Day trip from Paris

Take the train. You don’t need a car.

Claude Monet – The Gare Saint-Lazare, Arrival of a Train. Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum

Where exactly is it?

On this map, directly to the left of the Eiffel Tower, you’ll see Évreux. Bernay is the next train stop. If you’re thinking “Évreux looks closer, why not go there?” just don’t. It’s bigger (50K people), and parts of it were destroyed in WWII and rebuilt afterwards. It’s just not as pleasant, not as picturesque, not walkable…

How to get here

Hop on a train at the Gare Saint Lazare in Paris, arrive in Bernay in under an hour and 30 minutes. Depending on when you’re traveling, round-trip tickets can be as low as 30€. The Bernay train station is a five-minute walk from the center of town.

What if I want to drive?

If you do, there’s plenty of free public parking in Bernay. But you might want to get a disque de stationnement because some of these lots are time-limited. Click the image to get to the official PDF.

But it’s really only worth the over two-hour drive if you’re staying longer than a weekend and want to see other spots in the region, like Lisieux, which is 30 minutes from Bernay by car (or 15 minutes by train). There, for example, you’ll find the Basilica of Sainte-Thérèse of Lisieux, the second most popular pilgrimage site in France after Lourdes. (I’ll be writing about the surrounding areas a bit too.)