Overnighter on West or North Coast of France

St Malo which is 3 hours by train from Gare Montparnasse.

Have visited Deauville years ago and is a very nice place for staying and strolling around, think nearby Trouville is worth to stay as well as Cabourg-Houlgate more west. All are within 3 hours by train from St. Lazare Paris.

Renee, I trust you are OK on your Schengen time. No more than 90 days in the Schengen Zone on this trip, right?

Another vote for Saint Malo

Pampol, St Malo, Cancale, Granville, Vannes, the list is endless. Also it only takes two and a half hours to get to Bordeaux by train, which then gives you access to a wealth of small coastal towns in the south west!!!!

Thank you for the tips.

And yes, I'm keeping my visit to the EU to 70 days total. I know someone who was refused reentry for staying 92 days, so I consider myself forewarned. But thanks for the reminder.

Deauville, or even Honfleur, are less than 3 hrs from Paris. Either would be a nice place to spend an overnight.

I love Honfleur, but its my understanding that without a car it is hard to get to. I recommend Dinard, it's a quaint seaside town with a retro resort vibe. It is also across the water from St. Malo

We stayed in an old but attractive beachside hotel in Dinard, the Reine Hortense. However, we selected it because it had parking, and were just lucky that it was so nice. One window in our room had a full beach/water view. We were slightly off-season, and some of the seasonal businesses had shut down. But that meant we could walk in to several seafood restaurants that were still open. Note that this coast has the same climate as their Brexit neighbor across the water!

St. Malo would not be quite as subject to seasonality, and has a massive yacht-port outside the walls. It may be harder to get a hotel room high enough to be above the fortification walls. But it's a more interesting destination than Dinard (unless you are following the path of Picasso.) Perhaps train connections will be the most important for you, which we did not investigate. You might look for Cider harvest festivals. Personally, I would not go this far for a single night.

The beach in Dinard is much shallower and smaller, but not inadequate in any way. It's a lovely little crescent of sand, with kids playgrounds and a short piece of boardwalk with fried foods (in season) and so on. St. Malo's beach looked deeper and wider, but also (out of season) a little desolate. I don't mean scary, just missing the sweaty bodies and umbrella rentals!

I doubt that the two bigger named towns to the north are anything like these two, but I haven't been to Deauville or that area. Of course, there are massive beaches near Bayeux, with WW II ruins and history to see. A little hard without a car.

Deauville is an attractive resort town with architecture from roughly the turn of the 20th century. In other words, not old. It was busy with tourists when I was there in July 2017. I have no clue what it would be like in late September, but it would surely be quieter.

Deauville was far from busy during my visit in early June some 10 years back and I founded it very pleasant for walking around and I expect the same for late September. Some spots with that typical Normandy style half-timbered architecture there are really stunning. Trouville is more about guess Belle-Epoque style like Dinard, not so upmarket as Deauville, nevertheless founded it lovely on my way to the latter. There are a few tiny lovely hotels just at the beach in Trouville, well that’s google maps and streetview tells me.