Day Trip Paris

Have you considered an early eurostar trip to London or Brussels? I've only experienced the London portion, but you can see all the touristy things and return on the latest train.

What is your goal for this trip? Is it just to experience the high speed trains, or is there a particular place or kind of place you want to go? And, while I understand wanting to go somewhere else besides Paris, the high speed trains go mostly to cities, not small towns. It doesn't make sense to spend the time and money getting to a city, only to spend 1-2 hours there. If it's worth going to, it's worth spending most of the day (unless there's some bucket list sight and that's the only reason you're going to a particular city). There are long lists on-line of day trips from Paris. Most do no involve high speed trains, but if that's what you want, in addition to London or Brussels, you could go to other French cities like Strasbourg, Nancy, Lille, Marseille, or Lyon (my favorite). All are within your time limit (Marseille's a bit over). In Belgium, you could take the Thalys high speed train to Brussels; if Brussels is not of interest (I didn't care for it, but others like it) then you can stay on the Thalys for Antwerp, or change to regular trains for Ghent or Bruges (or indeed, anywhere in the country). If you do this, see if you can book a ticket with an "ABS" add-on, which gets you to All Belgian Stations for only a few Euro more than going to Brussels. If you can stretch to 3 hours 20 minutes, you can even go from Paris to Amsterdam or Cologne. If you do want to take a day trip by high speed train, book in advance for best fares; tickets bought at the last minute will be very expensive, and on some routes at some times you run the risk of them being sold out. The problem is, the advance tickets are not refundable or changeable. Yet more reason to focus on trips within the Paris region or nearby (Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chartres, Giverny, etc), which are reached by regional trains not requiring reservations.

Cities within 3 hours of Paris by train include Marseilles, Avignon, Lyon, Dijon, Angers, Amboise, Rennes, Reims, Rouen, Strasbourg, Nancy and Metz (could even visit both same day), Brussels and Brugge, and of course London.

Harold
thanks for the Information. we have experienced Paris in the past as well as southern France. The thought is having lunch on a high speed train watching the country side slide by, the high speed train should allow a lot of country side to be viewed in the shortest amount of time. The train in the south of France spent more time in tunnels not allowing for any view. we have done this type of thing before, when we were in Arles we hopped on a train and got off 2 hours later, we discovered a wonderfull village or town, called Montelimar the home of Nougats. I like your suggestion of Lyon. Thanks Dave