5 Easy Day Trips from Paris Without a Car
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I spent the month of April living out of an AirBnB in Paris, which gave me lots of time to take day trips outside of the city. I loved having the opportunity to experience the sights and cultures throughout other regions of northern France, since you always hear that Paris isn’t representative of the whole country. I was also able to take some longer weekend trips, but in theory any of those could be condensed into a day trip. Read on for tips on getting to these unique locations without a car via public transportation, and why these are my favorite unique day trips from Paris.
Visit Monet’s Home in Giverny
Giverny is a small commune west of Paris that was home to impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926). When walking through the still beautifully kept gardens, his famous lily pond reflects and morphs the vibrant colors of surrounding flowers and tendrils of trees. The tones drip and swirl through the water in a way that so obviously inspired his paintings that it seems unreal, like stepping inside a world of his creation. Did the place inspire the work, or did the work summon this place up through power of will?
You can also walk through the home itself, and it turns out Monet was something of an interior designer. The dining room is a bright pale yellow with a rust and white checkered floor, filled with matching accents in the form of paintings, sculpture, and curtains. The kitchen is all blue, white, and copper. His studio has been recreated to match the way it was originally set up in an old photo of him.
It was very crowded the day I visited even though it wasn’t a weekend, so I’m not sure you can really avoid it. On weekdays there are school trips with lots of children running around. After leaving his home, I enjoyed walking the quiet, charming streets of the village and visiting the church where he is buried.
Getting to Giverny from Paris on Public Transportation
I found a lot of conflicting information online about how to get to Giverny via public transportation from Paris, so I’m happy for a chance to clear things up here for anyone else who may be confused. Firstly, most blogs said you should really rent a car because it would be oh-so-difficult to get here otherwise. Not so. In fact you can quite easily and quickly reach Giverny via public transportation. Other blogs said the bus from the station to Claude Monet’s house only runs once or twice a day. Also false.
To get to Maison de Claude Monet from Paris, you’ll depart from Gare Saint-Lazare (this station is depicted in his paintings, so it’s almost like part of the tour!) and get off the train at the Vernon-Giverny stop. Outside this train station is a bus stop where a shuttle (“navette”) will take you directly to the village of Giverny. Here is the shuttle schedule (in case this becomes outdated, be sure to check online for a more recent schedule). It’s €5 one-way or €10 to include a return ticket. If you wanted to make things more complicated you could try to figure out the local city bus as an alternative, but the shuttle is designed to get you exactly where you need to go. When they drop you off in a parking lot, you will see signs directing you on how to walk through the village to Monet’s home from there, and you can just follow everyone else.
One thing I found while taking various day trips from Paris is that it was hard to figure out where exactly I was supposed to wait for buses or shuttles. Most stations would have a very generic sign about waiting “devant” the station, in front of the station, but that’s an entire city block. Outside, there was rarely a sign that said “wait here” or “bus stop”. Multiple times I tried to ask a kiosk information agent where exactly the stop was, and they would just say to wait outside with no further explanation. At the Vernon-Giverny station you will see other buses, shuttles, and trolleys pulling up, but most of these are for expensive tours. The shuttle you want will not park exactly in front of the station door; with your back to the station door, look up the street on the right. Your shuttle will park up that road a short way.
If it’s still sounding too complicated, you could always book a guided day trip from Paris to Giverny.
Explore the Castles of Loire Valley
From Paris, you can easily take a train to the Blois-Chambord or Amboise areas of the Loire Valley to visit as many as six idyllic castles without a car. You wouldn’t be able to see all six in one day (that’s more of a weekend trip), but you could pick a couple favorites or come back again and again on multiple day trips. I wrote a more extensive breakdown on how to visit these castles here:
Visiting Castles in the Loire Valley Without a Car
Pilgrimage to the Abbey at Mont Saint-Michel
Le Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and feels like it was ripped straight from the pages of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. They think it has been around since the year 708, which blows my mind. In America we would call a building from 1970 “old”.
The abbey at Mont St-Michel still hosts monks today, who I was fortunate to hear sing during my visit. The abbey has survived Viking raiders and World Wars because of its fortified design. It sits in the middle of a vast sandy beach, so visitors on foot must time their approach with the tides. While I was there the water was very far away from the islet’s walls and I was able to explore the beach, but online you can find pictures where it is completely surrounded and isolated by water. Hikers pilgrimage many miles to this site, but a day trip from Paris to Mont Saint-Michel is clearly more practical for tourists.
You can also walk around the small village beneath the looming abbey and grab a bite at various restaurants overlooking the bay. You really don’t need more than a few hours at Mont Saint-Michel, I have no idea what you’d do on days 2 or 3 if you planned to spend extra time here. It was fascinating and beautiful, but it was also ridiculously crowded. Again, I even went on a weekday to try to avoid crowds, but no dice. Small screaming children were running through the abbey and into the church where the monks were in silence, and families hauled their giant strollers around narrow spiral staircases. I got a bit overwhelmed and wanted out of there, but I’m still glad I got to see such a feat of architecture, human boldness and resilience. I loved contemplating that I was walking in the same footsteps as people who lived centuries ago. I even stepped in the same mushy quicksand depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry:
Getting to Mont Saint-Michel from Paris on Public Transportation
I took a train from Gare Montparnasse to the town of Villedieu-les-Poêles, then switched to a bus for the final stretch to Mont Saint-Michel. The SNCF website has published a very helpful guide on using public transportation to reach Mont Saint-Michel for a day trip here. They call it the “NOMAD” train but I don’t know what this means, and neither did the ticket agent at the station. I’m pretty sure it’s just a regular TER train.
