Is 6 days in Normandy too much?

Normandy is certainly worth a few days, and its easy to spend 2 or even 3 days on the coast, with visits anywhere between St Mère Eglise and Honfleur. If your primary interest is Juno beach and the Canadian museum, plus it's related sites, you might consider staying in Courseulles-sur-Mer. I think 6 days is a bit much even if you are a military history buff.

Giverny is a couple hours drive from the coast, and while it is lovely in September, there is nowhere close by to drop off your rental car before returning to Paris. I'd actually add a day to your Paris stay and visit Giverny as a day trip.

Belgium is a great place to visit, but there are much more interesting places to visit than Brussels. I'd suggest Bruges or Ghent instead. Both easily reached by frequent trains from Brussels

ETA - re your forum name: any relation?

I.mccrae,
Six days in Normandy is not too much. Six days of only touring the DDay sights is too much for me. Normandy is large and includes many other sights to see and places to explore and enjoy. I found Brussels to be the least interesting part of Belgium, so would skip that. So, with your 6 days in Normandy, I would give 2 full days around the DDay sights (3 nights), 1 full day on cheese/cider route. (Where you spend this night depends on what you find to do. You may be able to do this from your first location, making it Nights 1-4 there.) Drive from there east along the Route des Abbayes, driving next to the Seine part of the way to Rouen. (Stop at the Abbey of Jumieges enroute). Spend 2 nights in Rouen so you can have a full day there...wonderful medieval city with the famous cathedral, food, old town, Joan of Arc connections. Drive toward Paris stopping at Giverny (half-day is good here) and end up in Paris, or drive to Lille to drop car and train to Amsterdam
Night 1-3 Bayeux or Arromanches or St. Mere-Eglise
Night 4 Possibly same as 1-3...depends on cider/cheese decisions
Night 5-6 Rouen
Night 7 Wherever it works to drop the car and catch a train to Amsterdam. (Paris, Lille, ?)

I am assuming you would prefer to avoid the autoroutes (freeways, but not free). The D roads are the most scenic, esp. between the DDay area to Rouen. There are numerous suggestions for Normandy other than DDay sights on the forum. Use the above search bar. Filter for "forum" and "one year or less" or "two years or less".
Have a great trip. Come back to the forum with your more detailed questions as you research your trip. There are many helpful contributors here.
Bonne chance!

Great tips thank you. Having never been there it’s hard to know where to start. I will research based on your ideas and post a potential
Itinerary for more advice.

Another vote for all 6 days in Normandy. Get the Michelin Green Guide for Brittany which covers just about every town, has suggested driving routes, etc. We also used Stu Dudley's Normandy & Brittany itinerary; see https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/normandy-and-brittany-stu-dudleys-updated-itinerary-1670294/

For the D-day beaches I'd recommend taking one of the guided tours unless you feel well informed about the history; the guides at companies like Overlord are very good at explaining what you're seeing and what happened.

I typically spend 8–10 days in Normandy every other year. Yes, I am very interested in history, but there is so much to see other than that, and it is a very peaceful, bucolic place. Kinda like Nova Scotia...

Driving from Paris to the coast, I'd make time to visit both Rouen and Honfleur.

Normandy AND Brittany....I feel that this is too much to cover in 6 days, especially if you want to include Giverny. I would leave Brittany for another trip. Brittany is over 10,000 sq. miles; Normandy is over 11,000 sq. miles, way too much area to cover in 6 days. People often tend to meld the two areas into one lump, but they have stark differences, and each is worthy of as many days as you can spare.
I hope you have a terrific trip!

Would you suggest returning the rental car back to Paris to train to Amsterdam or would Lille be a better option?

I am not familiar with Lille re car drop-offs, but will say that I would avoid driving into Paris at all costs.

We returned our car in Lille last year. The car rental return for all of the agencies is across the street from the train station. Very convenient. One caveat: We returned our car on a Sunday. Hours are very limited on Sundays; so don't do it on Sunday. We had to really coordinate our car return and train to a pretty tight time. But all went smoothly. Then we took the train to Belgium.

Perfect thanks!

We visited Mont St Michel as a day trip when we spent 6 nights in Normandy. So you could add that to your plan if interested.

IMHO this would be a good way to use your 6 days for Normandy: get your rental car in Caen. Split your time between Bayeaux (for Juno Beach and Honfleur) and Saint Malo (for Dinan and Mont Saint Michel). Caen to Saint Malo is only 120 miles. We found the areas I suggest, some of which are just across the border in Brittany, more interesting than other parts of Normandy.

Totally off topic: Lucky you to live in Nova Scotia! We loved our October week there several years ago - Lunenberg, Digby, Wolfeville, and Cape Breton. The highlight was crossing the Canso Causeway with waves crashing -TV news said they closed it right after we crossed!

I just finished a week in Normandy, and there's a lot I need to go back to. First, WWII stuff will get repetitious; you want to see Juno and the Canadian museum, I think that's good. Do stop at the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, it's one of the prettiest cemeteries, and worth a visit. And unlike the American one at Omaha, you can walk the graves.

