We've Been Ruined by This French Town (Send Help!)

We’ve lived in France for two years now.

We always thought we’d try somewhere new by this point. Southern France would offer more sun. We keep going back to Italy, a country with which I’m deeply obsessed. My family’s Polish, so that’d be a more natural transition.

But every time we talk about moving, it ends the same way: “Eh, it’s too much work. Let’s just stay.”

Honestly, we just haven’t seen anything better yet, or at least something good enough for us to go through the hassle of moving.

We live in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. It’s technically a suburb of Paris, which I say with mild annoyance because I grew up in Chicago and have strong feelings about people claiming cities when they’re actually from the suburbs.

Well, suburb or not, I’m claiming this one. This place ruined us. Here’s why.

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There’s a literal castle down the street.

The first thing you see when you come up from the RER station, the train hub we use to get to Paris and the airport, assuming the escalator is working, is a full-on royal château.

It’s not a castle-themed hotel or a glorified cheese store, although I will always have love for the Mars Cheese Castle in Wisconsin. It’s a real castle.

This is an actual 17th-century royal residence, the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

A dog walks chateau grounds at sunset in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France.

This castle dates back to the 12th century, when Louis VI wanted to build a fortification overlooking the Seine valley. The structure we see today largely reflects a 16th-century Renaissance rebuild commissioned by Francis I.

It later became a favored royal residence where kings like Louis XIV were born and raised before the court moved permanently to the Palace of Versailles in 1682.

After falling into decline, the château underwent extensive restoration under Napoleon III. Quite a bit of it was reconstructed to reflect its Renaissance appearance, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive when I’m showing off our town.

Today, it houses the National Archaeology Museum, which is admittedly pretty dry, but the fact remains: we live minutes from a castle.

Perhaps most impressively, our dog Kimmy Kibbler has pooped within the castle grounds. I don’t know how you come back from that. Am I supposed to move somewhere without a château in my daily walking radius? Ruined.

Fun fact: If we’re feeling really aggressive, we can walk to another castle from our house, the Château de Monte Cristo. It’s the former home of author Alexandre Dumas.

We can see the Eiffel Tower from our house.

Yes, we’re those people. On clear days, you can spot the Eiffel Tower from the edge of town. Do we casually point it out when people visit? Absolutely. Is it tiny and obscured by haze most days? Also yes.

But it’s still one of those small, potentially annoying flexes that never gets old. Once you’ve had that view, it’s hard to imagine going back to not having a view of an icon from your pad. Ruined.

Royal gardens are just public parks here.

Flowers bloom in front of the castle in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France.

The terrace and gardens around the château used to be royal land. Now they’re just where we go to get our steps in.

In the spring, everything blooms. It’s my favorite season here, as we generally don’t have to worry about the “false spring” that tormented us back in the Midwest.

In the fall, the leaves get to that perfect level of crunch underneath our feet. Winters are tougher. We don’t get much snow, but it rains quite a bit, so I’ve affectionately started calling winters here “mud season.”

That only makes those first signs of spring more special.

And because we’re outside central Paris, it’s not overrun with influencers doing duck lips in the flower beds. It’s mostly locals walking their dogs, jogging, pushing strollers, or sitting on benches reading novels. Sometimes they’re making out if they’re twitterpated.

This is our everyday backdrop. Ruined.

There are baby goats.

A smiling goat in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

Next to the gardens, there’s a small farm with goats and pigs. It’s part of our regular family walk route with Kimmy. You can bring kitchen scraps to feed the adults, which is as wholesome as it sounds.

To add to the Disney effect, every year, there are new baby goats. They wobble. They headbutt each other. They fall off logs. I fawn.

Back in the U.S., I would’ve paid for this experience at a petting zoo. I’m someone who has dropped quite a bit of coin on goat yoga experiences back in California.

Here? It’s just any old day. If we’re feeling ambitious, we walk to a second farm at the bottom of the hill in Le Pecq, the neighboring ‘burb. There’s a friendly donkey at that one who loves carrot sticks. Ruined.

The forest goes on forever.

A man walks his dog in the forest in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France.

