A Day Trip from Paris - Saint-Germain-en-Laye

View of the château with town in the background

When I woke up there was not a cloud in the sky in spite of the forecasted showers. Given the day before's changeable weather this didn't mean much. It had literally gone from sunny and relatively warm to cold and wet more than half a dozen times in a period of a few hours. I already had delayed so many things that I wanted to do because of the poor weather over the past 6 weeks. Time to take a risk and visit Saint-Germain-en-Laye. My friend Xenia had recommended it as an interesting day trip from Paris.

Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

It is about a 25 minute walk from Valérie's to La Défense where I caught the RER A to Saint-Germein-en-Lay. We passed through Nanterre with its university. Coming out of the station you are immediately confronted by the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye which houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale. I visited only part of the museum as the top section was closed off. I confess to not being particularly interested in the prehistoric era so the museum was rather wasted on me. I would have been better to have just walked into the courtyard area and not bothered with buying a ticket for the museum.

View from château grounds

I did the self-guided walking tour from the brochure provided by the tourist information office. Perhaps I was having a bad day but I didn't find it particularly interesting either. It seemed to take me along a lot of rather non-descript streets. It didn't even advise to go into the Château park which I thought was lovely with its view over the Seine Valley back towards La Défense and the Eiffel Tower in the disance. What does look quite interesting are the 1.5 hour guided costumed tours during July and August on a Saturday afternoon. For more information contact the Saint-Germain-en-Laye Tourist Information Office

Saint-Germain-en-Laye is only 30 minutes from Paris by train and as such is ideally located for tourists visiting France that want to visit a French town with winding cobble-stoned streets outside of Paris.

Terrace in town centre

My first ever religieuse - yum!