Advice for guided day trip from Paris to Normandy

Is the group willing tto take a train to Bayeux or Caen and take the tour from there? If so, I suggest https://www.overlordtour.com/product/tour-1-omaha-half-day-tour/.

Most of the tours start early in the morning (8 ish) from Bayeux, so it would be best to stay in Bayeux the night before. It is about 3 hrs from Paris by train. If you are hoping to make this a day trip from Paris, it would be a very long day with very few D-Day sights.

Here is another company that is mentioned on this forum often https://www.dboothnormandytours.com/available-tours

Thank you both for such quick replies. This forum is always very helpful. A trip to Normandy is not feasible for us this time.

Are you no longer interested in a day trip to Normandy or do you mean an overnight trip to Normandy is out of the question? If you want a tour that departs from Paris, friends of mine did the day trip (13 hours) tour offered by Paris City Vision. They liked all of their Paris City Vision tours. They also used them for a day trip to Mont-St-Michel, another day trip (I forget to where) and for a day trip to Bruges in addition to the Normandy day trip.

Overlord has an option for a private tour from Paris. Not cheap, but this is a good company, and if this is their only chance to see D-Day sites, why not?

https://www.overlordtour.com/product/tour-10-pick-up-paris-two-days-tour/

Overlord offers a full-day trip departing from the Bayeux train station, timed specifically for those taking the first train up from Paris. The tour drops participants back at the Bayeux train station at the end of the day. This would allow your friends to cover more sights than a bus tour from Paris. Overlord uses small vans rather than large buses.

https://www.overlordtour.com/product/tour-2fs-omaha-utah-full-day-tour-week-days-only/

The six of us are all together this week (we don’t live too close to each other) and we’re planning our time together. There is one day when we are splitting up and doing our own thing for the day. Without getting into too much detail, the day trip to Normandy is probably just a little too far outside the time/cost parameters for the two who are thinking about that as one option. We haven’t finalized that yet but it will be up to them to decide between that and other options. They may well still choose to take a day trip. Either way, the links and information are helpful and truly appreciated.

We are doing it from Paris with Blue Fox Travel small groups ( max 8 people) with transport it will be a long day but my husband is a huge history buff and this was his one request prices I believe are reasonable and reviews are very good.

If Normandy is no longer a good option, have you considered Giverny? The Monet house and garden is, of course, the centrepiece, but the village itself is lovely and worth a wander. The train from Paris takes about an hour, and drops you in a villlage across the Seine, and then a shuttle brings you into Giverny. Arrive early to avoid the tour bus crowds! We had a wonderful day there. AND…bonus…by starting early, we got back into Paris in time to catch a lovely concert at La Madeleine!

@manager, excellent advice, but to be clear, Giverny is in Normandy (as is Rouen, Étretat, Fécamp, Honfleur, Dieppe, etc.). It is just that many people from the states, when referring to "Normandy," really mean the WWII Beaches area. I sometimes suffer from that mistake myself.

It makes a great deal of sense to consider the cost of day trips vs. how much time you'll actually have to see the sights at the destination. Paying round-trip transportation to a distant destination where you can't spend much time can be very costly on a per-hour-of-fun basis. I prefer to spend multiple nights in an area to see local sights and perhaps take one or two short day trips to places with only one day's worth of sights.

Normandy, of course, has lots to see, so going there for just a day--significantly less if you're traveling up from Paris--seems a shame to me. Bayeux alone has close to a full day's sightseeing options in addition to being the base for a variety of D-Day tours.

Isn’t Cityvision stilling doing day trips to WW2 sites !
They leave from Paris .
Yea a long day . But perhaps doable .
You can sleep in bus

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/day-trip-from-paris-to-d-day-beaches-acf8ace3-7773-4e57-b464-b178dcd45e1f

If the 2 interested in going to the D-Day beaches decide not to go, there is still a lot to see in Paris. I recommend reading Is Paris Burning by Lapierre & Collins about the liberation of Paris. Here is a Visit Paris Region page about sights in and near Paris.

A trip to Reims to see the Museum of Surrender is also an option, with the added benefit of visiting champagne houses.