How many days in Normandy?

Will you be doing a van tour of D-Day sites ? We rented a car from Paris (Orly -- wanted to make sure of sn automatic) for a week and drove around on our own plus a night at Mont St Michael plus two nights in Amboise to see some chateaux. (Better price to rent for a week.)
FYI, you can remove your duplicate posts by opening and clicking 'delete'

You might want to delete all your duplicate Threads, as it will be much easier to keep all replies in the same place.

Thank you, all!
-- I deleted the duplicate posts. I apologize. This is my first time on the travel blog site.
-- I am terrified of being jet lagged. When we similarly arrived in London in the morning, we staggered around a park until the hotel opened and then slept the rest of the day. We will be arriving in Paris in the morning.
-- We will likely take WWII mini-van group tours out of Bayeaux. Perhaps a third day with a private guide or on our own.
-- There are a few days after touring WWII sites out of Bayeaux where renting a car holds appeal. We are undecided about our route at that point. Keep our base in Bayeaux? Select a second base?

We had 5 extra nights before a month in Paris a couple of years ago and decided to use them in Normandy. We trained to Caen for the car and spent a night at Mont St. Michel, two in Bayeux and two in Honfleur. We arrived late near MSM and spent the evening and had dinner on the Mont and then returned the next morning for the Abbey before driving in early afternoon to Bayeux. That afternoon we visited the Tapestry and Cathedral. The full day we took an Overlord tour of the American beaches. The following day we drove to Honfleur and enjoyed the town that evening. On the full day we drove to Etretat and climbed the cliff paths. We drove back to Caen and trained back to Paris the day after.

We took this in a leisurely fashion and loved it. We could have squeezed in a few more towns. You can see snapshots of some of this including Etretat (very cool place -- a real must see IMHO) in my photo journal at:
http://janettravels.wordpress.com/category/normandy/

If you haven't been to Paris before, you haven't left yourself much time for that. The one day tour of WWII sites was way plenty for us. If you get an apartment you could do all this from one base, but we who generally don't move around a lot and get an apartment and stay put, found that moving worked well for this trip. We liked spending evenings in the three different places which gave us a view of the towns far superior to a day trip/walk around visit. We have a sort of 'seen one, seen em all' view of villages and towns in a region. A day visit to 3 is not superior to a leisurely evening spent strolling around one and then dining in one of the nice little restaurants. Honfleur is lovely especially its small harbor -- once a working harbor and now the parking place for the yachts of the rich. Etretat is a nice little beach town in a stunning setting. Having spent the afternoon there we didn't feel a need to see more cute beach towns.

Unless you are doing organized tours each day in Normandy, you will need a car to get around. Janettravels has a very good point about Paris. Have you been there? If not, of your 12 nights in France I personally would spend more time in Paris. There is so much to see and do there. You would still have more than enough time to spend in Normandy. What time of year will you be traveling?

I would structure my trip something like this-

Arrive in Paris in the morning. If traveling Spring - Fall, take the train to Giverny. Tour Monet's home and garden. Spend a night there to help with your jetlag. If traveling during the time of year that Giverny is closed, take the train to Rouen instead. Spend the night there. Pick up a car there for the rest of the time you are outside of Paris. With your allowable time I would limit myself to no more than 4 nights in Normandy. Bayeux is a nice place to base yourself. Are you interested in the Loire? If yes, spend 3 nights there. Again, a car is necessary. That's 7 nights. The remaining 5 nights I would spend in Paris. If you aren't interested in anything besides Normandy and Paris, I would allot 4-5 nights in Normandy and the rest in Paris.

As for jetlag, I've found that the best way to deal with it is to just keep moving. Being outdoors really helps. Stay up until 9:00 p.m. or so that first night, get a good nights sleep, then the next day just hit the ground running. You mentioned going to Edmonds, so I'll assume you live in Washington. Going to Europe is a long trek for those of us on the West Coast.

Have a great trip!

I've been to Paris many times, and I'm returning this July with 2 adult children and their spouses. I asked some Parisian friends how long it would take to see the main D Day sites and the answer was two days. Three maybe better, so at first glance, you appear to have too many days in Normandy and too few in Paris. Plus, Normandy is only 2.5 hour train ride to/from Paris, not a whole day, so you might want to reconsider your schedule.

Thank you!
Your advice is sincerely appreciated and echoed by others. We added another night in Paris upfront.
My husband is a history buff. The prime purpose of our trip is Normandy so we will leave open-ended time after Bayeaux to explore the sites to his heart's content - and add some smaller romantic sites, like Honfleur and Entretat.