Paris with Kids
With preteens: Drop your charges into the sewer.

By Robert V. Camuto
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 14, 2006

What is it exactly about the Paris Sewer Museum that leaves normally blase junior high school kids speechless? Is it the rivers of real sewer water rushing a couple of yards below our feet as we stand on a catwalk? Could it be the stuffed rat -- accompanied by an explanation by our chipper guide of how dead vermin release toxic gas when stepped on? Or maybe it's Mademoiselle's constant references to toilets, flushing, etc., as overhead pipes drip water (clean, we are assured) onto our heads.

As it turned out, it was something else that left our pair of 11-year-olds -- our son and his Texas-born friend Mathieu, who now lives in Paris -- wide-eyed and quiet as trained clams.

"The smell." "Yeah, definitely the smell."

We had just arrived for a weekend in the City of Light -- a lovely, warm fall day on the Quai d'Orsay along the Seine. But rather than drag our son around to monuments, palaces and exhibitions of priceless art as we had several times before, our plan was to experience Paris through the eyes of sixth-graders -- too cool for puppet shows yet too small to appreciate the adult charms of one of the world's most romantic, sophisticated cities.

And so that led us -- the boys, my wife and I, and Mathieu's mom -- to our first museum stop in the working sewers of Paris. The entrance to Paris's Musee des Egouts is a kiosk on the left bank of the Seine in a chic district next to the Pont d'Alma.

Going subterranean on a nice Saturday afternoon, while most of the civilized world seems to be strolling though the nearby Tuileries Gardens, may seem counterintuitive. But Generation PlayStation likes a little shock and awe -- not to mention a whiff of reality. The Musee des Egouts provided just the sort of off-center view that set the right tone for a successful family break, something I doubt we could have achieved at the Louvre or Versailles.

What's more, we learned everything we'd never even dreamed we wanted to know about sewers since the Middle Ages, and the lives, technology and mechanics that go on beneath those manhole covers in a major city.

About 20 minutes into the tour, our guide warned us in French to get a good bit of oxygen before we entered the tunnels, those underground canals where torrents of sewer water rush toward treatment stations. (Tours are also offered in English during summer, or visitors can use a free English booklet for a self-guided tour.) Once inside -- let us just say the smell is not that of the Parc de Bagatelle and its famous roses -- most peoples' instinct is to raise a hand to nose and mouth.

The two boys buried their faces in their sweaters, bobbing up only for occasional commentary. Standing on a metal bridge with rapids of dirty water below our feet, the boys stared into the fetid current.

"Look, paper," Mathieu suddenly pointed.

A sly grin crossed my son's face. "Heh," he chuckled. "Toilet paper!"

They shared a laugh at that.

When we finally emerged, after more than an hour of sensory deprivation in the sewers, Paris seemed more dazzling and inviting than ever. The boys ran along the Seine, seemingly content to soak up the sun and beauty and appreciate life's little pleasures -- like breathable city air.

* * *

Travel can be stressful, especially in a big city when you've got a tired kid trailing behind you, saying things like "Do we have to look at more impressionist paintings?!"

Scratch below its Grand Tour surface, and Paris can please all but the hardest cases of budding adolescent attitude. I'm no expert on kid behavior, but my theory is that investing time in something kids find cool can pay parents back handsomely.

On Sunday, the morning after our arrival in Paris, we set out for the city's most popular turn-'em-loose destination, Parc de la Villette: a more than 100-acre collection of parks, exotic gardens, playful environmental features, playgrounds, theaters, performance spaces and hands-on museums spanning the Our Canal. Opened in the 1980s on the site of what was once a meatpacking district, la Villette is the product of a team of dozens of architects and is one of the great modern open spaces of Europe.

To get there, we took a canal boat ride from the Musee D'Orsay and the Seine, under the Place de la Bastille and up the Canal St. Martin -- a long, slow, aquatic amble through some of Paris's most picturesque tree-lined neighborhoods.

On foot, we could have done the trip in a fraction of the 2 3/4 -hour ride, but that wasn't the point. This journey required us to pass through nine canal locks -- with lots of century-old equipment and gushing walls of water -- as well as several mechanical swing bridges.

Entry to la Villette is free, though specific attractions have fees. We could have spent the day -- a rare cloudless, sunny day -- in the park. But we had a destination: la Villette's Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie, a massive glass-and-steel science museum with a 112-foot reflective glass geodesic dome, La Geode, parked out front.

The Cite des Sciences is everything its name promises: a veritable city of science and technology. Its three stories of open Tinkertoy architecture, with massive steel beams and skylights, resemble more a mega-mall than a museum. It's got food courts, exhibit halls dedicated to aeronautics, light, sound and volcanoes, an aquarium, a planetarium, 3-D films and a theater with moving seats. La Geode houses an Omnimax theater. (Exhibits are bilingual in English, and theater presentations provide free foreign-language headphones.)

"This," my son said as we rode up an escalator, "is like a dream school."

On this Sunday, the place was jammed with thousands of kids and parents coming for "Star Wars l'Expo," a "Star Wars" extravaganza of props, scale models, podracers, costumes, weaponry and special effects running through Aug. 27. Similar to the "Star Wars" show that opened about the same time in Boston, this one (pronounced "Stah Wahrz") is trumpeted as being larger -- at least in France. The exhibition is also organized differently -- around "planets" where the films were set, so the visitor can follow a logical flow, say, from the moon of Endor to Tatooine and Naboo, etc.

