Last Updated on 20 October 2023 by Colette
Typically when we’re on holiday in France, we like to alternate our days between campsite days, beach days and finding little towns to go and explore. I particularly enjoy finding little markets where we can pick up some food or souvenirs to take home.
On our most recent visit France (we stayed at Camping Les Tropiques), we found that between the weather being really good, having our best friends on holiday with us and the pools on site really holding the kids attention we didn’t actually need to particularly go out on adventures or exploring. It wasn’t really what any of us were in the mood for – this holiday was more of a frozen margaritas in the sunshine vibe. However, on one day in the middle of our holiday, the weather was not looking great – it was cloudy, it was damp and thunderstorms were forecast so we decided we would hop in the car and go visit the nearby town of Perpignan.
Perpignan wasn’t somewhere we’d particularly investigated before we went and we didn’t really have any plans, it was more just that it was the nearest town and we wanted somewhere to have a little bit of a mooch – to explore and wander around some shops so that we didn’t waste our day.
As we were walking up from where we’d parked the car to the middle of Perpignan, we spotted “Le Petit Train De Perpignan” and the girls asked if we could go on it and we just thought, “Why not?”. It was a completely spur of the moment decision – there happened to be a train sat waiting so we booked our tickets and got straight on just as it was about to leave.
What is Le Petit Train de Perpignan?
Le Petit Train de Perpignan translates to “the little train of Perpignan” and is little “train” which offers a short guided tour of Perpignan.
Is the tour in French?
We were each given a set of headphones; little in-ear headphones for the adults and over-ear headphones for the children. The in-ear headphones were brand new and you can take them away with you when the tour is finished, the children’s headphones had to be handed back again.
The headphones plug in above you and you choose the channel according to the language that you would like your tour in. Obviously we chose English but I think there were about 10 different options and two of them were child-specific – I can’t remember which languages had child-specific tours but the English one was just one version so we were all listening to the same thing.
How long does the tour take?
The Little Train of Perpignan train takes around 45 minutes from memory. The guided tour is timed to match perfectly with each of the places you visit. The tour showed us various historical places of interest and told us little stories which meant that we got to see and know about far more of the town than we might have done on foot particularly as the weather wasn’t great.
Because the Le Petit Train pootles along at quite a steady pace, you are able to take photographs as you go along and it gave us ideas of places that we might want to wander back and explore a little more of later in the day. For that reason I think it’s a really great thing to do first thing in the morning.
Once the tour finished it was lunchtime and the weather wasn’t particularly great so we grab some food and actually ended up deciding to go back to the campsite because we weren’t enjoying wandering around in the rain. Had we not taken Le Petit Train de Perpignan tour then we would have seen very little of the city so I’m really glad that we decided to hop on.
How much does Le Petit Train de Perpignan cost?
The Little Train of Perpignan costs 5 euros for children and 8.50 euros for adults.
Can I pre book The Little Train of Perpignan?
You can’t book ahead for the Le Petit Train. Tickets are bought at the box office opposite Gallerie de Lafayette near Boulevard Wilson (if you’re using What3words = ///router.carver.socket) and must be paid for by cash.
Le Petit Train de Perpignan is a great way of getting to see and learn about the southern French city of Perpignan and the reasons for the significant Catalonian influence and was definitely worth the money we spent on it.
Have a look at these posts next:
Driving to the south of France with kids
Hiring car to drive to the South of France
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