Paris - Chartres - Normandy - help

I would allow around 3 hours to rent a car and drive to Chartres. It will probably take 30 minutes to rent the car, 30 minutes to drive through Paris to Porte d´Orléans from where A6 leaves the city. Once on A6, plan on 1½ hours to Chartres, assuming no unforeseen delays.

Google driving times are wildly inaccurate. Chartres is almost 100km from Paris. Making the drive in 45 minutes is a physical impossibility. I might recommend Mappy or ViaMichelin for much better route information.

From Chartres, plan on one hour to Damville. Where you go from there depends greatly upon where in Normandy you are going.

Your entire itinerary would make a great deal more sense if you were to drop off your car in Normandy, such as in St Malo, and take the train to Provence from there. Car rentals through Sixt or Europcar typically do not charge extra for in France drop off/pickup. You could save money and valuable time.

I would caution that your trip to Normandy is the first weekend after the week of big celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of D-day. Expect it to be more crowded than normal anywhere near the D-day landing beaches—and possibly anywhere in Normandy due to people combining a trip fro the anniversary, with visits to other parts of Normandy..

I personally find Caen to be a very boring, industrial city. Much if not most of it was wiped out during bombing in the weeks following D-day. Some people like the Caen so-called Peace Memorial, but I find it very underwhelming compared to other wonderful museums in the area (and the thought of spending a whole day in any museum will deny you precious tome to see the actual sites). Nearby Bayeux is a much more beautiful, and peaceful medieval city—and thankfully escaped the damage of the Battle for Normandy. It is also more convenient to the U.S. battle sites like Omaha Beach, the Normandy American Cemetery, and Point-du-hoc. Many tours leave from Bayeux as well, although it may be too late to book many of them. Whatever plans you make for this time should be made ASAP.

Stay in Bayeux for the beaches; see the Bayeux Tapestry while there. I'd go to MSM the first evening and stay there. Have dinner on the Mont in the evening and wander around the ramparts -- gorgeous -- then see the Abbey in the morning and head for Bayeux the next day; there is no reason you can't tour the beaches on your own with a car, but if you want an all day tour with Overlord or one of those organizations (excellent tours) then base in Bayeux but spend that first day heading over to Etretat to see the cliffs or some other town in the region you want to see and come back to Bayeux for the evening and for the tour the next morning.
https://janettravels.wordpress.com/category/normandy/
You might want to rent the car on the side of Paris closer to the drive to Chartres and thus also avoid the extra fee for renting at a train station.

Thank you all. Great information and tips. We wanted the car from Avis because the rental car location was inside the Gare de Lyon train terminal. The Europcar was several miles away from that station so we were confused about getting to the car rental station. We check and it sees our train ticket out of Gare De Lyon is non refundable so unfortunately we are stuck with returning to Paris. Our current train ticket to Provence out of Paris is out of Gare de Lyon on a high speed train approx time to Provence 4 hours. We are meeting up with a group and need to be by 3:00. Wish I had asked this question sooner and could change the train ticket to leave from St. Malo station.

So with all that in mind and getting back to Paris on Tuesday the 18th. Are you suggestioning traveling from Damville on June 14th to Bayeux?

Thank you for the suggestion on Mappy or viaMichelin I’ll look into those. Bayeux sounds lovely, we were also looking at exploring Etretat and Mont St-Michel. I’m just not sure we can do it all from June 15 returning Paris June 18 to a train leave 11:37 from Gare de Lyon.

We will look now into booking a tour out of Bayeux for D-day area, do you have any recommendations on tour companies from Bayeux? Thank you again for all of your suggestions.

I was very happy with my one-day Overlord Tour, but I know I've seen recommendations here for other companies as well, including Dale Booth. You should try to book a tour immediately, because this is expected to be a very busy season. Most if not all of the companies use vans rather than full-size buses, and capacity is limited.

There are frequent trains from Gare Montparnasse to Chartres, taking about an hour. That seems like a much easier way to get there, if you can rent the car from there. If Malcolm Miller is still giving cathedral tours, and your schedule fits his, you're in for a treat.

I agree with others that Bayeux would be a better Normandy base than Caen. I'm a fan of the Peace Memorial but it requires considerable time. You don't have that, especially if you want to drive out to MSM as well.

I think returning from Normandy to Paris on the same day as your non-refundable 11:00 train south is asking for trouble. Get there the night before. Consider returning the car in Caen (better service than Bayeux) and taking a train in to Gare St-Lazare. You could spend Monday night near either station, which are connected by Metro line 14, or use a taxi if you don't want to deal with luggage. (I believe line 14, the newest one, is the most luggage-friendly with elevators and escalators to avoid stairs.)