From guest blogger, Andrea Widburg, of Andi’s Answers

Paris in the spring is the stuff of poetry, Paris in the summer is the most popular tourist time, and Paris in the winter is a great time to go, especially when you’re traveling with two active elementary school aged children. We went to Paris last winter right after Christmas and, while the crowds were still overwhelming, it felt almost empty compared to the usual summer traffic. Here are some of the things we discovered:

The Louvre Museum is a great way to stay out of the rain. Our kids are very active, and they need room to roam. The Louvre museum, at almost 200,000 square feet, is so huge that they got more than enough activity. The collection is also awe inspiring.

Though the children would really rather have their nails pulled out than spend time in the average museum, even they were thrilled to get an up-close view of the Mona Lisa. They were also completely charmed by Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s imaginative paintings, which use fruits, vegetables, flowers and plants to create portraits. As for me, as a Medieval Flemish painting junkie, the Louvre was art heaven.

Another exciting place to visit was the Conciergerie, the former palace and prison in which Marie Antoinette spent her final days before meeting Madame la Guillotine. It’s a grim place, and the small, but excellent exhibit (which includes a guillotine blade that was still used in the 19^th Century) gives you a hint of the horrors it held for its unfortunate residents. The children, needless to say, were thrilled.

Right around the corner from the Conciergerie is one of the most uplifting places in all of Paris: the Sainte-Chapelle, a small Church from the mid-13^th Century that has the finest stained glass windows in Europe. Even on an overcast winter’s day, the interior is radiant. Between the windows and the painted surfaces, one has almost no sense of the stone bones underlying the chapel’s construction. Although the children were pushed to their limits for the half hour we spent inside, I don’t think they regretted it, because even they recognized its extraordinary beauty.

Lastly, if you have active children and find yourself in Paris in mid-Winter, go to Versailles. We started with a tour of the Palace’s interior, which stunned the children with its gaudy magnificence. By tour’s end, however, they simply collapsed and couldn’t get out of there soon enough. Fortunately, “getting out” took us onto Versailles’ grounds, and we spent several hours wandering around there. We visited Marie Antoinette’s exquisite Petite Trianon, made especially poignant by the fact that we’d earlier soon the grim cell in which she lived during her last days. There was also room just to run. Because of the cold, most people weren’t lingering in the garden, so my kids could really stretch their wings, with pauses to look at the swans, sheep and ponies that still live in Marie Antoinette’s silly little model farm. Because of the combination of eye candy and space that Versailles offered on a winter’s day, I have to say it was probably the best day we spent in Paris.