How To Spend A Weekend In Auxerre

Only an hour and a half from Paris you can find the charming town of Auxerre.

There’s a lot you can visit near Paris and  Auxerre is on the list. Luckily I got the opportunity to explore this delightful town the time of a short week end.

Therefore I can tell you this; this town is charming, comfortable to walk in and perfect to shot some lovely photography. In my opinion a perfect week end gateway.

How To Spend A Weekend In Auxerre

Two decades ago in 1995 Auxerre was named “Town of Art and History”.
Knowing this you can easily assume that the town is quite scenic. And you’d be right.

Auxerre is crossed by a river, the Yonne, giving the city a magical landscape.
If you get on one of the bridge, you can catch a good sight of the Cathedral dominating above the city. Lastly, I think it’s always a novel idea whenever you take a stroll along a river – especially in such lovely weather as we had.

If you want to take some very instagrammable like a shot, then you need to get your bum on this bridge you can see to get a full view over the city as you can visualise in the first picture of this post.

But if you rather model instead of taking photographs of the city, then you can do it right on the bridge. Pretty cool am I right?
Although I feel like a shot would have been better without this lamp, and maybe a better outfit BUT at least my backpack is pretty damn fancy. (It’s a backpack from Grafea, check out my Grafea Backpack Review)

Anyway, I digress.

Moving on onto the unique, ravishing town of Auxerre and its quiet narrow cobbled streets. If you’re an amateur of the old town and their particular architectural style full of touch from the medieval renaissance then there’s every likelihood you’ll love strolling around and taking pictures of Auxerre.

One of the main landmarks of the town is the Clock Tower.

The location of the Clock Tower is right in the heart of the town; it fit so well with the town architecture. It’s stunning.

As you may have noticed on this street, you can find plenty of various shops if you’re looking for souvenirs, traditional products or even Yankee Candles! A few restaurants,  and the town hall.

I love this kind of architecture

Another landmark of the town is Auxerre’s Cathedral. The cathedral was built between the years 1215-1233.

The diocese was my favourite part of the visit!
Stained glass panels were lightening over the nave.

If you happen to visit Auxerre some day you should drop by Olivier Vidal chocolate shops. You can find some delicious cakes and chocolates that make perfect souvenirs or yummy treats for yourself.

The area around Auxerre has some more point of interests, but unfortunately unlike Auxerre city centre which is easy to access by train and walk around, if you don’t have a car they’re pretty hard to obtain. There are some buses but they pretty much run very few times a day so not the most convenient way to travel.

 

WHAT ELSE TO SEE

Boutissaint Park 

Boutissaint is a huge park where you can find several animals such as deer wandering around or some others in the restricted area. And if you’re as unlucky like us, you might come across a baby boar and get the fright of your life (seriously that was no fun at all)

You can also rent bikes to visit the park. Which I would have love to do however it wasn’t available on that day…

This aside it’s fantastic to see deer from such a short distance.
It gave me a big Nara vibe. Nara is a city in Japan where the deer roam freely for over a thousand years.

Have to say the peacock matching my friend’s hair was also pretty damn cool.

St Fargeau Castle 

St Fargeau Castle displays now and then a night visit where the castle gets a “revival night” with costumed actors/guides explain you everything about the castle and life used to be back in the days. The visit also ends on a horses show.
Obviously, you can also visit it during the day but the night visit is pretty cool and unusual.

Wine cave: Baily Lapierre.

We didn’t get to visit this one, because they were no more guide and well honestly none of us was keen onto doing the visit, but it’s apparently interesting and pretty famous for wines amateur according to the locals.

HOW TO ACCESS ->

Auxerre can be accessed either by car, train or even bus (such as FlixBus).

The train is probably the easiest way it’s also somewhat cheap and only takes 1h30 if you plan on visit Auxerre exclusively. However, if you plan on visiting more of the area then going there by car might be a better idea.

In conclusion, if you are looking to visit more of France, you should give Auxerre a chance. It is one of that lovely town where you can just freely stroll around without a plan and get surprised by what you will find.
And if you’ve already been there let me know about it in the comment 🙂

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Enjoy,
Lyne

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