France, one day at a time.
Versailles before the coaches, a boat under the Pont Neuf at dusk, Saint-Émilion cellars and the long road to Mont-Saint-Michel. What each day is really like, what it costs, and where to book it.
The Louvre, the palace, the river boat.
These are the tickets and tables that fill a French week: timed entry under the glass Pyramid, the State Apartments at Versailles while they are still quiet, a dinner boat past the Conciergerie, and a Montmartre morning that ends in a cheese shop.
Paris: Louvre Museum Timed-Entrance Ticket
Timed-entry Louvre ticket with fast Priority Access, letting you see icons like Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo at your own pace.
From $26 per person
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Get to Versailles before the coaches.
The gates open at nine and the first hour belongs to whoever is standing there. Do the State Apartments and the Hall of Mirrors while they are still quiet, then take the gardens at your own pace: the Grand Canal, the two Trianons, Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet with its working farm. The palace is shut on Mondays, and the fountains only run on show days from spring to autumn.
Which day out of Paris is yours?
Paris gives most trips one clear day for the country, maybe two. The palace, the garden and the abbey each take a different shape of day, and only one of them will fit the week you are actually taking. Prices and running times sit on every card.
Half a day, mostly indoors
The palace day
1 day · from $17 · 41,579 reviews
RER C from the Left Bank, forty minutes, then the State Apartments and the Hall of Mirrors before the tour groups land. The skip-the-line ticket is the whole game here; the queue without one runs well past an hour. Add the gardens and the Trianons and it turns into a full day.
Compare the Versailles days →
Back by lunch
The garden morning
6 hours (approx.) · from $91 · 1,836 reviews
Monet’s house at Giverny still has its green shutters, its Japanese bridge and the lily pond he painted for thirty years. Seventy-five kilometres from Paris, half a day door to door. May and June are when the irises and the roses overlap; the estate closes from November to late March.
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The long one
The abbey on the tide
14 hours (approx.) · from $131 · 2,750 reviews
Four hours out and four back, and worth every kilometre when the bay is doing its trick. Coaches leave central Paris around seven and give you the ramparts, the abbey climb and a couple of hours in the village. Check the tide table before you pick a date, because the causeway view changes with it.
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Paris saves its best hour for dusk.
The tower sparkles for five minutes on the hour, the bateaux switch on their floodlights, and the terraces below Sacré-Cœur fill up while the hill is still warm. A dinner boat past the Conciergerie, a cabaret on the Boulevard de Clichy, or an open-top bus that does the whole circuit: three ways to spend the hours most itineraries waste.
Bordeaux keeps its best bottles at home.
Saint-Émilion digs its cellars straight into the limestone, the Médoc châteaux pour from the barrel, and the Cité du Vin will teach you the map of the region in an afternoon. Tastings run small and the drive out of the city is short.
Learn the croissant, then the macaron.
Paris teaches its own baking in two-hour blocks: laminated dough at nine, piping bags by eleven, a box to carry away at the end. Classes cap at ten or twelve, most run in English, and the good ones sit near the Marais or Galeries Lafayette.
Six centuries of châteaux, one river.
Chenonceau spans the Cher on five arches and was run by women for most of its life. Chambord has a double-helix staircase nobody has fully explained. Amboise holds Leonardo’s grave. The valley starts two hours south-west of Paris, and one long day takes in two castles with a Vouvray tasting on the way home.
The war graves, described plainly.
The landing beaches, the Normandy cemeteries and the Verdun battlefields are places of burial and commemoration before they are anything else. The pages behind these links set out what each visit covers, how long it takes, how much of the day is driving and what it costs, and they do not rank one against another. Guides working these routes keep to the standard the sites themselves ask of visitors, and so does everything written here.
Most of France is not Paris.
The TGV puts Lyon two hours from the Gare de Lyon and Marseille three. Nice runs the coast road east to Menton. Bordeaux pours at the end of the line, Strasbourg does storks and half-timber, and Corsica is a short hop or an overnight ferry.
Know the shape of your afternoon?
Pick the kind of booking rather than the landmark. Everything behind each tile carries its price, its running time and what other travellers made of it.
Half of France is a morning away.
Versailles is forty minutes on the RER. Giverny is an hour to Vernon and a shuttle from the station. The Loire, Chartres and the château country all fit between breakfast and a late dinner, and the return seat is part of the ticket.
Three days, and one of them out of town.
You cannot see France in a long weekend, but you can build three days that never waste an hour. This is the order that works: the river first while your legs are fresh, the museums second, the palace last.
Day 1
Start on the water
Walk out to the Île de la Cité, look at Notre-Dame from the quay, then take an afternoon boat from the Pont de l’Alma and let the city introduce itself. Dinner in the Marais, and a short walk back.
Plan the river day →
Day 2
The museum day
Timed entry at the Louvre before ten, out by one with the Denon wing done properly, then the Orsay across the river for the Impressionists. Finish on the Montmartre hill as the light goes.
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Day 3
Out to the palace
RER C from Saint-Michel, State Apartments first while the coaches are still parking, gardens after lunch, and back in Paris by six with time for a last dinner.
Plan the palace day →
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