Day Trip To Paris: What To See & Do

*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link! This supports me and keeps my blog running.*

Contents

This post will share details of my day trip to Paris.

For my brother’s 21st birthday, I took him on a day trip to Paris.

This will be my fifth time in France and my second time in Paris.

Other times, I was in Montpellier, Nice and in Strasbourg.

Similar to London, I’m not much of a fan of Paris and prefer other parts of the country.

Also, the train from Manchester to Paris takes about 4 hours, compared to 2 hours if I lived in London.

So it never really appealed to me.

Anyway, for this trip, I wanted to teach my brother the tips and tricks of solo travelling.

Having been to thirty-plus countries, I believe I have a few tricks up my sleeve to pass to him.

The trip was a bit of a whirlwind one, and I’m happy to share the details.

Here’s What To See & Do On A Day Trip To Paris

I chose Paris for this trip as I believe it’s easiest for a first-time solo traveller, particularly for a day trip from Manchester or any part of the UK, for that matter.

Other notable mentions are Dublin and Belfast, but it’s wet and gloomy at this time of the year, so it’s not particularly the best option.

During the spring/summer, it will definitely be a better alternative than Paris, which will be busy with peak tourists.

Getting to Paris from Manchester

Flights – £127.96 (two adults with seats booked)

I booked a one-way ticket to Paris-CDG for both of us in June.

Despite the tickets usually being affordable, I always like to secure them as early as possible.

We took a 9:35 am flight, which landed just before noon Paris time.

Flying into Paris CDG turned out to be a bad idea.

I literally forgot how massive the CDG airport is.

The airline was on the runway for about 20 minutes before finding a parking spot.

It took us 30 minutes to get to the airport train station.

It also took us another hour to get to the Eiffel Tower.

All this extra time took away from the time we could have spent in Paris if we had taken the Eurostar.

Airport Transfer & Public Transport

One airport way – €13

Navigo card – €2

After arrival, passport control went super quick as there were little to no queues.

I was a bit anxious about the new EU Entry-Exit System, but thankfully, it hadn’t been implemented yet.

So I was able to get a final stamp.

After which, we made our way down to the Paris CDG airport train station.

The last time I passed through this train station on my way to Strasbourg, it was under construction, so it was great to see the upgrade.

Like other airports, CDG also has an ‘express train’ to central Paris, the RER B, which runs every 20 minutes.

We had to buy the airport tickets from the ticket machines, which cost €13 for one way.

The ticket was loaded onto our Navigo Easy card, a reusable smart card that costs €2.

We were able to use the card by loading individual tickets on it throughout the day.

We didn’t need up to 10 passes, else we would have gotten one.

The whole experience took a minute to get used to, as I was expecting to tap in and out with Apple Pay.

Thankfully, the staff were super helpful at all the stations we passed throughout the day.

Exploring Central Paris

I had already planned a few experiences, but due to time constraints, we were only able to do the 1-hour Seine Cruise from the Eiffel Tower, which we booked via Get Your Guide.

Once we arrived in Paris, we immediately headed to the departure meeting point.

The cruise ran every hour, so we were able to catch one in about 15 minutes.

Boarding the boat was super quick as we already had our ticket in hand.

The entire cruise took about an hour and reminded me once again how incredibly stunning central Paris is.

We originally planned an evening cruise, which we didn’t have time for, but I’m glad we did it instead of the bus tour.

Once we were done, we made our way to Gare Du Nord.

Other Experiences Worth Booking.

If you have a few more hours to explore, here are a few essential activities:

Paris To Manchester Return

Once we arrived at Gare Du Nord, I remembered how much I hated the train station because of the chaos.

I could never find my way around, and I’ve passed through numerous train stations in the last few years.

Anyway, we had about an hour before check-in, so we took the metro out of Gare du Nord to do some shopping.

Once we were done, we took the metro back to Gare Du Nord to check in for our Eurostar train to London.

Thankfully, we were able to find the Eurostar section pretty quickly and checked in immediately.

This also went super fast, with barely any queues, so we had about 30 minutes to relax before boarding.

Despite visiting Paris several times, this is my first time using the Eurostar, so this was definitely an experience for me, and it was honestly worth the hype and convenience.

The journey to London took around 90minutes and it was very smooth.

Once we arrived at London St Pancras Station, we took a 15-minute walk down to Euston Station to catch our train back to Manchester.