Paris travel guide — where to stay, what to do, and where to eat in Paris, Île-de-France, France.
Top day trips
Handpicked excursions within easy reach.
Palace of Versailles
The main palace of Louis XIV, built to move the court and government out of Paris and keep the nobility under royal watch. The Hall of Mirrors, the King's and Queen's State Apartments, and the formal gardens laid out by Le Nôtre are the core of the visit. The scale is the point: this was designed to overwhelm visitors, and it still does, especially the gardens, which run for hundreds of hectares with fountains and canals.
Highlights: Hall of Mirrors and the King's State Apartments · Gardens of Versailles and the Grand Canal · Marie-Antoinette's Estate and the Petit Trianon · Musical Fountains Shows on select weekends (April–October)
Giverny — Monet's Garden & House
Claude Monet's home from 1883 until his death in 1926, and the garden he designed and painted for over four decades, including the water-lily pond and Japanese bridge that appear in the Nymphéas series. The house itself, with its yellow dining room and blue kitchen, is preserved with Monet's collection of Japanese prints on the walls. It's a single, small site rather than a sprawling estate, so the visit is short but concentrated.
Highlights: Monet's flower garden (Clos Normand) and pink house · The water garden and Japanese bridge over the lily pond · Musée des impressionnismes Giverny · Vernon-Giverny train and shuttle bus route through the Normandy countryside
Fontainebleau — Château & Forest
A royal and imperial residence used continuously from the Middle Ages through Napoleon III, which makes it architecturally layered in a way Versailles isn't — you can trace Renaissance, Bourbon, and Napoleonic additions in the same building. Napoleon I abdicated here in 1814, and his farewell to the Old Guard in the White Horse Courtyard is one of the château's set pieces. The surrounding forest, popular with Paris climbers and hikers, is a genuinely different kind of day if you want to combine the château with time outdoors.
Highlights: Château de Fontainebleau's horseshoe staircase and courtyard · François I gallery and the Napoleon I Museum · Forest of Fontainebleau hiking and bouldering trails · Château gardens and the Carp Pond
Reims — Champagne Capital & Gothic Cathedral
The city where French kings were crowned for centuries, anchored by Reims Cathedral, one of the great Gothic buildings in France and the coronation site of Clovis and most of the Capetian and Valois kings. It's also the commercial heart of Champagne production, with several of the big houses — Pommery, Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot — running cellar tours in and around the city itself, distinct from the vineyard villages further out. The city center was heavily rebuilt after WWI damage, so the Art Deco reconstruction is its own layer of interest alongside the medieval core.
Highlights: Notre-Dame de Reims Gothic cathedral · Champagne house cellar tours (Taittinger, Pommery, Veuve Clicquot) · Palace of Tau adjoining the cathedral · Place Drouet d'Erlon dining district
Chantilly — Château, Museum & Forest
A château rebuilt in the late 19th century by the Duke of Aumale to house the Musée Condé, one of the largest collections of Old Master paintings in France outside the Louvre, still hung in the duke's original 19th-century arrangement rather than a modern curated layout. The estate also includes the Grandes Écuries, an enormous 18th-century stable complex now used for the Domaine's Living Horse Museum and equestrian shows, reflecting Chantilly's long association with horse racing and training.
Highlights: Château de Chantilly and the Musée Condé art collection · Grandes Écuries and the Living Horse Museum dressage shows · Reflecting lake and formal French gardens · Forest of Chantilly walking trails
Chartres — Medieval Cathedral & Old Town
Chartres Cathedral is one of the best-preserved Gothic cathedrals in Europe, largely because it was rebuilt quickly after a 1194 fire using a single, coherent design, unlike cathedrals that accumulated styles over centuries. It's known especially for its original medieval stained glass — most of it survived both the French Revolution and both World Wars — and for the labyrinth set into the nave floor. The old town below the cathedral, with its half-timbered houses along the Eure river, is small enough to see on foot in an afternoon.
Highlights: Chartres Cathedral's medieval stained-glass windows and Chartres blue · Cathedral labyrinth and twin spires · Old town streets around Rue des Écuyers · Eure riverside district with half-timbered houses
Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte
The château that got its builder, Nicolas Fouquet, arrested — its 1661 housewarming party was so extravagant that Louis XIV had Fouquet jailed for embezzlement and then hired the same architect, painter, and garden designer to build Versailles. It's smaller and far less crowded than Versailles, and because it's privately owned rather than a state museum, the interior feels more like a lived-in house, with candlelit evening visits offered on select dates.
Highlights: Baroque château interiors built for Nicolas Fouquet · André Le Nôtre's formal gardens and reflecting canals · Saturday candlelit evening visits (May–October) · Château moat and grand entrance facade
Étretat — Alabaster Cliffs & Pebble Beach
A small Normandy resort town defined by its chalk cliffs and natural arches — the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the freestanding needle-like Aiguille — carved by the Channel into what's known as the Alabaster Coast. Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, and other Impressionists painted these cliffs repeatedly, and Étretat is also the setting Maurice Leblanc used for his Arsène Lupin novels. It's a long day from Paris, so the trip is really built around the coastal walk itself rather than the small town.
Highlights: Falaise d'Aval cliff and the Aiguille rock formation · Falaise d'Amont chapel clifftop walk · Manneporte natural stone arch · Pebble beach and seafront promenade
Épernay — Avenue de Champagne
Épernay is the commercial capital of Champagne, and the Avenue de Champagne is the single street where that fact is on display: a run of grand maisons — Moët & Chandon, Mercier, de Castellane, Perrier-Jouët among them — each sitting on tens of kilometres of chalk cellars cut into the hillside below. A day here is built around one or two cellar tours with tastings, not wandering; the town itself is small and the avenue is really the whole attraction.
Highlights: Avenue de Champagne and its historic maison facades · Moët & Chandon cellar tour and tasting · Underground chalk cellars used for champagne ageing · Surrounding vineyard views, especially during October harvest
Bruges — Medieval Belgian City
Bruges is a Flemish city whose medieval core — canals, brick gabled houses, a market square dominated by a 13th-century belfry — survived largely intact because the city's trade declined in the late Middle Ages and building simply stopped. It rewards a full day of walking rather than a rushed loop: the historic centre is compact but dense, and the canals and quieter side streets away from the Markt are where the city feels least like a stage set.
Highlights: Markt square and the Belfry of Bruges · Canal boat tour through the medieval old town · Basilica of the Holy Blood and the Burg square · Chocolate shops and waffle stands throughout the old town
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Multi-day tours from Paris
If you have longer than a day, these are organised multi-day trips that start here.
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Day trip tips
Make the most of your excursions.
Book TGV train tickets as early as possible — advance purchase prices are often 50–70% lower than day-of prices at oui.sncf
For Versailles, buy a Palace + Gardens timed-entry ticket online at chateauversailles.fr to skip the 45-min+ queues; arrive on the RER C from Invalides or Saint-Michel
Giverny's Monet gardens sell out online; book tickets at fondation-monet.com at least 2 weeks ahead in peak season (May–June)
The Navigo weekly pass (€30) covers all Île-de-France destinations including Versailles, Fontainebleau, and Rambouillet — check if your destination is within zones 1–5
Many small towns near Paris have excellent local markets on Saturday and Sunday mornings — combine a market visit with sightseeing
Pack a picnic from a Paris boulangerie or fromagerie — eating on Versailles lawns or in Fontainebleau forest is one of the great Parisian pleasures