Normandy area - travel to Paris

We stayed in Bayeaux for our WW2 tour and thought it was perfect. We did not have a 12 year old traveling with us but the cathedral, tapestry (incredibly interesting maybe even to a 12 year old!), British cemetery (you can walk to from city center of Bayeaux) should be enough to keep your son busy. Do some research by way of RSteves, etc on Bayeaux and it would probably be a lot more fun for your child.....there are some really interesting WW2 facts about the cathedral....had the knowledge of a friend that was a WW2 Normandy grad in college and he told us that the British allowed their families to post personal messages on the tombstones at the cemetery in Bayeux as opposed to just the names on the tombstones like at the American cemetery.....so it was incredibly interesting to us to walk the graves in Bayeux at the cemetery there and read of the deceased’s lives, etc that their loved ones had added.......tried to get Dale Booth as our WW2 guide for Normandy as we had heard such great things about him but he was not available to us when we were there so we used Overlord tours.......maybe you can find a private guide there as we were very pleased with their knowledge. We have dropped off cars numerous times in Paris and it is not for the faint at heart......doing it outside the city and training in is a good idea.

I always recommend at least a day on a guided tour for the invasion sites. If you can arrange for a private guide, even better.

I don't think you need a private guide the entire time. The invasion museum in Bayeux (near the British Cemetery) is excellent and would be my top recommendation for your situation, and the tapestry museum has an audioguide. As of 2017 the Bayeux tourist office was offering an English-language walking tour of yhe town. Then there's the cathedral. So there's over a half day of top-flight local activities for which you don't need a private guide

I would personally definitely not rent a car and drive up, instead take a 2 hour relaxing train for like $40 (through OUI.sncf) up to Caen and rent a car there right across the street from the train station, then drive around Normandy, return the car, and train back to Paris, but that's just me. Paris driving looks nightmarish, at best. Also be ready for the narrowest roads you've ever driven on, in Normandy. Half the time I thought we were on a private one-lane road, but it was the actual highway (aaaagh). Add tour buses and bicycles and it was definitely interesting.

We stayed in a giant and affordable chateau in the country for $425 for a week (yes, a week), so it might not be his cup of tea, but it was amazing.

We just got back from a week in Normandy, though not with teens. We were there for the D-Day sites (on D-Day, which was awesome). The Bayeux tapestry was amazing, and the WWII museum in Caen was very good (though pricier). There's a super cool little museum called The Big Red One on the roadside near Omaha Beach that is terrific, and has some very unique beach-combed artifacts from D-Day. Definitely see that if you can. Pointe du Hoc is also very cool, with bunkers and cliffs to see. The Omaha beach visitor's center and cemetery are great to walk through, though there's a créperie right outside the exit that is not worth the stop, it was the only place in two weeks in France where we found the much-clichéed bad service. Maybe they just had D-Day tourist overload though.

Honfleur is very cool to walk around, too, but Deauville was insanely busy even in June. Like, turn the car around and leave, level of busy.

I'll offer two driving tips for Normandy: Make sure you download a lifesaving offline Google map of the area for navigation and take the back roads, so you can skip the weird autoroute travel, crazy drivers, and tolls (where do we pay? how do we pay? which line? omg our visa doesn't work/we don't have the right euros!), and enjoy the scenery and villages instead.

Also GET GAS anywhere you see a station. There are like ...two.. gas stations in Normandy. Ok, I may be kidding, but they're not on every corner like the US. At all. Not even in every town. And US credit cards don't work in them 75% of the time. And they're also CLOSED for all Catholic holidays, meaning no attendant to pay euros with, no help, no gas for youuuu. Learned that the hard way too. We almost ran out of gas looking for an open station that would also (knock wood) take our visa, which was a little nerve wracking.

When you get back to Paris, just grab a carnet of 10 metro tickets for $16.69 or a Passlib (travel/museum/Seine cruise pack) or a $17/day Mobilis for unlimited metro/bus/train travel around the city, and then taxi out to CDG (it's like $60 vs a $5 train, but like my Parisian friend said "you can take the train to the airport with your luggage during rush hour if you WANT. But you will suffer.")

Hope any of this helps. We LOVED our trip and are already planning to go back next year. Enjoy!

We stayed in a giant and affordable chateau in the country for $425 for a week (yes, a week), so it might not be his cup of tea, but it was amazing.

Dang! I think that's what I'm paying for two nights in Bayeux.