Chevreuse: The Perfect Day Trip

Bonjour everyone,

I’m officially past the halfway mark for my program! It’s crazy!! Exploring Paris has been amazing—there are so many different foods to try, places to see, and neighborhoods to get lost in. Today I’ll be talking about another excursion I took outside of Paris: Chevreuse! 

Chevreuse is a little town on the outskirts of Paris, south of Versailles. I heard about it from one of the IES Abroad staff who recommended it for those who needed to get out of the city for a bit. So my friends and I planned to take a day trip there. 

We took the RER B to the end of the line around 10am on Saturday. While there was an option to wait for a bus to go to the center of Chevreuse, we decided to take the path and walk about 1.5 miles. On our way, we saw cows and goats (which we were able to stop and pet).

Chevreuse itself it pretty tiny—so the options for lunch were somewhat limited. We ended up eating at La Table Des Artistes, which was great! It’s a restaurant that has art displayed inside and has amazing food. I got a burger, which came with fries and a salad. The staff were super friendly too. It looked expensive on google maps, but when we got there and looked at the menu, everything was pretty reasonably priced. My meal was about 16 euros.

After lunch, we hiked up to the Chateau de La Madeleine, which is over 1000 years old. The view was phenomenal. There’s also a museum (which unfortunately is not open on Saturdays). While it’s not an enormous chateau, it’s still a beautiful piece of history.

On our way back down, we stopped for ice cream at the local Boulangerie/Pâtisserie, which was pretty good! It started to rain so we had perfect timing. After the rain was over, we walked back along the path to the train station and stopped at a dairy farm: Ferme de Coubertin. There, they have local organic products such as honey, milk, eggs, fruit, vegetables, and cheese for purchase. The milk came straight from their cows on the farm! They also have a cheese vending machine (which I think was created during COVID)!

After our dairy farm visit, we walked back to the train station, where we took about a 40 minute ride back to Paris. It was such a beautiful and amazing experience to get out of Paris for a bit! The town is very cute and has a little river flowing through it with tiny bridges that look, according to my boyfriend, “structurally unsound.” But they were adorable and the perfect spot for pictures!

If you’re looking for a day trip out of Paris to rediscover the country, Chevreuse is the way to go! Add the Chateau and the dairy farm to your must-see list while you’re there and spend some time just walking around the town (easily hitting your step goal). 

Signing off,

Elowen