1/2 Day Normandy tour and Mont St Michel

To get to Mont St. Michel you have to take a train from Bayeux to Pontoroson.
From Pontoroson. you can either take a taxi or a bus to Mont St. Michel.
It is real easy.

There is no train station at Mt St Michel so to get back to Paris you would need to go back to Pontoroson to catch a train back to Bayeux and then another train directly to Paris.

Your proposed itinerary sounds quite rushed to me. What do you want to see in Normandy? If your interests include the D-Day landing beaches, that can be a full day on its own including the American Cemetery, other nearby beaches with monuments, and possibly the (less often visited) German cemetery. The American Cemetery is very beautiful, has a large museum, and has walking paths all the way down to the beach.

Similarly, I'd want at least a full day to experience Mont St. Michel (preferably stay in a hotel on the mainland that has a view of the Mont).

The RS guidebook to France gives good directions for driving yourself around these areas. Naturally also buy a Michelin map and consider GPS in your rental car. Have you checked rental car availability out of Bayeux, or would you consider getting a rental car at CDG airport?

If you are so inclined, Hotel Churchill in Bayeux offers a shuttle service to Mont Saint Michel. You leave Bayeux at around 9:30 AM and return at around 3 PM. It is worth considering -- it costs more than the train and you don't get to spend the night at MSM which I think is the best time to be there, but it is awfully convenient and easy.

I imagine that a 1/2 Day tour from Bayeux will basically visit Omaha Beach (WN-62, the various memorials, etc) and the American cemetery (memorial, etc) on the bluff behind the beach - there wouldn't really be enough time to see anything else unless it's a drive-by...

With a 1/2 day in Bayeux you can get a glimpse of most everything.

Mont St. Michel to Bayeux on public transport will take most of 2 hours - 4 hours for a round trip.

2 Days is not a lot of time to see an area with 1,500 years of very dramatic history. Another day or even two would really help.

I also would recommend a full day tour to the Normandy Beaches, Cemeteries, small towns with significant history of D-Day activities. We booked a tour and it was well worth it to have a very knowledgeable guide who could tell us so much of the history.

To quickly get back from MSM to Paris, the easiest and most frequent option is to get to Rennes, and from there take a direct TGV train to Paris Montparnasse.

Thank you for all your suggestions. I know it's going to be rushed, but we are meeting family in Rome the following week. I just thought arriving a couple of days early in Paris, we have seen Paris and love it, we wanted to see something else.

Give yourselves over to a full day tour on the 12th if you think you may be jet lagged. No thinking then required.

May 11th - Arrive in Paris. Train to Bayeux (2)
May 12th - Full day Normandy tour
May 13th - Travel to Mont St Michel (1)
May 14th - Return to Paris from Rennes

I agree that the WW2 invasion sites deserve a full day tour. Then a day to St-Michel, not because the hill needs a long visit but because of the transport (which will, at least, provide a decent experience of the Normandy countryside.) An alternative base is Caen, bigger and with more facilities than Bayeux, with its own well-reviewed war museum which runs tours. From Caen you might take a bus tour to St-Michel. As a bonus, William the Conqueror's fortress castle is worth a look, right in the middle of the Caen.

Seeing MSM at night is spectacular so you should stay over.