Bayeux Area - City Recommendations

Have stayed in Bayeux twice in the past dozen years - think it would be hard to find a more convenient location. Close enough to the beaches, numerous hotels and restaurants. The historic district is quaint.

We stayed this year at Hotel Lion d'Or and enjoyed our stay very much. Michelin rated restaurant also.

Also had dinners at L' Alcove and Le Pommier (L' Alcove was our favorite in two weeks in France!).

Make dinner reservations WELL in advance, walk in opportunites were seldom found in Bayeux,

Also throw in a prop for the Winston Churchill center and British Cemetary in Ver-sur-Mer. Very thoughfully presented.

Bayeux is centrally located. My favorite alternative is Port en Bessin. When you come to Normandie rent your car in Caen adjacent to the railroad station. May is just before the summer rush so a coastal “base” could be nice.

There are as many reasonable recommendations as there are people posting. To make your father’s experience more meaningful read some of the history on that momentous summer. There are endless ways to absorb D-Day.

One poster referred to the British Cemetery at Ver sur Mer; it’s in fact the official memorial for British/Commonwealth forces who participated. It’s a moving monument to that summer of battle decades ago.

Good Luck!

Bayeux is wonderful and has the added benefit of being large enough to have several dining and hotel options, along with some local sight-seeing for the times you only have a little time before or after visiting larger, more out of the way sights. Really, it is recommended for a reason, and I have stayed there a couple of times. That being said, I almost always stay in Sainte-Mère-Église (eight or nine times so far, and going back next June). It is the epicenter of U.S. Airborne operations around D-day if that is of interest to you, and celebrates the U.S. involvement in the Battle of Normandy. There are also many WWII sights fairly close (Utah Beach, La Fiére Casueway, Saint-Marie-du-Mont, etc.). But there aren't nearly as many dining options there (PM me if you want some recommendations, including my favorite). Although I have never stayed overnight in Port-en-Bessin, it is a nice, quaint, seaside village with a few places to eat. It has a very cute port with ramparts and boats coming and going.

Everything nearby other than Bayeux will be smaller with less dining—other than Caen which is far from "charming." One thing of which to be aware: depending on when in May you are going, you could be close to the June 6th anniversary of D-day. That will limit your options if you aren't already booked. Good luck and bon voyage!

My husband and I and our two daughters stayed in Bayeux for a few nights and found it quite charming.

What a wonderful surprise for your dad!

This past spring (May 5-6, 2025), my husband and I stayed two nights at the Hotel Reine Mathilde just a block from the Hotel Villa Lara in the center of town. We really enjoyed the location; it was charming and close to everything we wanted to do. I couldn’t comment on the suitability for this location with a car as we didn’t have one. Our focus was the Bayeux Tapestry Museum (before it closed for renovations), wandering the town and a Normandy Beaches tour with Overlord Tours.

The town felt busy, but didn’t feel over-run with tourists. Maybe we hit the sweet spot between the May 1st and May 8th holidays. And, I’m sure this was a total anomaly, we were the only two people on our “group” Overlord tour. We had an excellent private tour at the group price!

We’re kind of casual about meals — the stroll-up-the-street-and-pick-a-restaurant types. Perhaps because we are early diners, both nights we had no difficulty getting a table as walk-ins when restaurants first opened for dinner. We had a nice meal at the restaurant at our hotel the first night and had a good steak frites on the rue Saint-Jean the next night. Both restaurants were full by the time we finished and left.

We prefer smaller towns to busy places so when we visited Normandy, we rented a small house in Port en Bessin. We could walk to shops, restaurants, the shore, and the harbor, and from the house, see the cute town and fishing boats coming in and out of the harbor. There was a clean and well-stocked grocery store in the village. It was nice.