Amsterdam to Normandy (via Paris?) (by train?)

I don't understand the 1-2 hour timeframe for a connection in Paris.
Metro from Gare du Nord to Saint-Lazare for train to Rouen is 15 minutes. Gare du Nord to Montparnasse for train to Chartres is 20 minutes.
Or, metro from Gare du Nord to CDG is 30 minutes. Rent and return your car at CDG. Drive to either Rouen or Chartres to start your trip. I have not driven from CDG, but have driven from Orly and found it similar to any major US city highway driving. I did not have to drive in central Paris itself, which I would not want to do either.

Are Monet's Garden in Giverney and Mont Saint Michel on your planned stops?

Mont St Michel for sure. Giverny, maybe, if we drive to/from CDG. (And, wasn’t sure if it was flower-filled in third week of April as in summer.) The Metro estimates were including travel time plus waiting for scheduled train time, AND hoping we weren’t there at commute time, as it’s a weekday. (Plus, last time in Paris, we were surrounded by some young men on the standing-room-only Metro from CDG, and they tried to steal our suitcases at the next stop. Made us a bit leery of Metro with luggage.)

We were in Giverny in late April 2017 and there were tons of flowers in bloom, especially tulips. The gardens were beautiful then. You won't be disappointed( barring a spring snowstorm).

Oh yes. As mentioned many times on the forum, do not rent a car in one country and drop it off in another. You will pay big time.

Have you thought about taking the Eurostar to Lille Europe and renting a car there driving to Normandy and turning it in at CDG?

Never thought about Lille, France. (I need better maps of Europe, not just one country at a time.) Is that the Eurostar on the way to Chunnel crossing route? I know that one can fill up pretty fast. That would also solve the rental-car-in-one-country issue, though. And, that adds a bit of Picardy sightseeing to the mix.

Hmm. Eurostar.com not showing any stops in Lille. However, does go to CDG, Paris, which may work well for car rental (if I don’t see too many traffic horror stories about driving in/out of there). Weirdly, at present, mobile won’t let me put in any future dates beyond a few days ahead; I’ll have to try my laptop.

Finding out how to get to Lille by train is rather straightforward. But you should not make any a priori assumptions on which train service you need.

What you need to do is just us one of the many European train planners, and just enter "Amsterdam" as origin, and "Lille" as destination, and let the system find out for you who goes there, and when.

Best place to book this is at www.b-europe.com
That is the website of the Belgian railways, and they can sell you all the different options.

Note that schedules for April aren't online yet, but you can just use a date next week to see what is available.

I second the recommendation to rent a car in Lille.
The drive to Rouen takes a few hours, but you could see Amiens cathedral on the way, and it is cheaper and faster than connecting through Paris.

Regarding this:

I don't understand the 1-2 hour timeframe for a connection in Paris. Metro from Gare du Nord to Saint-Lazare for train to Rouen is 15 minutes. Gare du Nord to Montparnasse for train to Chartres is 20 minutes.
Or, metro from Gare du Nord to CDG is 30 minutes. Rent and return your car at CDG.

I have to point out that those timings are wildly optimistic: those are the transit times from metro/RER platform to metro platform.
Nord to St Lazare typically takes 45 min: 15 to exit the TGV and reach the RER E platform, 15-20 waiting + train time (1 stop), 10-15 to climb all the way back up from the deep RER E to the mainline tracks at St Lazare.

And renting a car at CDG to drive to Normandy is not very convenient, since you would have to drive 1/3 of the way around the Paris metro area.

It is absolutely normal to arrive in Paris at one station and leave from another. Many posters on this board learn that they cannot take a single-train from CDG to Normandy, but have to change stations in Paris that morning.

How long is the whole trip? I personally would not pair Amsterdam with Normandy (too far...), but it's your vacation. As you wrote, it's a "Netherlands trip in April." You might wish to use the Search box top center to get a fuller idea of what posters here have done to cover the Loire to Normandy. Here's an example:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/normandy-brittany-thoughts

We flew into Paris, TGV to St. Pierre des Corps, and returned the car at CDG, where we must have spent the last night. We'd already been to Giverny from Paris by train, years ago. So we mostly did Public Gardens (in summer) on the drive back towards Paris. This trip covers a lot of driving time, and we had to skip plenty of sights to do it in the time we had just for that Paris-Paris loop.

