Normandy trip...stay in Bayeux or Arromanches?

Arromanches with a car is a great hub. Did it that way on a 3 day Normandy trip about 15 years ago, split between the D-Day beaches, MSM, and Bayeux...it was nice to return to Arromanches every afternoon and enjoy the beach and good food at multiple restaurants. We stayed in a motel with plenty of parking, can't recall the name. Nice little town...

We absolutely loved the charm of Bayeux with it's wonderful city center. I'm guessing you can't make a wrong choice with your two options.

Keep in mind that the Bayeux Tapestry museum will close Sept 1 for a 2 year renovation. Not saying that alone should impact your choice of where to stay, but it is one less reason to base out of Bayeux (or would be for me). The tapestry is the highlight of Bayeux.

We stayed in Arromanches and it worked well for us. They have an amazing smallish museum. There are remnants of the artificial harbor built for the D-day landing. The beach is lovely, It was a great central location for touring Normandy and our BnB had parking.

Have you priced out accommodations and checked for parking? That might help you decide?

Either could work, but they're very different towns. Bayeux has a population of about 13,000, has a real commercial downtown that caters to residents (read: real home stores and clothing stores not just tourist t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats). It has major grocery store chains and lots of boulangeries and boucheries, as most any town of that size in France would have. It even has a small (somewhat overpriced, in my view) épicerie Italien. It also was relatively untouched during WWII and consequently gives an impression of what towns in Normandy might look like if they hadn't been destroyed, more or less, by the war.

Arromanches has a population of between 400 and 500 people. Its commercial core is pretty much completely geared toward the tourist trade. It has some decent restaurants, but the better places in Bayeux are better than those in Arromanches.

In my mind, Arromanches would make a better place to stay if you were most interested in the British and Canadian landings, as they happened on that end of the landing sites. Bayeux, while it hosts a British cemetery and has a very good museum about the landings with somewhat of a British slant to the displays, is more on the edge of the western American landing sites.

There are other differences as well, but I just wanted to make the point that the two aren't interchangeable. They're fundamentally different, and if you weren't aware of that, you should take it into account as you plan your visit.

We stayed in Arromanches in 2019 and absolutely loved it. Stayed at a Bed and Breakfast (Hôtel Les Villas d'Arromanches) on the outskirts of town with easy, ample parking, breakfast and laundry service. We walked into town every night for dinner; it was so nice to be able to have drinks with dinner without having to worry about driving after. We visited Bayeaux for a day to see the tapestry and the town, and when we saw the very narrow streets we were very glad not to be staying there.