Le Puy-en-Velay is a small town in Haute-Loire, 2h30 away from Lyon by train. It's picturesque, calme and not super touristy in April. It was the ideal destination for us to go on a relaxing weekend in a small French town in April.

Two days were enough to visit the town without rushing it and even taking breaks to have a drink outside in local bars. Here's everything we did and ate (coming in a different post very soon).

We rented an Airbnb, it was very central, super practical to visit the town. It's right beside the Halles Ponot and you'll need to walk about 15 minutes to get to the train station.  

The main reason people visit the Puy-en-Velay (not the reason we went there though, haha) is that it's a stop on the pilgrimage of Camino de Santiago. There's a lot of things to see and do talking about that and you'll see a lot of pilgrims in the town.

Our favorite spot of the trip ❤️ : Le musée Crozatier

To access the museum, you can go through the Henri Vinay park which is very nice. There's a playground for kids, a few animals (goats, peacocks...), a cute pond and a lot of benches to have a picnic.  

It's a very fun museum for kids, lots of things they can touch, listen to... Very nice collections, we could've spent hours there (and we did) !

My animal-loving daughter really enjoyed the last floor with the mammoth fossils and the snakes in formaldehyde collection.

Price : 6€ for adults, free for kids
Address : 2 rue Antoine Martin, 43000 Le Puy-en-Velay

Get a good view of the landscape : le rocher St-Michel d'Aiguilhe

268 steps to climb to get to the chapel and get a gorgeous view on the town and its surroundings. There's a few benches inbetween steps to take a break if needed.

Before climbing to the top, there's a few movies you can watch that explain the story of the chapel and the volcanic rock it's sitting on. Great for kids and adults !

You can tell by our hair that it was quite windy up there. 😂

Once you get to the top, the view is nice but the visit is very short. Not much to see inside the chapel if you're not here to pray.

Price : 6€ for adults, 4€ for kids
Address : Rue du rocher, 43000 Le Puy-en-Velay

If you want a higher point-of-view, you can also climb the Notre Dame de France statue but we decided not to this time.

Get plenty of local delicious things : le marché de la place du Plot

You'll find a lot of great local specialties to bring back home with you, including lentils and the famous artisous cheese. The market is on Saturday morning.

Lots of cured meats, local cheeses and fresh bread. We bought everything we needed to have a nice picnic, it was great. You can have a picnic at the Henri Vinay park we talked about earlier.

The market is located on the place du Plot but it also spreads to a few streets nearby, prices vary a lot so have a walk around the market to compare before you decide to buy anything.

Wander in the narrow streets and discover cute shops

I love wandering in small streets when I discover a new city so that's exactly what I did in le Puy-en-Velay and the streets are so cute. The town is not very big, so take your time to explore !

Get a little background story, visit the Puy-en-Velay cathedral

We're not big fans of these type of visits so we just went inside to check it out. You can pay to see other parts of the cathedral though. The organ is quite impressive !

L'hôtel des lumières that is just outside the cathedral looked very fun but it was closed when we were there... Too bad !

There are quite a lot of hiking trails outside the town, you can ask the tourist office for recommendations.

There's probably a lot more to do but in two days, without rushing it, that's what we got to do. It was a very relaxing weekend !

I hope this will be useful if you're planning on visiting the Puy-en-Velay soon. I'll post the what we ate there blog post really soon.