Luke Kimbrell

Some fun toddler lunch ideas dairy free ideas for kids could be peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with apple slices and carrot sticks , peanut butter and banana tortilla, juice, apple sticks and cheeses slices. We also enjoyed ourselves in the historical Palais Royal, just north of the Louvre. The 18th century architecture is some of the city's most elegant - but we entertained ourselves jumping across the truncated black and white columns installed by sculptor Daniel Buren in 1986. It was a great route towards the Eiffel Tower where we gazed up through the steelwork and consumed towering chocolate ice creams while tourists with more patience queued to scale Gustave Eiffel's masterpiece of engineering. Berges is part of an epic regeneration project, banishing cars and creating a massive pedestrianised waterfront filled with playful ideas: quirky benches, complex pavement mazes, child-friendly climbing walls, ampitheatre seating and even a be-your-own-DJ style disco under a bridge. The only thing that marred our trip was a nightmarish journey on the metro when we first arrived. Level access for pushchairs is poorly signposted and often non-existent; lifts smell ‘yucky' as Catherine put it. There were lavish antique shops and chic art galleries all around, as well as the all-important boulangerie, fromagerie, patisserie and boucherie (bread, cheese, cakes and a butcher). Even a wine merchant was less than two minutes from the front door. I was relieved we could eat outside in the spring sunshine because tightly-packed tables inside jostling cafes are not so pushchair friendly. Eating outdoors meant we had a wider selection of lunch options and weren't restricted to ‘kid-friendly' chain restaurants. Don't let that put you off - there's a huge amount of equipment for children of all ages. There's also only one entrance/exit so we could relax in the sun while Catherine ran riot and baby Hannah had a snooze. But we also had time to sample little bistros offering hearty salads filled with cold meats and mouthwateringly-juicy burgers. Restaurant staff were consistently charming, entertaining our girls while we scanned the menus. The Eiffel Tour, the Seine, Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Champs-Elysees - these places are tightly packed together and because we were staying on the doorstep we were raring to go each day, fuelled by still-warm early morning croissants. Struggling with suitcases, a toddler lunch ideas daycare tantrum, a fractious baby and barely enough room to squeeze into the carriage, I reached for my handbag and found a pickpocket rifling through the contents. I screamed and he jumped off as the doors shut. In Standard Premier there was enough room to keep our pushchair in the carriage with sleeping baby left in peace, and when our wriggly 11-month-old did wake up she was happier not being restrained with a seatbelt, compared to the tantrums of take off and landing.