Day trip to Amsterdam from Paris

It is the first time I've heard of Amsterdam as a day trip from Paris. It is doable with the high-speed Thalys, but hardly agreeable: you'll spend close to 7 hrs on the train for a relatively short visit. Tickets, when bought well in advance on the Thalys website, can be as cheap as EUR 35 single journey, depending on demand.

As I recall, we had to stop in Brussels to change trains. Assuming you are going to go out and walk the town a bit this is not going to be doable as a day trip, continuing on to Amsterdam and returning the same day. The immediate area of the Brussels train station is nothing that I can imagine you would want to see. This was I believe from 2017.
The best way to get train information is at trainline.com
Having said that, it's rather a long ride for a short stay.

That's a 3 hr. 19 min. trip on the Thalys. Add the time to get from your hotel to Paris Nord and back at the end of the day, and you probably have close to 8 hours of travel time. For me that's way too much time on a train for a day-trip--especially to a city where I'd want to spend multiple days. I certainly can't imagine stopping in Brussels on the way. The Thalys stop is Bruxelles Midi, which is a mile from the Grand-Place; I'm not sure what there is to see in the immediate area of Bruxelles Midi; I have never been to the city.

You really do not have time to stop in Brussels. The Grand Place is at the Brussels Central Station stop that the Thalys does not serve. Hopefully you are going in summer when the days are a lot longer. To satisfy your curiosity taking Thalys is the quickest way but expensive if you do not buy 90 days in advance. There have been other travelers here that have reported taking daytrips to Amsterdam from Paris that did not feel like it was a waste of their time but I would not do it
https://www.thalys.com/fr/en

That seems like a lot of transit for a day trip (and possibly pricey train tickets as well).

My recommendation would be to not try to do all of that. If it were me, I'd stick to day trips in France around Paris. That being said, if you are relatively sure that this may be the only trip to Europe you take, I can understand wanting to knock out a bucket list item. Perhaps an overnight in Amsterdam would be better? It's just that the transit there is going to eat up over three hours each way already. A day trip to Brussels would be manageable (though people tend to have a mixed response to Brussels).

As others have noted you are devoting at least 8 hours to just travel on that day -- stopping in Brussels is... for what?

I would not do this as a day trip and I love Amsterdam. I would only do it if I could spend at least one night -- travel early have the afternoon and evening and then return late so you have most of the day. Travel with just a day pack for essentials and get a central hotel (priceline which we don't usually use in Europe is actually pretty good for Amsterdam) Amsterdam repays a relatively short visit -- but not the time you would have in a day trip IMHO.

If you have an apartment in Paris then just keep that for the overnight trip and leave most of your stuff. If you have an hotel than arrange to change rooms and have them store your stuff till you return (most hotels will do that for a short period in my experience). Thalys tickets are cheapest about 4 mos out.

You would be spending most of your day on trains, then essentially hopping out in Amsterdam to walk around for a short while before getting back on the train to head back. This is not a smart way to travel. Amsterdam deserves more time than that (so does Brussels). I would urge you to reconsider.

Ideally one should spend multiple days in Amsterdam, but often it's fun to do something crazy like this when on vacation....so I say go for it! If you take the very first and last Thalys trains the travel time isn't that big a deal especially if you nap through it. People take the Chunnel train on day trips between Paris/London all the time and when you factor in the overhead of checkin and immigration the travel time is only a bit shorter. Forget about stopping in Brussels and just do Amsterdam...it will be a blast and a great adventure!

Yeah go for it. The first train leaves at 6:13 the last one back is at 19:15.
So you can get I good eight hours of sight seeing

Wow! I’ve been very entertained by some of your responses! Thanks for the tips, much appreciated - I will probably make it a overnight trip.

Well the idea of visiting both Amsterdam and Brussels on a day trip is, I am afraid to say, a bit ludicrous (and that was the exact reference, to the idea you posited about doing both Amsterdam and Brussels in the same round trip day trip from Paris).

People are simply responding to your request for advice. If you don’t like some pieces of advice, you are certainly welcome to disregard them in favor of the ones you do like. But you also can not be surprised to receive honest assessments of your proposal on both sides - good and bad.

If you are travelling from North America, explore using a multi-destination search function to find a flight into Paris and home from Amsterdam. That way you can allot a couple of days to Amsterdam, which it deserves. The itinerary won't be much more expensive than a simple round trip, will save you one rail fare, and save you lots of time. You could always do it in reverse order since Amsterdam and Paris are both major airport gateways.

When I'm doing my initial, rough planning for a trip, I find it useful to use Google to see the distance between places I am considering.

A simple Google search will give you an idea of possible modes of travel and approx. time. I can quickly see if my idea is possible. Saves me getting enamored of an idea that just isn't going to work.

I tend to agree with those who find the idea of a day trip to Amsterdam from Paris a less than ideal idea. I probably wouldn't do it myself, but I think others might find it an adventure so I wouldn't presume to tell someone else not to do it or tell them it was an idiotic idea.

If you do decide to do it I hope you'll come back here and do a (day)trip report and let us know how it worked out for you. It might help others to know it you found it a good use of your time.

I did a day trip to Amsterdam from Paris in 2010 specifically to take my daughter to the Van Gogh museum. I think it took us about 7 hours round trip on the train. The only deal I know of is to buy your tickets early. Given that it took us 7 hours of train travel time plus arriving ahead of time to the station and travel within the cities to get to the train station, we did not think there was no time to stop in Brussels but then again my daughter had no interest in Brussels but was obsessed with Van Gogh at the time. If you take the earliest train from Paris like we did, you arrive in Amsterdam at around 10 AM and the last train leaves at around 7. We spent three hours at the museum, took a one-hour canal tour, and ate a meal during our approximately 7 hours in Amsterdam. I have a thing against taking the last train of the night so we took the 6ish PM train home. It was a hectic day but was worth it. We went back to Amsterdam from Paris subsequently and stopped in Brussels but that was a four-day trip.

Andrew.reis mentioned Bruges: that is more feasible than Amsterdam as a day trip, and more 'satisfying' as a few hours are enough to see most of Bruges - whereas you'd miss most of Amsterdam. Travel time is a bit shorter, too (you save 60-90 minutes on the round trip). You do need to change trains in Brussels but that's very easy. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, in the vicinity of Bruxelles Midi station so it is really just a place to change trains.