Logistics of overnight in Paris before Normandy via rental car

I would take a taxi to your hotel from Orly. Sunday morning, after checking out of the hotel, have them hold your bags. Visit the Orsay or whatever sightseeing you want to do. Return to your hotel and pick up your luggage. Take a taxi to Orly and pick up the rental car. Taxis to/from ORLY are a fixed rate, and easier with luggage and a child.

If your hotel is far from the Orsay, you could look for luggage storage options using the Bounce or Nannybag app.

Edit: The Orsay offers luggage storage on a limited basis. You could try this and have a backup via Bounce or Nannybag.

Generally, I recommend to someone, visiting outside Paris, that upon arrival (CDG or ORY), to continue to one's next destination, rent a car there (Normandy) the following day, and visit Paris itself at the vacation's end, before taking a return flight home. It greatly simplifies logistics and makes prepositioning for a return flight infinitely easier.

Maybe not an option here, but if I were in Paris with the intention of departing for Giverny/Normandy, I would not go to ORY to rent a car. It adds unnecessary expense to reach ORY and ORY is well outside Paris and on the wrong side of Paris for anyone wanting to head west. My first choice would likely be renting from an agency at Gare Montparnasse, which has relatively easy access to the périphérique, and continue from there to Porte d'Auteuil which is the start of A13 to Giverny/Normandy. You should be able to fine a Montparnasse rental that is no more expensive than a ORY rental.

I am not familiar with any luggage check at ORY. I would absolutely not leave a rental car overnight in any unmonitored lot on the "outskirts of Paris". Break-ins are very common.

If you filled in your itinerary, just roughly, before and after the French portion, it would be easier to advise.

Thank you travel4fun and Tocard!

travel4fun, we’re probably staying at an AirBnB in the Montmartre area, so out would both be out of the way to go back and unlikely to be able to hold our bags for us. I’ve never had issues with public transit from the airport into Paris in the past so I think I’ll do that rather than taxi, but appreciate the suggestion.

Tocard, we’re just in France for this trip, visiting Normandy and the Loire Valley as I mentioned, flying into and out of ORY. If you meant filling in the itinerary for when we’re in France in more detail, I can do that.

I’ll double check prices for renting near Montparnasse, but I’m assuming the reason I’m seeing so much better prices for renting at ORY is that I was planning to return the car at ORY before our flight at the end of the trip so renting from ORY at the beginning makes it not an open jaws rental. I’ll also look at the logistics again and see if it seems worth the extra couple hundred $$ to do it that way.

The way I currently have the trip planned out, it doesn’t work well for us to head out immediately by train since our first destination is Giverny and there don’t look to be good car rental or luggage storage options there, but I’ll look at my itinerary again and see whether we could reverse the trip to start with Loire Valley and a train to Amboise or Tours and end at Giverny. It seemed like given our early afternoon flight arrival that heading directly into Paris to do some Paris sightseeing in the evening and some in the morning before visiting Giverny in the afternoon of the second day made sense, and with a midday departure departure that driving directly from Amboise at the airport on our last day would work well. I didn’t see a particular advantage to switching which end we visit Paris - I think with our flight timing we effectively lose a day if we do Paris at the end, but I’ll look through the itinerary again and double check.

It seems the outlier is staying on Montmartre. It would be a lot more convenient to stay either near Montparnasse or near the Musée d'Orsay and visit Montmartre on Saturday but sleep at one of these other two places. All of this back and forth from the Orly to Montmartre, back to the Museum, and back to Montmartre or drag your suitcases around Paris with you, and south to Orly only to drive north again is unnecessary.

Elizabeth, I’m not planning to go back to Montmartre again after we check out in the morning so staying there overnight doesn’t create any more backtracking than staying somewhere else. We’re looking at AirBnBs not hotels (because having separate bedrooms and living areas is SO much better with a child who goes to bed early!), and very few AirBnBs allow you to leave bags after check out, so regardless of where we stay, we’ll need to figure out something to do with our bags during our morning activities.

If I may piggyback onto the posting by e.h.: what to do with our bags after checking out all of our apartment rental near the outskirts of Paris in the 12th? We want to spend the day in Paris before traveling to our hotel at CDG for a flight the next day. We thought about leaving our bags, at Gare d' Lyon. Then taking a taxi that evening (which are lined up there) to CDG. Any thoughts about this would be greatly appreciated.

If my intentions were to drop my bags for a day in Paris, then proceed to CDG later that evening, I would not recommend leaving bags at Gare de Lyon. From Gare de Lyon, you will need to take the RER A to Châtelet/les Halls and connect to the RER B line to CDG. The easiest transition for a train to CDG would be finding luggage consignment near Gare du Nord, Châtelet, St Michel, or Luxembourg and pickup the RER B from one of those stations.

There are numerous consignment locations near or at these stations:

https://www.eelway.com/
https://lockandenjoy.com/en/home/
https://www.citylocker.paris/en/
https://luggagehero.com/
https://www.nannybag.com/en/luggage-storage
https://stasher.com/