Day trips from Paris

Paris is ringed with châteaux because French kings spent centuries escaping it. Almost all of them are an hour from one of the city's six terminals, and several are reachable on an ordinary regional ticket. The question is not whether to go, but which one — each takes a full day.

Since the 2025 fare reform a single metro, train and RER ticket costs €2.55 and covers the whole Île-de-France region, with no zones — the same ticket reaches Versailles, Fontainebleau and the Disneyland station. The exceptions are the airports (€14) and anything outside the region: Chartres, Reims and Giverny are SNCF tickets, bought separately.

Versailles — the château that ate a state

The biggest day trip and the only one that firmly requires a booked slot. RER C to Versailles Château Rive Gauche runs about 40 minutes from Saint-Michel or Invalides, the ticket is €2.55, and the gate is a ten-minute walk from the station. Tickets from 14 January 2026: the Passport (palace, Trianon, Marie-Antoinette's estate and gardens) is €35 for non-EEA visitors and €32 for EEA residents from April to October, and €25 and €22 from November to March; there is no palace-only ticket, but the Trianon estate is sold separately at €15. Under-18s go free. The gardens open at 8, the Trianon estate only at 12, and the palace is closed on Mondays. The order that works: take the first slot into the palace, come out into the gardens around 11 and spend the rest of the day in the park, where there is room for everyone, or hire a bike by the Grand Canal. At weekends and on Tuesdays from April to October the Grandes Eaux Musicales run, the fountains playing to music, and the gardens then carry a ticket of their own (€12). With only two days in Paris, this trip is probably a luxury you can't fit in.

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Giverny — the garden painted five hundred times

A village in Normandy where Claude Monet lived for forty-three years and where he dug the pond and built the Japanese bridge you know from the paintings. The train from Gare Saint-Lazare to Vernon–Giverny takes 45 to 50 minutes (€15–17 one way), then a shuttle bus to the village (€10 return) or a bike from the rental by the station, five flat kilometres along a former railway line. The Fondation Claude Monet is open 1 April to 1 November, 10–18, last entry 17:30; admission is €13, children 7 to 17 pay €7. Go at opening or after 16:00 — at midday you cross the Japanese garden in single file. The water lilies flower from June to September. Outside that window the garden is simply shut, so a winter trip out here is pointless.

Fontainebleau — Versailles without the crowd

A palace that eight centuries of French rulers kept adding to, from François I to Napoleon, who left from here into exile. The train from Gare de Lyon to Fontainebleau-Avon takes about 40 minutes, ticket €2.55, then bus line 1 to the château (ten minutes). The palace is closed on Tuesdays, open 9:30–17 from October to March and 9:30–18 from April to September, admission €17, and the park and gardens are free and always open. Around it lies a forest of twenty-five thousand hectares whose sandstone boulders are where modern free climbing was invented. Anyone hoping for something entirely different from Versailles won't find it here — same genre, just quieter.

Chartres — a cathedral worth the journey

The train from Montparnasse takes an hour and ten minutes, from €10 one way, and the cathedral is visible from the platform. Chartres holds the best-preserved twelfth- and thirteenth-century stained glass in the world — a hundred and sixty-five windows, in a blue called 'chartres bleu' that nobody since has managed to reproduce. Entry to the cathedral is free; the crypt (€2.70) and the north tower (€9) are ticketed separately and go with a guide. From April to October the town projects light shows onto some twenty facades in the evening ('Chartres en lumières'), free of charge, which is the reason to stay until dark. With no interest in churches this trip loses its point — the rest of the town is pleasant, but small.

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Reims and Champagne — a fast train and deep cellars

The TGV from Gare de l'Est reaches Reims in about 45 minutes; the fare is €16–49 depending on how far ahead you buy, and that gap decides whether the trip makes sense. French kings were crowned in Reims for eight centuries, so the cathedral is among the most important in the country and entry is free. The real reason to come is underground: champagne cellars cut into chalk galleries, some of them Roman. A tour with a tasting runs about an hour and a half and costs €30–55 depending on the house and the number of glasses — book ahead, you don't walk in off the street. Épernay and its Avenue de Champagne are another half hour by train. It doesn't pay off if you don't drink or if you're driving — the tasting is the whole reason to come.

Disneyland Paris — the one trip that takes a whole day and a whole decision

RER A to the terminus at Marne-la-Vallée – Chessy, about 40 minutes from Châtelet, ticket €2.55, and the station exit faces the entrance gates. A one-park ticket is €52–150, depending on the date and demand — check the exact day and buy ahead. Two parks add another thirty euros or so. Realistically: leave at 8, be at the gate before opening, and plan to head back before 22:00, when the RER fills up. Without children or a personal soft spot for the park, the same money buys three big Paris houses and dinner besides.

Chantilly — the château with France's second picture collection

The train from Gare du Nord to Chantilly-Gouvieux takes 25 minutes, ticket €2.55, then a twenty-five-minute walk through the park or a local bus. Inside is the Musée Condé, second only to the Louvre in old masters — Raphael, Poussin, Ingres — and a library of medieval manuscripts. Admission is €18 and covers both the château and a park laid out by Le Nôtre, the man who designed Versailles. Across the lawn stand the Great Stables, built for a prince who believed he would be reincarnated as a horse. Anyone hoping for a town should go elsewhere — Chantilly is a château, a forest and a racecourse, and that's it.

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If you pick one

• First time in Paris, one free day: Versailles. Book the first morning slot, be out in the gardens by midday and back in the city for dinner.
• Couples or photographers: Giverny from May to September, at the ten o'clock opening or after four — at midday you cross the Japanese garden in single file.
• A returning visitor who has done Versailles: Fontainebleau or Chantilly. The same splendour, a third of the people, and a park you walk into without a ticket.

What transport costs

Regional tickets carry no seat reservation and are bought at a machine, in the app or loaded onto a Navigo Easy card; for the TGV to Reims the price depends on how early you buy, so book the moment you know the date. A car makes sense only for Fontainebleau and its forest, or for touring several champagne houses — everything else is faster by train, and parking at Versailles eats the saving.

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