Alternatively, you could look at booking a guided day trip from Paris to Mont Saint-Michel. There’s even a two-day trip that visits the Loire Valley one day and Mont Saint-Michel another day.
Discover German-French Fusion in Alsace
There are a handful of charming Alsatian villages you might choose from for a day trip to the Alsace-Lorraine region of eastern France, such as Colmar or Ribeauvillé. It’s impossible to do them all unless your entire trip is simply focused on that one region of the country for an extended period of time. You’ll want to pick one or two for a short day or weekend trip. I chose Strasbourg!
The Alsace-Lorraine region has changed hands between Germany and France so many times, that while it’s now fully French territory, it still has very prominent German influence. It has its own dialect and is known for unique cuisine that you wouldn’t find as often throughout the rest of France, such as the delicious flammekueche I had at an Alsatian winstub (a very thin, cripsy pizza-esque dish made with fromage blanc or crème fraîche instead of typical cheese and tomato sauce, plus onion and lardons). I’d love to return when the local restaurants are rolling out decadent specialties around Christmas time. Strasbourg is renowned for it’s Christmas market, supposedly the oldest in the country dating back to 1570.
Visitors to Strasbourg are smitten with the half-timbered houses and the dramatic, looming Cathédrale Notre Dame de Strasbourg, a building so massive that you can’t really fit the whole thing into a photo. It’s illuminated once the sun goes down, so it’s worth walking back to see the cathedral during both day and night. The Grande Île of Strasbourg is the main, walkable area of town encircled by the Ill River, but the cutest buildings are in the Petite-France section. There’s a good handful of local museums, including the Historical Museum of the City of Strasbourg. I went to the Alsatian Museum because I wanted a wider overview of the whole region.
I found that Strasbourg has a busy nightlife and a younger, edgier population than some of the other towns I’ve visited throughout France. A local university probably has a lot to do with that. If you’re doing an overnighter rather than a day trip and you’re looking to meet fellow travelers or just keep to a budget, you might follow in my footsteps and stay at a hostel called The People. It has a restaurant and bar downstairs, plus a bunch of digital nomads working away on their laptops.
Getting to Strasbourg from Paris on Public Transportation
To get to Strasbourg from Paris, you can take a BlahBlahBlus to save money, but this ride is like 5 hours long and would really eat into your exploring time. The better idea is to pay for a high speed TGV train ticket, which is only a 1 hour 45 minute ride from Gare de l’Est.
Once you’re in Strasbourg, consider joining a guided walking or bike tour, a boat cruise, or food tour! There are many options here, although I haven’t found a guided day trip from Paris.
Hike in Fontainebleau Forest
When I made the decision to stay in Paris for a month, I also committed to chilling out when it comes to my hiking obsession. It’s hard to lay your favorite hobby down for an extended period of time, but that’s how you try to become a well rounded and less…fanatic? single-minded? unhealthy?…person. It’s the South of France that’s truly known for mountains and gorgeous scenery, and I plan to be there in August. So for now, why fret? I wanted to focus on the things northern France is known for instead of trying to force it to be something it’s not.
It didn’t last. J’adore faire de la randonée.
Within a couple weeks I was Googling places to hike near Paris. The easiest natural area to get to from the city is the Fontainebleau forest. Many day trippers visit Fontainebleau for the purpose of seeing Château de Fontainebleau, but after Loire Valley I was castled-out. I never did visit that particular castle, but I enjoyed the area because of the walking trails. The forêt de Fontainebleau is also well known for bouldering.
Fontainebleau is all about thick forest and greenery. If you’re from the States, you might say that if the Alps and Pyrénées in southern France are akin to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado or North Cascades in Washington, then Fontainebleau is akin to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina. There are not any tall peaks and it’s a bit buggy and damp, but the foliage and natural points of interest make for plenty of enjoyable trails. I really liked the walk to Tour Denecourt, a tower in the middle of the forest that you can climb up to get a view over the surrounding landscape.
Getting to Fontainebleau from Paris on Public Transportation
If you have the Navigo Monthly or Weekly Pass for using the metro and buses in Paris, then you can use that to take an SNCF train to Fontainebleau without any additional cost. It’s essentially “gratuit” (free) because Fontainebleau is still within the Île-de-France region serviced by SNCF. I took the train 45 minutes from Paris Gare de Lyon to Fontainebleau-Avon and then walked literally across the street from the station and into the forest. Some trailheads will be farther, though, and require a bus ride from the Fontainebleau-Avon station.
Alternatively, you could always join a guided day trip from Paris to Fontainebleau, or grab a ticket to visit the château before of after your hike, here.
Next time I’m in France and looking for easy day trips from Paris, I’d like to visit Château de Chantilly (if only for the Chantilly cream!) or one of the many beaches near Paris. If you’ve spent a good chunk of time in Paris and had the opportunity to explore and compare different destinations outside the city, what were your favorite day trips? I saw a ton of quaint medieval towns recommended online when I was making my plans, like Provins, Reims, Lille, Chartres, Dijon, Rambouillet, etc, but I had a hard time deciphering what made each one special enough to prioritize. The descriptions usually mention a church and a good market or restaurant, but if they all have these features, how do you ever pick? Ultimately I went with destinations that I felt each had something very unique to offer, but I imagine you could spend your whole life in Paris and never see everything worth seeing on the outskirts.
Bon voyage!
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