Trip Report – 9 Days In Europe With a Family Of 4

My wife and I took our 2 youngest kids on a trip to London and Paris a few months ago. I have been slowly writing about the trip over the last few weeks, and I’ve finally come to the end of the posts that I am planning on writing about the trip. So before I turn the corner on this trip and move to the next one, I wanted to give one last recap post that talks about the trip as a whole. I’ve written 28 articles about the trip (which seems like an insane number), and this article will walk through the trip with links out to each article. You can also see a more traditional table of contents at the bottom of the post.

Trip Planning

My wife and I try to regularly take one-on-one trips with each of our kids each year as a way to give them all some solo time with just Mom or Dad, which is something that we find important to prioritize since we have a large family. My daughter wanted to go to London and visit the Harry Potter studio. Originally my son had talked about going to Gibraltar, but he eventually decided that he’d be interested in joining us on the London trip. Then when I found a deal on flights from Paris to Cincinnati, we added Paris to the mix. But then my wife said that we couldn’t go to Paris without her :-), so we turned it into a “double date”.

We left Cincinnati on on Monday, March 4th and after a quick stop at The Club CVG and our “first first class flight” on a regional jet from CVG to New York JFK, we had a few hours at the AA Flagship Business Lounge / Greenwich Room at JFK.

We then flew American Airlines business class from JFK-LHR on a redeye before showering and having breakfast at the American Airlines London Heathrow / LHR Arrivals Lounge.

4 Days In London

We arrived on Tuesday, March 5th and took the subway from Heathrow into London. Riding the subway turned out to be a much bigger part of the vacation than we originally planned. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express London Hammersmith on IHG points, which turned out to be a very convenient base for our trip, and quite affordable, especially with the 4th night free.

We mostly just went around to the various big touristy sites in London, including Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben and Tower Bridge. We also stopped by the Greenwich Observatory to be on the Prime Meridian (because my son and I are geography nerds) and went to Borough Market for chocolate covered strawberries that my wife had seen on Instagram.

The biggest thing we were all looking for was visiting the London Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio, which we did on our last full day. We also took the opportunity to use Laundryheap which is a laundry delivery service – definitely recommend it if you don’t have other laundry options.

4 (Make That 5!) Days in Paris

We took the Eurostar Train from London to Paris – we all kind of were interested to taking the Chunnel tunnel, though the reality probably didn’t match expectations, as this meme indicates.

Originally we had wanted to book the Hyatt Regency Paris Etoille but they were too busy playing award shenanigans, so we ended up booking the Marriott Courtyard Paris Gare de Lyon for 2 nights. It was a convenient base for the things we saw in Paris. We had an early(ish) flight back home from Paris, so on our last night, we took Paris Bus 351 to CDG Airport and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Paris CDG Airport where they gave me connecting rooms with someone else in them.

On The Way Home

We spent a few hours in the Air France Paris CDG Terminal E Gate M Lounge waiting for our Delta flight back from Paris to Cincinnati. But unfortunately after a few hours’ delay, our flight was cancelled. We went back to the Holiday Inn Express Paris CDG Airport. The next day we went to the Air France Paris CDG Terminal E Gate L Lounge before taking an Air France Airbus A350-900 Review Paris – Newark (CDG-EWR) flight. The flight was good though I didn’t buy the wifi. We had a brief stop at the Delta Sky Club EWR Lounge before finally arriving home.

The Bottom Line

Because of the flight cancellation, we were eligible for 600 Euros each from Delta, which proved easier to get than I thought it would be. We also each got 20,000 Sky Miles from the mysterious Rose O. Dougherty from Delta customer service, thanks to putting our frequent flyer number on even an award reservation. The combination of those 2 things helped me possibly MAKE money on this trip (depending on how you look at it). This was truly an epic trip and we’re already busy planning the next one!

What has been your favorite family trip? Leave it in the comments below

Newsletter Signup

Join the PWaC newsletter filled with credit card and travel tips

Join Now!

You have Successfully Subscribed!