First Time To France- Any Help Would Be Great!

Bus tours or small group tours are offered from Paris to the Loire valley, as a full-day excursion. I'd suggest doing one of those, if you really, really want to go. However, I'd suggest you do Versailles on your own. Schedule a full day for each, out of your total Paris time.

For a first visit to Paris, I'd allocate at least 3 full days for the city itself (not counting your arrival day) and pick Versailles for one extra day (so a 5 nights stay min.).

Will you be renting a car for the Provence part? You can easily pick up and drop-off a rental car from the Avignon TGV train station for a few days. Car or no-car will impact where you can base yourself from. You will not want a car for Nice, but it would really be great for the heart of Provence.

For Nice, allocate one full day just for visiting Villefranche-sur-mer (Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in the morning) and Monte Carlo (afternoon). Two of the visits that I also enjoyed when I spent time in Nice were the Chagall Museum in Nice and the Monaco Aquarium.

Nice is in Provence. It's worth an afternoon and an evening. There's some spare time.

Four or five days is okay for Paris, even with a day spent out at Versailles.

There's no central spot for all of Provence, You're going to have to pick either departments or interests of some kind before you'll get much real help. Five days is tight. Call it six if you displace once. How do you plan to move around the region?

The Loire just about screws the deal. You've already got a travel day going from Paris to the south. It'll take most of another one to get into the Loire. You've got about a spare day which won't give you much. It could be better used someplace else.

Sorry just to clarify I will not be renting a car at all. So I had though maybe I would take a train from Paris to Provence and then in Provence use the metro system. Then from provence to Nice I would take a train/bus and station myself there.

There is no metro system in Provence. Provence covers a large area. You can travel by train to a few places, and buses go to others. Buses may not run regularly. Provence is best seen by car. If you absolutely don't want to drive you should base somewhere with good train/bus service. Avignon, Arles and Aix en Provence would all meet that criteria. Aix and Avignon are both larger than Arles. Any place you choose I would plan on staying near the train station for ease of getting around to other towns.

Katie, There's no metro in Provence, except for a few lines in Marseille. As Ed said, Provence is a large region. It sounds like you want to station yourself in one spot and move around to see other towns and sights by bus and train. Many people have written on Arles and Avignon as places to base yourself. Next, Nice is three hours from Arles and Avignon by train. That would be a separate place to base yourself to see the museums and small towns on the coast.

I suggest you only do Paris and Nice. During your stay in Paris, you could take the CityVisions bus tour of the Loire Valley. they have a one day tour, or a two day tour (which I took a year ago -- it was great). Your could also do a Mont St. Michel or Normandy tour. Add a couple more days to Nice, and take bus to Monaco/Monte Carlo, or other towns nearby. The French Rivera should be wonderful in Late summer, spend time there!

Thank you all for your responses. I spoke to my mom and we decided on renting a car in Provence. This is my revised itinerary:

Day1: Friday August 29th: Travel (Leave Toronto)
Day 2: Saturday August 30th: Paris
Day 3: Sunday August 31st: :Paris
Day 4: Monday September 1st :Paris
Day 5: Tuesday Septmeber 2nd :Paris
Day 6: Wednesday September 3rd : Paris (day trip to Versailles)
Day 7: Thursday September 4th :Paris (day trip to Liore Valley)
Day 8: Friday September 5th :Provence
Day 9: Saturday September 6th : Provence
Day 10: Sunday Septmeber 7th : Provence
Day 11: Monday Septmeber 8th : Provence
Day 12: Tuesday Septmeber 9th :Provence
Day 13: Wednesday Septmeber 10th :Nice
Day 14: Thursday September 11th : Nice
Day 15: Friday Septmeber 12th : Nice
Day 16: Saturday September 13th: :Travel home

I think this is an intelligent and thoughtful itinerary. You might want to re-think the car thing for Provence (or as Ed might say, western Provence).

Many wonderful sights are on the rail line in the Rhone Valley area, but for a 5-night stay I think you might rub up against that constraint a bit and wish you could get out into the countryside and see more. There are buses that time of year but they often entail transfers and waiting around.

if you are determined to be car-free you can of course still have a memorable trip. You might consider shifting another day to Paris in that case however.

Hi Adam, Thank you so much for your response. I spoke to my mom and we decided on renting a car in Provence, We thought it would be an easier idea. DO you suggest we still base ourselves in Avingon or somewhere else. Also what are the must sees with a car? Im not sure if i should shift a day from Provence to Nice?

Katie, it sounds like the advice so far has been pretty good. If there were anywhere in France to have a car rental, Provence would be it. You don't have to base yourself in Avignon, although it would be fine if you did. Other options would be Aix-en-Provence, Orange, or Les Baux. There are dozens of other towns to consider but these would be a good start.

As for the switching a day over to the Riviera instead, so far you have 5 nights for Provence and 3 nights for the Riviera. I don't think it would be an issue to leave it as is. But if you wanted to spend an extra day in the Riviera, then by all means go ahead. There isn't really a wrong answer there. One last suggestion though. You might consider staying in Villafranche instead of Nice as it is smaller, easy to get to and probably less crowded with a car.

for driving times and directions, maps.google.com is pretty good about giving you ideas. You can also try www.viamichelin.com.

For research purposes... correct spelling is "Villefranche" aka "Villefranche sur Mer".

Katie.. you have four full days in Paris but will be out on wed and thurs.. leaving you primarily mon and tues for sightseeing.. the issue to be careful of is if you wish to visit some of the popular museums( Louvre or Orsay for instance) they close on Tuesday for Louvre and Monday for Orsay.. it would suck to discover on tuesday that you had missed the chance to visit the Orsay because it was closed and you already have daytrips out of city for next two days.. the one to Loire Valley will take all day into the evening but the day you go to Versaille you could conceivably go to the Louvre after as its open late on wed nights.. Orsay is open late on Thurs.. but really that would be alot to do in one day.

You will not regret having a car in Provence! With a car, I would prefer to stay someplace smaller than Avignon—but I confess that's based on visits to Avignon versus stays in other places, not on direct experience wrangling a car there. You can ditch the car when you head to Nice.

I am also tremendously biased in favor of the Rhone Valley end of things. There is so much to see and do there! And in the south, it's high season and hot. So: reservations and air conditioning.

I would agree with ditching the car in Nice. Bus service is quite good, especially to the east of Nice, and easy to use. Nice has a lot to offer in terms of art, beauty, and accessibility to transportation; even not knowing your or your mom's interests, I would think it would make a good home base for you. Personally, I would find Villefranche a little sleepy. The Cote d'Azur is lovely and you will have no trouble finding things to do. If you like to hike, there are plenty of opportunities for that as well.

Just to be clear, while returning the car in Nice would be fine, I was suggesting returning it in western Provence (probably in Avignon) and taking the train to Nice. Based only on the OP's original predisposition against driving.

Both train and drive should take about 3 hours I think.