day trip to Normandy

Its about a 2 hour train ride one way from Gare Saint Lazare. You get off at Caen and rent a car. You can do everything yourself easily or you can hire a guide for a more in depth study of whatever site[s] you want to see. It would be a very long day. The Bayeux tapestry is in Bayeux and amazing. Then there's the cemetery and beaches which are very moving, even for my 13 yo daughter who read every.last.word and explored everything in the museum that leads out to the cemetery. Then there's Mont St. Michele. And much more. So one day seems like a loss, but many people do it. If you start early and return late you could see a lot

Jessica

Our tours available or do we do it ourselves?

There are tours available
for example https://www.viator.com/tours/Paris/Normandy-D-Day-Battlefields-and-Beaches-Day-Trip/d479-2050NP

but you can do it yourself; when I went I ran into people doing themselves on a daytrip from Paris.

How long is the trip and what way would be the best and how much time is involved?

The link to the trip above says 14 hours roundtrip. The people I ran into took the train from Paris to Bayeux and then the bus to the American Cemetery Museum from there.The American Cemetery Museum leads to the Omaha Beach; you probably will not have time to see as many areas of the beach if you do it that way.

Look up Overlord Tour -- https://www.overlordtour.com

Their tours start in Bayeux, but they also have a set of tours that start in Paris -- https://www.overlordtour.com/product-category/tour-from-paris/

Full-day guided tours are very much worth the substantial cost, more informative (and more emotional) than what you can do on your own. You can't get from Paris to Bayeux by train in time to catch the morning departures. Half day is half the experience. The well-regarded peace museum in Caen also runs tours and Caen, being bigger, offers a bigger choice of services than Bayeux.

Buried deep on the Overlord Tours website is a reference to a tour that departs from (I think) the Caen train station rather than Bayeux, and the starting time is just enough later in the morning to make it theoretically possible for someone to take an early train up from Paris and catch the tour. I wouldn't want to do that, but you could use the contact link on the Overlord website to ask when that tour may be offered. I assume it is not a frequent thing.

Really, I would not attempt the D-Day sites unless I could spend at least one night in Bayeux--the night before a full-day tour. Driving around yourself (unless you are a military historian or very-well-informed hobbyist) is just not going to be very illuminating. You'll see and learn a great deal more by taking a full-day tour.

Cheryl,

As the others have mentioned, taking a "day trip" to visit the Normandy beaches is not really a realistic option, due to the travel times to get there and back. While a direct train from Paris to Bayeux may only be a couple of hours, you still have to get from wherever you're staying in Paris to Gare St. Lazare, buy tickets, wait for the train, etc. Another point is when you arrive in Bayeux, how do you get to the beaches? The invasion covered a front of about 50 miles and extended some distance inland. A guided tour which provides transportation would be essential. While you could rent a car, that's not really practical for a few hours, and you wouldn't really know your way around.

One possibility would be to book one of the half-day Overlord tours, which often pick up in Bayeux. If you decide on that, pre-booking well in advance is highly recommended!

The easiest method would probably be to take one of the guided tours from Paris, such as this one - https://www.pariscityvision.com/en/france/normandy . Those will be a long day, again because of the transportation times, but will provide a brief overview of some of the major sites.

Good luck!

I just reserved an Overlord tour for friends that begins with pickup at the Bayeux train station. They'll catch the 7:06 out of gare St Lazare, arriving Bayeux at 09:16 and (hopefully) returning to the station to catch the 18:35-20:49.

Personally I prefer to stay at least 2 nights in Bayeux but they just don't have the time and they really want to see the Normandy Beaches. Maybe next trip they can stay longer.

Darcy, that's the tour I noticed on the website last year. Glad it worked out for your friends. I think that is a better option than taking a bus tour from Paris, assuming those tours use buses to get to Normandy. Caen is 146 miles from Paris.

Just did this trip last Thursday.
http://www.bayeuxshuttle.com/d-daygrouptour-paris-winter.htm
We saw, among other things, Point du Hoc, Utah and Omaha beaches. We arrived at the American Cemetery just as they were lowering the flags for the day (we had about an hour before they closed for the day). They give you explicit instructions as to which trains to take and the times. We took a train from Paris to Carentan where the driver met us. We took a return train from Bayeux. It was a long day but you can take a nap on the return train! We really enjoyed the trip.

We did the DDay beaches in a day trip from Paris in 2016. I agree spending the night is advisable but it did not work with our France plan on that trip. We bought 7 a.m. tickets (in advance on trainline.eu) to Bayeux (about 2 1.2 hours) and arrived about 9 am. We spent the morning exploring (highlight for me was the cathedral and water wheel), had lunch then took the 1/2 day Overloard Tour. They dropped us off at the train station for a 6:30 pm train back to Paris. The guide did a great job and we covered areas that would have taken us a whole day. It was a long day but very enjoyable.

We day tripped last year to Normandy. We looked at Rick Steves recommendations and trip advisor. I emailed all the tour companies I could find and many of them were already booked. We booked late like in April for an August date. We supplied them with several days of possibilities. We took our grandson (age 17) and it was a long day. Wish we could have spent the night because the area is BEAUTIFUL. We left early in the morning and returned in the evening. We went with First Normandy. He was very professional, took us to sites I specifically wanted to see and made great suggestions. It was a great day and one our grandson will never forget.

The van trips don't typically book up so far in advance, but it will be very helpful to contact the chosen company well ahead of time, and if you can offer multiple date options, that will make it easier. My Overlord Tour had 9 passengers, and I think the van may have been at capacity, but I saw some other Overlord vans that were larger. I assume they assign the vehicles based on how many people have signed up for each tour.

For those without a family connection to D-Day, taking a Canada- or UK-oriented tour might also be a possibility if the US-oriented tour schedule didn't work out.