After the Marathon des Grands Crus: Paris

The Route: Dijon → Paris Gare de Lyon (4 nights) → Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport / Orly Logistics: Direct TGV north to Paris Gare de Lyon, 1 hour 36 minutes at the fastest, arriving inside the city rather than at an outlying airport terminal. Marathon Month: October Duration: 4 nights

Dijon-Ville ──(1h36 TGV)──> Paris Gare de Lyon (base, 4 nights)
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                    RER B (~45-60 mins) or RER B/Orlyval
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              Roissy Charles de Gaulle (CDG) or Paris-Orly (ORY)

The Marathon des Grands Crus is a Burgundy race through and through, so four nights in Paris afterward is less an extension of the marathon trip than a genuinely separate one, connected only by the TGV line that happens to run straight from the race city to the capital. For anyone flying home through a Paris airport regardless, it is close to a free add-on: the same journey you were already going to make, just stretched out.

October in Paris runs cooler and greyer than the postcard version of the city, with shorter days and a real chance of rain on any given afternoon. That works in this trip's favour: museums and indoor sights carry more of the itinerary than they would in June, which suits legs that are still finding their feet four or five days after a marathon and would rather sit in a gallery than stand in a queue outside one.

Night One: Arrival, Gare de Lyon and Bercy

Arriving into Gare de Lyon puts you within a short walk of one of the flattest, most forgiving recovery routes in the city. The Promenade Plantée, also known as the Coulée verte René-Dumont, is an elevated former railway viaduct converted into a linear park, running roughly 4.5 km east from near the station: paved throughout, level, planted along its length, and largely free of the steps and cobblestones that make so much of central Paris hard going on tired legs. It is the clearest reason to base yourself near Gare de Lyon on the first night rather than crossing the city immediately.

Le Train Bleu, the historic Belle Époque restaurant built directly into Gare de Lyon station itself, is worth the first dinner if the setting appeals as much as the food: gilded ceilings and painted panels from 1900, and a classic French menu that runs to duck and a proper cheese course. It is not a quiet meal, but arriving into it straight off a train and a marathon week has its own logic.

Where to stay: Novotel Paris Gare de Lyon, a short walk from the station, keeps the first and last nights simple, useful given you are arriving by train and may be departing for the airport from the same area. Mercure Paris Gare de Lyon offers a similar trade of convenience over character, a reasonable choice if minimising walking on arrival day matters more than the neighbourhood.

Night Two: The Marais and Place des Vosges

The Marais, a short walk or a couple of metro stops from Gare de Lyon, holds narrow medieval streets that predate Haussmann's nineteenth-century boulevards, a rare surviving texture in a city mostly rebuilt to a wider, straighter plan. Place des Vosges, Paris's oldest planned square, dating to 1612, is a flat, arcaded space with gardens at its centre, and it works better as a sitting point than another walking obligation: benches under the arcades, grass in the middle, and none of the traffic that surrounds most central Paris squares.

Where to stay: for the Marais nights, a smaller boutique hotel inside the district itself puts you within walking distance of Place des Vosges and the covered passages of the Musée Carnavalet; check current availability directly, since room counts in the Marais's historic buildings run small and book out early for October weekends.

Where to eat: Bofinger, near Bastille and the edge of the Marais, is one of Paris's oldest brasseries, open since 1864, known for choucroute and a proper seafood platter under a genuine Belle Époque glass dome. Book ahead for dinner, particularly on a weekend.

Night Three: The Seine and Montmartre

The Musée d'Orsay, on the Left Bank, is worth a half-day on its own: an Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection housed inside a converted Belle Époque railway station, with the building's original station clock still visible behind glass at one end of the main hall. Entry runs approximately €16 (£14). From there, the Berges de Seine, the pedestrianised riverside walkway between the museum and Pont de l'Alma, gives a flat, paved stretch of river walking with cafés and seating built into the route, a gentler alternative to the cobblestones that dominate so much of central Paris underfoot.

Montmartre, on the hill in the north of the city, is the one part of Paris where the recovery lens matters most: the streets around Sacré-Cœur climb steeply, and stairs are unavoidable if you walk up from Abbesses. The funicular railway from the bottom of the Rue Foyatier steps to the base of the basilica removes that climb entirely and costs the same as a standard metro ticket, a straightforward substitution worth making a few days after a marathon rather than a point of pride to walk past.

Where to eat: Le Consulat, a long-standing café on Rue Norvins near the top of Montmartre, works for an unhurried lunch with a view back over the rooftops, simple French bistro plates rather than anything that needs booking ahead.

Night Four: A slower final day

Keep the last full day light rather than trying to fit in a final major sight. The Jardin des Tuileries, between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, is flat gravel throughout with plenty of café seating, an easy place to spend an unhurried afternoon before an early departure the next morning. If a museum visit still appeals, the Louvre's collection is large enough that a focused two-hour visit, rather than an attempt to see everything, suits tired legs better; entry runs approximately €22 (£19), and booking a timed slot in advance avoids the worst of the queue.

Where to stay for the final night: returning to the Novotel or Mercure near Gare de Lyon, recommended above, keeps the last morning simple if you are departing by train or heading to the airport directly from that side of the city.

Getting to Roissy Charles de Gaulle or Paris-Orly Airport

For Roissy Charles de Gaulle (CDG), the RER B runs from central Paris stations including Gare du Nord and Châtelet–Les Halles, taking around 45 to 60 minutes depending on the starting point and time of day. For Paris-Orly (ORY), the RER B connects to the automated Orlyval shuttle at Antony, or the Orlybus runs directly from Denfert-Rochereau; either route takes roughly 35 to 50 minutes from central Paris. Check the current fare and any planned engineering works at ratp.fr before departure day, and build in more time than feels necessary if travelling with luggage from a four-night stay.