A slightly different day can easily be spent in Cherbourg at Cité de la mer, on the harbor front, where you can also see some WWII bunkers, but you'll get a combined ticket for the Titanic, the theater with a good movie about the city in WWII and the reconstruction, the Aquarium, and a tour of a nuclear submarine. Good restaurant too.

And don't forget to tour a cider press, or Calvados distillery. Cider, Norman cheeses, and clams, mussels, and oysters are local specialties.

If you have any interest in horses, Normandy is the Kentucky of France. Go inland from the beaches just a short ways, like around St Lo, and you'll find that's a major part of the economy.

Unfortunately the museum with the Bayeaux Tapestry will be closed as of 1 SEP for at least two years. And the cathedral in Chartres is all wrapped up in scaffolds inside and out, but there's a lot of other stuff to see and do.

Expect rain.

You could easily spend a month or two in Normandie and not see everything. 6 days will be a great introduction.

Do stop at the Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, it's one of the
prettiest cemeteries, and worth a visit. And unlike the American one
at Omaha, you can walk the graves.

While I agree on the beauty and peacefulness of the Canadian War Cemetery (I visit it almost every time I go to Normandy), the suggestion that you can't walk the graves at the American Cemetery is incorrect. With the exception of the official ceremony on June 6th every year, you certainly can and should walk the graves in this cemetery. Often the area right around Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and his brother Quentin Roosevelt (WWI Veteran) can also be off-limits that entire week of June due to excessive foot traffic. But the other graves and all the graves outside of that week are easily accessed.

Sorry, but I was at Omaha just 3 days ago. All the graves are roped off.

I second the suggestion of Cité de la Mer and both the impressively huge nuclear submarine, La Redoubtable, and the Titanic exhibit -- and I write this having never seen the film nor being particularly interested in the Titanic as a subject. But that submarine is impressive. If you've ever visited one of the diesel-electric submarines moored as museums in various towns around the world, I recommend visiting La Redoubtable. It's so much larger it's almost unbelievable.

If you want to visit some classic seaside Norman harbor towns, Barfleur and Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue are both worth a stop. Not much to do there except sightsee and have a meal, but they're pretty cool. Highlights are the stony village of Barfleur with its interesting geology (very old rocks with large igneous crystals that were part of an ancient mountain range) and Vauban's defensive towers offshore of Saint-Vaast-la-Hogue.

And I'll second KGC's observation: when I was at the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer with family visiting from the states last Spring, one could not walk among the graves without some special dispensation -- you had to stick to the footpaths.

Here is another vote for all 6 in Normandy. 2 days for the beaches and D-Day museums. Add in a cider day, MSM, make sure to stop in Bayeux for the cathedral and tapestry, you could do Rouen and Honfleur and travel further up the coast to Etretat.

Everyone has been so helpful already , thank you.
Ok here is my start. Pick up rental car in Paris. Head to Monet house and garden then on to Rouen for the night.
Breakfast and explore Rouen then head to the coast to visit Etretat to see beaches/cliffs then to Honfleur for the night.
Honfleur - cider route - Bayeux for the night.
Juno and other beaches - Bayeaux second night.
Bayeux to Mont Saint Michel then where to stay for that night? Thinking two nights at a Chateau in St Pierre en Auge (Chateau de Hieville) for some R&R then return car in Caen to train back to Paris and catch train to Amsterdam.
We were going to stay in Deauville but the film festival is on.
Thoughts? Suggestions?

Your have made some good plans here. In 2017 we drove from a suburb of Paris to Giverny in the a.m., spent 3 hours there, then ate lunch in the cafe on site We then drove to Rouen to spend the night. We had time for a walk around the old town, stopping at a market to drool over the products there, have a look at the cathedral, plus enjoy a nice dinner.
We lucked out finding parking in a street pay/lot close to our hotel on the outskirts near the cathedral, so easy in, easy out. Next day we drove to Bayeux via the D road that went along the Seine, and the Route Des Abbayes, stopping at Jumiege Abbey. Your choice to go to Entretat and Honfleur from Rouen is another good choice. We also stayed in Bayeux 2 nights and headed to Mont St Michel after that. We stopped in Villedieu-les-Poelles that night and went to MSM early the next day. After a morning and early afternoon on the Mont we went on our way. Here we diverge from your plans, so I can't comment on them, but when we made this trip it went really well and we weren't rushed. We felt we had enough time at each location and didn't have any arduous drives. Our only time on the autoroute was from the Paris area to Giverny. All the other drives were on smaller roads through the countryside...very, very pleasant and easy!
Have a grand time!

Where did you go after Mont?

After the MSM visit we drove to Brittany, staying in Dinan, Le Conquet and Pluneret. We had some family visiting to do, and also did some sightseeing around Quimper, Carnac and Auray. Brittany is a very special place, distinct from the rest of France with a proud history facing the mighty Atlantic. It's very deserving of a good look.

If you're interested in cider, go here: https://www.theo-capelle.com/

I prefer the Cotentin ciders and loved this stuff.