The Forêt de Saint-Germain is huge, miles and miles of trails that connect to more forest, and then more. Brian loves long runs through these woods, but it brings joy for me because it’s where our dog feels the most joy.

She’s really embraced that stick life after moving here. It’s where we go when we want to escape the townsfolk, or where we want to remind ourselves that we live in a place where nature and our daily life can coexist.

I will miss this the most when it’s time to leave. You just cannot replicate this in the U.S. It doesn’t exist, not in this way, with a thriving town on the edge of this much space to roam.

Fun fact: Apparently, there are wild pigs in these woods, too, although we’ve yet to see any evidence of them.

Anyway, you can be in central Paris in under an hour, or you can be tossing sticks with your dog in five minutes. That balance is dangerous. Ruined.

The town center feels like a movie set.

Sweet treats at a bakery in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

The historic center is walkable, compact, and charming AF. There’s an animatronic cobbler handcrafting shoes in his shop window. They decorate every holiday. There are dozens of boulangeries.

Fromageries. Boucheries. Rotisseries. It’s all here.

You don’t have to go to the grocery store for everything. You can go to your bread person, or your cheese person, or your chicken person. (Our chicken person is Roy at Rotisserie du Roy, as he is the best, end of story.)

Back home, moving through the world that way just doesn’t exist, and even if you tried to replicate it, it’d be unsustainable financially. You can buy a baguette for around a euro here, or the most beautiful pastry for four or five.

Note: They taste as good as they look, by the way, which is not always everyone else.

It feels curated and Intentional, even old-world. When my mom visited for the first time, she said it reminded her of the old country.

Yes, we still have all of the fast food chains you’d expect in a modern community, but you’re also surrounded by healthy, fresh, well-priced options to feed yourself locally. Ruined.

The market is life.

Fresh fruits and veggies at a market in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

Three times a week, the town hosts a full market in its city center, up against the backdrop of a post office that looks like it should be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the U.S., this would be an overpriced farmers’ market, with heirloom tomatoes that cost as much as a month’s worth of dog food. Here, it’s a regular addition to shopping habits, and prices are comparable to what you’ll find inside the grocery stores.

On Sundays, our spills onto the side streets. You can buy produce, cheese, meat, flowers, scarves, coats, random antiques, and the occasional thing you absolutely did not plan on purchasing.

Something I promised myself recently is to take advantage of it more, as this is definitely something we won’t get back at home. Ruined.

Cheap wine has never looked so good.

A glass of wine at a wine bar in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

Shopping at the grocery store is still our default. We still go several times a week because eating fresh is the default, and we have two great options within a few minutes’ walk of our apartment.

If we feel like having wine with dinner, it’s not a budget compromise. This is broader than our town, as it’s true for most of France, but wine here is cheap.

We’ve stopped thinking of it as a luxury and have embraced the notion that local goods should be cheaper. This country produces a lot of wine, so a lot of it is very affordable. Are you listening, Napa? Back home, cheap wine is best used to deglaze your pan.

Note: I don’t care what you say about Trader Joe’s. It’s cheap, but it’s not good wine. I’ll just be drinking less of it back home, because this point has changed me.

You can buy a very nice bottle of wine for under $5 here. If you’re throwing a rager, you can buy a nice bottle of wine for about $3 here. Brian would want me to mention the access to cheaper Belgian beer here, too.

That’s the way it should be with goods produced locally, whether that’s bread, produce, or wine. Ruined.

Why We Haven’t Left

It’s not even France in general that ruined us. We’ve been all over the country, to nearly every department in metropolitan France. Some places are sunnier. Some are cheaper.

But moving sucks. None have been compelling enough to make us say, “Yes, let’s pack up what we’ve built here.” We have stuff now. We got an air fryer the other day.

We’d also be trading something with a move, whether that’s walkability, the woods, our castle, or those friggin’ baby goats.

I know this place isn’t forever, but that’s why it’s important for us to embrace the time we have here with both hands. We’re ruined now, and that’s not the worst thing.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in France:

More guides to French destinations:

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We’ve Been Ruined by This French Town (Send Help!)