Maisons-Laffitte was a pleasant surprise. About 10 or 15 minutes walk, depending on which way you walked. It was a good stop for shopping, eating and wandering. It meant that once the van was on the camp we didn’t need to drive off until we left.

It was where we got the RER into Paris with no bother, and where we headed for a cheaper day out to mitigate the costliness of days out in the capital.

We took the riverside walk for the scenery and to pass some time (aire de jeux pour les enfants)

We meandered around the shops, with some very fancy displays. Faire la lèche vitrine has never been so good.

We ended up sitting outside an Italian style restaurant called Caffè e Cucina and had an agreeable lunch for just over €98 (so much for a cheaper day out) and had much fun. After chatting to the waiter in French 3 or 4 times it was amusing to discover he was actually Irish. It was only when he let slip a “mother of god” that it was evident!

We walked across town to take a tour of the Château, for the entirely more reasonable €16.

It was smaller than your average Loire château, but nice enough. The interiors were very typical and we spent a couple of hours having a pleasant wander and laughing at the goons posing for hundreds of selfies in the driveway.

We returned via the riverbank again after spotting some humour in the ironmongery

It’s clearly a residential, rather than tourist area, but was pleasant enough and meant that we didn’t have to battle with traffic when we needed to stock up. I’m not sure I’d go out of my way to go there, but if I was in the area again I wouldn’t necessarily avoid it either. Price-wise not much different to the other bits of Paris we visited.