We are planning on taking a day trip from Paris and doing a day trip to the WWII beaches in Normandy. We are fine with either doing it on our own or taking a tour which will give us more information.
I'd appreciate any ideas on what tour to take that would be interesting and pick us up in either Bayeaux or Caen. That's if we took the train from Paris to one of those cities.
We took the tour company "Overlord tours " "Band of Brothers" tour last year and it was excellent! They pick you up in downtown Bayeaux and drop you off at the same site. If you prefer to get dropped off at the train station, they will do that as well. They take you to all the important sites of "Easy Company", including other towns. We enjoyed it so much, we are going again this year, taking our two sons. They have other Normandy Beach tours other than the "Band of Brothers." We recommend it! Good Luck and hope you enjoy the Beaches!!
Coming from Paris for the day, see what is offered by viator. They are a middle man, but you can get a quick idea on what is on offer, cost, time.
http://www.viator.com/Paris/d479-ttd
Todd,
Visiting Normandy and the D-Day beaches from Paris is not ideal, due to the travel times involved. While it can be done, that only allows enough time for a brief view of a few of the major sights. Some of the day tours from Paris can also be expensive, such as the small group tour offered by Paris City Vision.
You could take an early trip to Bayeux and sign up for a half-day tour with Overlord Tour or one of the others (pre-booking the tour would be highly advisable). After the tour, have dinner in Bayeux and then return to Paris in the evening. It will be a LONG day.
There's also an excellent WW-II Museum in Bayeux, as well as the famous Tapestry that describes a much earlier battle, but not likely you'll have time to see those on a day trip.
We just had a great tour with Normandy-44 tours. They picked us up at hotel in Bayeux and we did the whole day. Their website says you can do a full day tour if you get a 7 AM train from Paris that gets in around 930 and they pick you up at the station. They also do a half day tour.
Bayeux is closer to the beaches and is a sweet little town, we drove thru Caen and it didn't seem as nice.
This is totally doable as a day trip, but it's a long day. We did this last June, taking the direct train from Paris to Bayeux. I believe we took the second train of the morning, around 9:30, but there's an earlier one, that would give you a little more time in Bayeux. The train station is almost directly across from the Hotel de la Gare, home of Normandy Landing Tours -- http://normandy-landing-tour.com. We had time to dash into Bayeux to see the tapestry, grab a quick lunch at the hotel, then take the half-day tour. It's a fast overview of some of the major D-Day sites. Don't expect an exhaustive, in-depth experience in a four- or five-hour tour, but we decided it was worth it, not knowing when we'd get another chance. Overlord and some of the other operators certainly have slicker operations and websites, but we had a perfectly fine experience with Jean-Marc Bacon and our guide Raymone. After the tour, we had a bit more time to walk around town and grab a gelato before catching the train back to Paris. We were back in the city by 8 or 9 p.m.
