but especially memorable if you see it while suspended high above the city or looking up from one of the riverboats, called ba^teaux mouches, that try to pass the base of the tower at some point during the display. (A tip: The smaller boats that don’t serve dinner and entertainment are best suited for kids. They’re cheaper, they move faster in the water and they have upstairs, open-air decks; we boarded one at the Pont Neuf bridge on the Ile de la Cite.)

The newest way to see the city and the rest of the country is actually to leave it for a newly created suburb near Versailles. France Miniature is so new and so targeted to the French that it hardly makes any guidebooks. Spurred by a nationalistic concern that EuroDisney would make Main Street USA more familiar to France’s children than its own architectural treasures, some of the country’s best architects painstakingly built 139 reduced-scale models of them. The 2-year-old outdoor park is laid out by region: the great abbeys in the Alps, the walled city of Carcassonne, the Loire chateaux and a replica of Mont St.-Michel complete with the tidal water that surrounds it. The replica of the Stade de France, the nation’s soccer arena, contains 50,000 miniature spectators, all individually painted.

Even though the girls had already seen all the major Paris monuments, they skipped around the little Eiffel Tower, sat next to Sacre Coeur and pointed out the head-chopping spot in Place de la Concorde. The park also has a picnic area, a playground, remote-controlled motorboats and fireworks. During the summer, when most children would be seeing Paris, there are planned activities and tours designed especially for families or children alone.

Weeks before our vacation began, we carefully planned our days and scoured guidebooks and Web sites for children’s activities. Claire and Teresa were tentatively scheduled to take a morning cooking lesson for girls ages 8 to 12 at Le Cordon Bleu, but we were bounced when the class was moved to a smaller room. On the Internet we found E-France Travel (https://www.e-francetravel.com), a New Jersey travel agency that offers customized, English-speaking tours for children, ranging from a walking tour with a local artist to sketch the monuments, to a medieval one that includes calligraphy lessons and dressing in period costumes. They even have a three-hour session in a grand old Parisian salon where children are taught how to set a formal table, brush up on their table manners and prepare a dessert.

Yet no matter how many activities you schedule, in travel it is always the unexpected that leaves the most lasting impression. When Claire was asked to name her favorite things to do in Paris, she listed carousels, the boat ride and the secret passageways. Secret passageways?

“When we would go through those big doorways to see what was inside,” she said, recalling how we would often step off the street to find beautiful courtyards and hidden gardens.

On our last day, as we crossed the bridge from the Ile St. Louis to the Left Bank, we got caught in a sudden downpour. With others we ran to the nearest shelter, the canopy of a restaurant not yet open for dinner. While we unsuccessfully tried to stay dry, a woman beckoned the girls inside and showed them to a seat by the window. We had guessed right: To be in a child in Paris is something special.

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GUIDEBOOK

Paris Hotels and Amusements for the Younger Set

Getting there: American, United, Air France and AOM French Airlines have nonstop service from LAX to Paris, and Continental, Delta, Northwest and TWA offer connecting flights. Restricted, round-trip coach fares begin at $800 on AOM, $1,052 on the others.

Where to stay: We divided our stay between hotels on the Right and Left banks of the Seine. On the Right Bank, the Inter-Continental, adjacent to the Rue de Rivoli, makes the Tuileries your private park. It’s primarily a business hotel, but we took advantage of its discounted weekend rates. Booking online, in April we got a junior suite for $330; a sitting room with a sleeper sofa and its own bathroom and TV adjoined the bedroom. 3 Rue Castiglione, tel. (800) 327-200 or 011-33-1-4477-1111, fax 011-33-1-4477-1460, Internet https://www.interconti.com; doubles start at about $380.

For our hipper Left Bank experience, we chose the elegant Relais Christine in the 6th arrondissement, a short walk to the cafes of Boulevard St. Germain. The breakfast room is in the remains of a 12th century abbey. The surrounding neighborhood included candy shops, a flower mart and the crooked streets of an antique district. The 35-room inn offered a roomy duplex, on three levels, for $520. It had plenty of nooks and crannies for the girls to explore, though we had to navigate 38 steps at night to get to the toilet. 3 Rue Christine, tel. 01-33-1-4051-6080, fax 011-33-1-4051-6081, Internet https://www.relais-christine.com; double rooms start at about $250.

Where to take the kids: Musee de la Poupee, 22 Rue Beaubourg, 3rd arrondissement, local tel. 01-4272-7311, is located off the impossible-to-find Impasse Berthaud, no bigger than an alley. It is around the corner from the Rambuteau Metro station that services the Pompidou Center art museum. Open daily except Mondays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Thursdays also 8 to 10:30 p.m.

Museum of Science and Industries, 30 Ave. Corentin-Cariou, 19th arrondissement, is in La Villette Park, on the outskirts of Paris. Besides La Geode, the park’s geodesic dome landmark, there is a hands-on museum for 3- to 12-year-olds. Take the Metro to Porte de la Villette; open daily except Mondays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. An events schedule is published each Wednesday. Admission about $6.50, ages 7 and younger free.

Museum of the Middle Ages, 6 Place Paul-Painleve, is near Luxembourg Gardens. Outdoors are ruins of Roman baths and an excavation site. Inside are tapestries (including the renowned Unicorn Tapestries), furniture and manuscripts of the 12th and 13th centuries, but children mostly like the weapons and armor. Take the Metro to St. Michel, La Sorbonne or Odeon; open daily except Tuesdays from 9:15 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. Adults about $4, 18 to 25 years about $2.50, free 17 and under.

France Miniature, in the town of Elancourt, is a short ride from Versailles. Open until Nov. 12; about $10; children 4 to 16, $6.50. Take the suburban rail train from La Defense or Montparnasse to La Verriere; bus 411 stops at the park. The SNCF rail service sells a ticket that includes transportation and admission; Internet https://www.franceminiature.com.

For more information: French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212; tel. (310) 271-6665 or (410) 286-8310 (France-on-Call hotline), fax (310) 276-2835, Internet https://www.franceguide.com.