Holidays in Paris

The Catalan capital is a great place to unwind if you’re shopped yourself into a stupor in Paris – it’s hot, sunny, and best of all, it has its own beach. Whilst many centuries of artists and architects have shaped Paris’s streets – from Haussmannian boulevards to Beaux-Arts buildings – just one artist is synonymous with Barcelona – Gaudi. For your first look at his Sagrada Familia, fly, drive over a couple of days or go to Barcelona by train. Take a direct TGV (high speed train) and you can be in Barcelona in under seven hours.

If you loved the Impressionists on the top floor of Paris’s Musée D’Orsay, then you’ll love twinning it with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Paris is massive, Amsterdam comparitively small, but you’ll find that the Dutch capital stands up to the French. It’s very easy to reach Amsterdam from Paris. A direct high speed train connects the two capitals, taking roughly three and a half hours. Trains run multiple times a day from Gare du Nord. Alternatively, you can drive in roughly five-and-a-half hours.

Holiday like a Parisian – by staying in France, just like the French do. Combine a city break in Paris with a beachy one on the Cote d’Azur. Nice, the biggest city in the area, is six hours away by train from Gare de Lyon in Paris. In just half a day you can be sipping a chilled Provencal rose on a terrace overlooking the warm Mediterranean sea. While you’re at it, take a stroll on Nice’s famed Promenade des Anglaise and hop along the coast to Monaco, Cannes or Antibes.

If you’re ‘doing’ Europe, then Paris and Rome are two of the continent’s truly unmissable capitals. Paris has the Louvre but Rome has the Colosseum and the Capitoline, and between the two you can see some of the best-preserved treasures of the ancient world. You could fly in a couple of hours, drive over a couple of days, or take the train to Italy from Paris’s Gare de Lyon – connecting in Milan or Torino for onward travel to Rome.