For our Netherlands trip, we flew into Cologne (United and Star Alliance partner Lufthansa, no extra cost for second flight), and returned the car in Amsterdam (which was a mistake, to enter Amsterdam with the car!)

Edit: Note that there are two major rail stations in Lille, connected by a long, covered, walkway. Also note that there will be a change in Eurostar departures from Amsterdam in June, 2024, so you might want to be ready for walkway or platform changes in April. Just to be ready for the possibility.

My bad that I assumed the Eurostar from Amsterdam to Paris stopped at Lille Europe, it does not. So you have to change trains at Brussels Midi.

Thanks for all of the suggestion! We already have the plane tickets, so we’re departing from CDG-Paris, regardless of other plans. I’ll keep my eye on Lille/Amiens for rail destination/car rental. It think it does make sense to stay north of Paris, since we don’t need to go there until end of trip. (It just seemed the natural destination if we ended up getting a high-speed train, allowing more afternoon driving time than a local.) Of course, the April train schedules aren’t loaded, yet, which makes me a bit nervous when it comes to planning a car rental — I guess they’ll just be more simultaneous events a little later in the process.

don't worry about the train timetables. They don't often change very much, if at all.

To find out what is likely available use the same day of the week next week.

Plus today is the changeover date for timetables. Give it a short while and it will likely become easy.

We did a Viking River cruise that ended in Amsterdam. The guys wanted to see the beaches of Normandy. Our friends had never taken the train in Europe so I purchased First Class tickets from Amsterdam to Paris early in the morning. I wanted to ease them into train travel. I did not want to take the underground from Gare du Nord to Gare St Lazar as they were new to public transportation...in retrospect we should have. The Paris Taxi scene is bad, with unlicensed taxis even getting into the official taxi stand. A driver tried to charge us 85 Euro for a 15 Euro trip. I was able to argue with cab drivers thanks to Babbel. Anyway, we got to our train and it took 2 hours to get to Caen. Took a short taxi ride to the Best Western Royal that was our home base. Very comfortable with a great breakfast. Rented a car in Caen (GPS was worth every penny extra) and had the best experience between beaches, war museums, cemeteries, and Bayeux. Skipped Mont St Michael as I had Achilles tendon issues and would not be able to climb or descend. We spent 5 days, but would have loved spending 2 weeks plus. So much history and so much wonderful food. I had pizza in little port town. It was covered with scallops that had been in the bay that morning. Amazing butter in Normandy too. Also brush up on your French for Normandy. Many speak English, but many don't. I was happy for the time I studied the language. I have heard that the phone app translators are good. For the return train trip to CDG, we arrived back at Gare St Lazar and went out the main exit then turned left at the street to the Hilton Hotel. The doormen will tell you what the fare to CDG is and will hail a licensed taxi for you. Metro would be faster as it was a rainy day and traffic was bad. We spent the night at the Holiday Inn CDG. What it lacked in charm, it was nice to walk out the door and take a very short tram ride to Air France.

Re: going from Gare du Nord to Gare St Lazare, the underground (Metro) is not the only choice. At Nord you can take the bus #26 to St Lazare. That's what I do as a way to avoid the Metro.

Note that "Metro" from GDN to st Lazare actually means RER E, which is the most recent of the RER lines, so the stations are large and modern, have elevators an escalators etc... Absolutely no need to avoid it.

Thanks Fred and Wengen! We are going back to France this Spring. Flying into Nantes from Athens ( after spending Orthodox Easter with friends in Greece). We loved Normandy last year so much we decided to rent a car and cruise around Brittany and Normandy for 12 days. Turn in the car next to the Caen train station and train it back to Gare St Lazare. After that we will take your suggestions and RER to CDG.