Such order, I'm afraid, would be lost on our group, and as far as I could tell, most others. Standing in line for our timed entry (we avoided a long wait by ordering tickets online), we heard strains of "Star Wars" theme music -- which prompted most boys in line, including my son and Mathieu, to act out imaginary lightsaber battles -- complete with sound effects.

Then, as we entered a familiar universe, there was a curation-be-damned explosion of kid sweat and excitement. The boys ran from the life-size Naboo starfighter to an assassin droid's speeder to a heavy-breathing Dark Vador (you can figure out who that is without the English translation) to a Yoda puppet who looked a bit tragic there, frozen static behind plexiglass.

My son asked to do something he rarely asks to do -- borrow my camera to take pictures. (A review of my digital camera later showed numerous angle shots of that starfighter and a podracer.) Eleven years old, in my experience, seems to be the age at which cameras wielded by adults normally elicit goofball faces and extended tongues. But a true sign of kid vacation excitement, I learned, is when they want to preserve memories to show their friends -- something that normally doesn't happen when the parents are window-shopping in Saint-Germain.

Film images exploded from huge flat screens everywhere, and I had the strange sense and creeping concern that it was here, in the center of George Lucas's universe, that my son felt truly at home.

About an hour later, his face flush and his hair damp, my son came up to me and announced, "Okay, let's go."

We walked through an exit corridor and arrived, predictably, in a big gift shop selling everything "Star Wars": $180 lightsaber replicas, Darth Vader bath and shower gel, T-shirts declaring in five languages "Que la force soit avec toi" ("May the force be with you").

That afternoon, I rented bikes with the boys while their moms went to a cafe. We rode up and down the canal, burning off pent-up "force" and dodging pedestrians, dogs and smaller children who wandered onto the bike path.

At one point at the end of the day, I asked the boys if they were ready to visit the Louvre.

"Oh no," they pleaded.

"There's the painting of Mona Lisa whose eyes follow you around, and that's the main attraction," my son said, world-weary.

"The Louvre," Mathieu scoffed, "is so a hundred years ago."

* * *

The next two days, my wife and son and I were on our own, as Mathieu and his mom left to visit friends in the country. Monday morning, we had planned to visit the Grevin wax museum on Paris's busy Boulevard Montmartre. At breakfast, I'd heard the first signs of mutiny: Our son announced he'd rather stay in bed at the hotel and watch cartoons.

An hour or so later, inside the Grevin, the signs of revolt were gone, and my son again asked to borrow my camera. Wax, you know, can do that.

I have been in other wax museums, but what distinguishes the Grevin is its setting -- a palatial manse with rococo vaulted ceilings and columns and a 200-seat Italianate theater that's a national historic monument.

The first room you enter is a round, ornate hall of mirrors and lights with figures of Oriental beauties, called the Palais des Mirages. Constructed for Paris's World's Fair of 1900, the hall is like the inside of a giant kaleidoscope.

Special effects -- so 100 years ago, but special nonetheless.

The Grevin may not be the world's most risque or up-to-the-minute wax museum (an exhibit titled "Ideal Concert" would fit in a natural history museum: Jimi Hendrix, Ray Charles, Phil Collins and Louis Armstrong). But the Grevin is a beautiful, well-conceived place and is less cheesy than most examples of the genre. There is no Brad Pitt with a strokable silicon chest, no pole-dancing Britney Spears (both at Madame Tussaud's in London). What's more, among houses of wax, it is certainly the most French, which is sort of the point after you've come this far.

France's rich and bloody history is recounted on elaborate sets and figures -- from the Inquisition to the burning of Joan of Arc, and from the court of Louis XIV to the Reign of Terror. French culture is represented by interesting sets and scores of figures from Rodin to Bardot to the teen idol you've probably never heard of, Lorie.

For some reason I can't explain, my son's most lasting memory was of a lineup of wax figures he called "the politicians" -- eight dark-suited heads of state flanking a slightly younger-looking Jacques Chirac. Russia's Vladimir Putin bore an uncanny resemblance to himself, we all agreed, while "George Bush Jr." resembled a Dodge sales manager I once encountered in Mesquite, Tex.

After three days of Paris on his level -- including periodic stops to check out the goods at gaming stores -- my son began to view Paris and the idea of a family vacation differently than he had before.

Leaving the Grevin, my wife wanted to do some sightseeing at the Madeleine church behind its Greek temple facade. He followed with not a word of complaint. Then I led us into Lavinia, a modern palace near La Madeleine dedicated to one of my son's least favorite things: wine.

Still no protests. Down in the sleek glassed-in cellar of older vintages, my son zeroed in on a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1945, reposing in a glass case. He fell backward when he saw the five-figure price tag, which, he observed, could have been a window sticker for an automobile. That was something he has never stopped talking about -- the wine that cost more than a small Renault. We wasted the better part of an hour in there, without a single whine.

On leaving, my son let out about the last thing I'd expected to hear from him.

"Actually," he said, "that's quite impressive."

Robert V. Camuto last wrote for travel about Cezanne's Mont Ste. Victoire.