A week here and there recommendations

I think Boudreaux could be a possibility and has some train connections to the south and southeast. You can also take some small day trips by van into the surrounding areas. There will be nice bus connections to get you smaller villages and cities you might like to explore and photograph.

You’ve probably already been there but the Alsace region has train service and busses to the smaller wine villages.

I like your Annnecy idea. We were fortunate to go on a tour at CERN into the underground area where they let us walk up and over the supercollider and we could look in and see the detectors. That was a long time ago, in 1998. We also visited in 2003 with our son’s family but we couldn’t go underground because they modifying it for LHC experiments.

Annecy's pretty, but it's quite small. I wouldn't want to spend a week there even if I were planning a day-trip to Geneva. However, if you want to take it really easy, it's a very attractive place just to be. It was awash in tourists during my June 2017 visit, but I hope September would be considerably quieter.

There are tons of things to do in and around both Lyon and Nice.

I enjoyed spending a few days in Bordeaux, but to me a major reason to go there is its proximity to the Dordogne, where you've already been. If you have no mobility issues, a side-trip to St-Emilion would be worthwhile, though it can be full of tourists. I'd choose Nice or Lyon instead of Bordeaux, however.

Actually, I really liked the towns (as opposed to villages) where I stayed or which I visited during trips in 2019: Cahors, Perigueux, Bergerac, Figeac. They're all accessible by public transportation, as is Sarlat. I don't know that there's a good single hub from which you could easily visit a bunch of those places, but I'd have considered my visit to the Dordogne worthwhile even if I hadn't gone to a few villages that required more walking than most folks would consider reasonable.

You didn't mention Provence. Have you been there?

Normandy and Brittany are both full of interesting towns, but I'm clueless about their weather in September.

There's also Alsace.

All those places mentioned are nice, but wouldn't want to not have a car there, as you'd spend so much time finding schedules and waiting for buses. So doing the math you need two places, each of which you could spend 3-4 days in without a car. If sightseeing is your thing, nothing I can think of France jumps out at me for that kind of time. You'd see all the sights in a day or two.

What I think you need is a place where you can relax, stroll the streets and live la vie française instead of sightseeing. This could be a charming town or city that you could reach by train (I'm thinking Strasbourg, Beaune, Annecy, Blois, Nice). Or a village that you could reach by cab from the nearest station (perhaps L'Isle sur le Sorgue, Collioures, St-Cirq-Lapopie, Rocamadour).

I’ve been to Annecy 3 times and am going again in July. It’s a relaxing kind of place, so I think a weeks stay might be too long. Lyon is only 2 hours by TER so you could do both. I also recommend Colmar and the outlying villages - cute as a button! Dijon was a good 2-day stopover for me and I took a mini bus tour to vineyards. Aix-en-Provence is a very walkable city and a great tourist office for booking tours to the hill towns. There’s also a commuter line that takes you to Marseille St Charles station. I walked to the seaside and took a hop on bus then mussels right along the water. Amboise for seeing chateau.

Good luck!

I don't understand Darren's comment about public transportation. First, both Nice and Lyon have far more than one day's worth of local sights. Nice has frequent local trains running along the coast, giving easy access to places like Menton, Antibes, and Cannes (and many more). There are buses going up into the hills, and it's really not that difficult to get schedule information online. I found the Nice tourist office (right outside the main train station) very helpful.

I'm less familiar with easy side-trips from Lyon, but I am sure they exist. Annecy has buses running along the lake (quite possibly all the way around it; I only went part-way), and no doubt Geneva is easy enough.

I would definitely not want to set up camp in Rocamadour for multiple days. The lower town is horribly touristy, and you would be totally marooned there without a car. It is a very, very long walk to the nearest bus stop, along a highway with narrow shoulders. I did that walk and didn't feel safe. St. Cirq is also something of a walk (part of it significantly uphill) from the nearest bus-access point, but it's not as isolated as Rocamadour; nor was it unpleasantly crowded at the time of my visit. On the other hand there's really not much to do there beyond a few hours. Collioure and L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue both have more-regular public transportation and are larger than the first two. However, for a week I wouldn't choose any of those places. I'd prefer a larger town with trains and/or buses fanning out to multiple spots of interest.

I've had a great deal of experience traveling around Europe (and 4-1/2 months in France) without a car. If you set up shop in a place of some size, there are virtually always some attractive options for day-trips. What's difficult is trying to get to two (or, worse, more than two) day-trip destinations on a single day--unless your targets are along the same train or bus line. It works best if your sightseeing targets are places where you can amuse yourself for the better part of a day, so you don't have to worry about trying to go to two places on the same day. You can check train and bus schedules before departure and then just verify when you get to your base city or town. If there's a local tourist office, it may have printed copies of local transportation schedules. It's really not that hard.

Thanks -- we are pretty mobile but my husband is visually impaired so sightseeing is no longer all that fun for him so a really pleasant place to stroll and have coffee by the water etc is good.

We have been to Provence a couple of times and are not big fans -- and have also spent a few days in Nice but find it attractive because of its great train connections along the coast clear to Italy. I love Brittany and we are thinking about that as well. We spent 4 nights in St. Malo a couple years ago without a car.

Happy to hear opinions about any of these place or other ideas. I agree that without a car a town rather than a village -- or a small city makes sense. Maybe 5 nights in Annecy and 2 in Geneva for Cern and head back to Paris from there? And that gives us another location on the front end -- or we could add a week into November on our Paris place.

I'm so in love with Brittany that I can easily see spending a week in either Rennes or Nantes. Both have good day trip options by train/bus to interesting places. This list of possible day trips from Nantes make it sound like a great place to base without a car. Both cities have plenty to do in themselves and are easily reached from Paris by train.

I love Brittany too -- we did spent 3 nights in Nantes a couple of years ago and loved it -- but we haven't done Rennes -- may look at that. appreciate it.

Rennes could work: Fougeres, Vitre, Dinan are good day-trips. Even Dinard and/or St. Malo would work. For that matter, Vannes (if you didn't get there while you were staying in Nantes) is no more than 75 minutes away on a regional train.

In September, you may or may not be lucky with the weather in the north. I suggest La Rochelle as your base which is further south than Normandy/Brittany. It’s got a great coastline with boat trips and the nearby gorgeous islands of Re and Oleron for oysters, small picturesque villages for having a coffee and people watching, a world class aquarium, fantastic food markets and plenty of historic sites.

Bordeaux is ok for a day trip, but I wouldn’t want to spend a week there.