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Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. ✅ Quick Answer For a first trip, 10 days works well: Paris (5 nights, including a day trip to Versailles or Giverny) plus Provence (4-5 nights, reached by direct TGV from Paris Gare de Lyon to Avignon). Seven days? Stay in Paris alone, with one day trip. Fourteen? Add the French Riviera or Normandy as a third base. Book TGV InOui or OUIGO tickets as early as your dates allow - OUIGO’s summer 2026 fares start around 10-19 euros and sell out fast, while TGV InOui typically runs about 35% cheaper booked 3-4 months ahead than at the last minute. The France Itinerary That Taught Us to Stop Chasing a Third City We had six cities on a whiteboard before we’d even booked flights: Paris, Lyon, Avignon, Nice, Bordeaux, and somehow Strasbourg too, all inside nine days. By day four we’d spent more time on SNCF platforms checking departure boards than actually looking at anything, and we cut Bordeaux entirely just to get a real afternoon in Avignon’s old town instead of a rushed two hours between trains. The trip that actually worked, the one we’d repeat, kept Paris as the anchor and added exactly one region by train - no more. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. ✅ Quick Answer France’s high-speed rail splits into two SNCF brands: TGV InOui, the full-service option with flexible fares and onboard catering, and OUIGO, the fixed-fare low-cost brand starting from around €10 on classic routes and around €19 on OUIGO TGV for summer 2026 sales (travel 4 July-12 December 2026). Booking around 3-4 months ahead (SNCF’s window runs up to roughly 90 days out) typically saves around 35% versus booking late, and OUIGO’s cheapest seats sell out fast once a sales tranche opens. Paris trains depart from different stations by direction — Gare de Lyon for the south/southeast, Gare du Nord for the north — so check your ticket before you travel. France Trains: The Two-Brand System Nobody Explains Up Front Book a French train for the first time and the confusion starts before you’ve even picked a seat: two logos, two very different price tags, and nobody tells you upfront which one you’re actually buying. I’ve watched a fellow traveler pay full InOui fare for a Paris-Lyon run that cost a third as much on OUIGO leaving twenty minutes later from the same city — same high-speed track, same 2-hour-ish journey, wildly different receipt. ...