Itinerary help for 16 days in France July 2017

the Loire, Dordogne, and Provence are indeed too ambitious for the remaining seven days of your trip. Obviously, you can touch all these bases, but you will have a better trip if you scale back. Alternatively, you could shift some days from Paris.

So I think you need to do the tough work of setting your priorities. Here is one possible itinerary that makes good use of your time: Toulouse > Dordogne > Loire > Paris.

Fly into Toulouse and, unless you are very okay with jet lag, spend the night. Toulouse is a great city for just walking and exploring, which you should try to do a lot of on your first day!

Next day drive to your Dordogne base. There are some great sights along the way, but also plenty to see in the Dordogne. You could however spend most of the day visiting the Peche Merle cave and the hill town of St. Cirq la Popie, both in the Cele valley, which is south of the Dordogne. Peche merle would probably be the best cave experience you would have in the area.

Spend at least 4 nights there. 5 would be better.

Drive from there to your base of choice in the Loire. I think your estimate of 2 nights there is plenty, since you are in a hurry, but if it turns out that you love those Renaissance chateaux there are some lovely ones you can visit as day trips from Paris. In fact if the Loire were not enroute I would push you to consider those day trips as an alternative to Loire castles altogether.

On to Paris from there.

You could reverse this itinerary of course, but you seem to prefer to visit Paris at the end of the trips. (That would be my personal choice too.)

My reality test for itinerary planning is this question: Does adding place D, and forgoing that time at A, B, and C, really make for a better trip? You have to include your travel time in that calculus too.

You also have to make allowances for first-time traveling; the three of you will not always be nimble, and there will be delays and inevitable hiccups. These small things can have a big impact on plans that are too tight and brittle, so build in some slack and minimize days when you have to get out of town early to do x, y, and z before sundown.

Thank you Adam for taking the time to give us such useful and detailed feedback. We have already purchased our non-open jawed plane tickets so flying into Toulouse and out of Paris is not possible for us, but that does sound like it would have been a very good idea. We did do an open-jawed flight when we traveled to Italy many years ago and it worked beautifully. This time around we were swayed by the incredible airfare and reasonable flight schedule in and out of Paris and just went with it.

We will take your suggestion to heart about not adding "D" as it takes away time from exploring "A, B, and C" and see if we can figure out a shorter loop to make. The train to Provence is just so quick and convenient compared with other southern destinations and it feels a bit criminal to travel to France and not visit this region, but I think the descriptions we have read of the Dordogne appeal strongly to all of us too.

Difficult decisions, but we certainly feel very lucky to be facing this particular dilemma!

Thank you again,
Jill

Jill, you might look into the possibility of a budget flight from your Paris airport to Toulouse or Bordeaux the morning you arrive.

You will have to claim your own bags (if you check them) in Paris and bring them to the local carrier, but you will already be at the airport.

This is exactly what we did, years ago, to start our trip in Toulouse. We felt that we had claimed an extra day for our trip!

Another thought: Where do you want to be on Bastille Day?

That is a good idea too. We had at one time thought we might try to fly to Barcelona and work our way back to Paris from there, but that seemed a bit much. Toulouse would be more doable.

After reading some blog posts, we think we would like to be in Paris on Bastille Day. I was a little concerned about the heightened risk of terrorism, but I am working on getting over that.

Thanks again Adam.

Day
1. Arrive Paris. Train to Tours-Loire Valley (3N)
Pick up hire car in Tours
4. Drive to Dordogne (3N)
7. Drive via Carcassonne to Avignon (4N)
Return hire car in Avignon
11. Train to Paris (6N)
17. Depart Paris

Thank you David for your suggestions. We had originally thought we would start in the Loire and work our way around through the Dordogne to Provence and then back to Paris, but for some reason (perhaps the national holiday) it costs almost $100 more to travel from Provence to Paris on the later dates of our trip than to head from Paris to Provence on the first few days.

It is useful to see how many days you would spend in a given area.

Thanks,
Jill

Via Michelin shows about 5 1/2 hours between Arles and Sarlat (picking two possible bases arbitrarily). That's an underestimate, not allowing for stops or traffic, but it still seems like you could do the Provence-Dordogne drive in a single long day if you're willing to skip some tempting stops in Languedoc (like Carcassonne, Toulouse, Albi). That would save a day in the itinerary you outlined -- a day I'd give to the Loire FWIW.

Adam is a thoughtful, experienced poster, and I share his love of the Dordogne, but he may over-estimate the "rush" factor in your case. If you're really committed to all those areas you have a pretty sensible plan to sample them. You're not a big group or, probably, a slow-moving one (the trick is to get the teenager going early in the morning I expect). Your basic plan seems doable -- though you might consider leaving Provence for another time. That's what I've done in several trips to France -- so far so good, but I really must get there someday! ;-)

Thank you for your perspective Dick. We are reviewing several options, one of which still includes Provence. Hard to give that up, but we really appreciate all of the different input.
Jill