How We’re Resisting the Urge to See Everything in and Around France

If you’re just finding this series, we’re taking our 3 kids to France for a month next summer, and I’m documenting the whole process—from why we’re doing it to choosing where we’ll stay, figuring out the budget, and eventually getting on that plane. Start with Why We’re Taking Our Three Kids to France for the Summer to get the full story behind the trip.

This part of planning our month in France has been really hard for me. Because if we're going to be there for 30+ days, shouldn't we see everything we possibly can?

Paris! Switzerland! Germany! More of France! Maybe Italy! Why not Finland or Estonia? If we're already there, we might as well go, right?

Except...no.

That is exactly how I could turn our month of living in France into a month-long vacation—and completely miss the point.

We have a $3,400 Airbnb that we're paying for whether we're there or not. If we're constantly packing bags and sleeping somewhere else, we're basically paying for a home base we're not using (already doing that with our mortgage, right!?).

And more importantly, that doesn't really feel like the experience we're trying to create.

So, reining myself in, we're staying relatively close to home to start. We'll do our weekday routines, explore our town, and take a couple of weekend trips so we can get out and see more without constantly disrupting our home base.

Then we'll pick up the pace for the final two weeks and aim for about two trips a week.

That's still a LOT of exploring.

Just...not everywhere.

And this is where I've had to rely pretty heavily on ChatGPT.

I've basically been asking:

What's actually convenient from where we're staying? What's worth the time it takes to get there? Which places make sense for an overnight versus a day trip? And how do I fit all of this into a reasonable budget?

Because there are approximately 47 places I want to see.

And my job is apparently to narrow that down to the handful that actually make sense.

It's requiring more restraint than I bargained for, but I keep reminding myself that the goal isn't to say, “Look at everywhere we went in Europe.”

It's to come home saying, “We actually lived in France for a month.”

And if that means I don't get to check every possible destination off my list?

I guess I'll survive.

Probably.