Park at Orly Airport and Shuttle in to Hotel Near Eiffel Tower?

Recommendations?? My first one would be to get rid of the rental car. You can train in about 3.5 hours right to the center of Paris and not have to worry about parking and shuttling and being nervous about driving.

Is Paris also the place where your outbound flight will be or do you need the car longer and how many nights includes a couple of days?

We are staying 2 nights in Paris and then are planning to drive to the Loire Valley and then back north to Amsterdam.

So train to Paris, sightsee, pick up the rental car and drive to your next destination. Sightsee, return car in France somewhere and train back to Amsterdam.

If the car is only for driving directly from Amsterdam to Paris, I second Tim's advice. The whole trip takes more time with the car and is in fact boring and a unnecessary concern. Unless you want to visit some places in between ofcourse.

I had a car recently that I picked up in Germany and needed to return there and had the same dilemma. We stayed at a hotel in Reims that had parking (cheap) so we stayed one night, took the train to Paris, stayed a few nights then took the train back to Reims, picked up the car and traveled on to Normandy. It worked out great and was much easier and cheaper than driving into Paris.

Thanks everyone for your ideas! We will do something similar to the suggestion by Terry Kathryn to stay at Reims and take the train into Paris. Instead of Reims, we will stay at Versailles and park the car there while we go to Paris on the train.

Cleven.. a rental car is simply not a great idea for most of your trip. First off picking one up in France and dropping it in Holland means a big drop off fee.

Take train into Paris.. enjoy two three days there.. then take train to Tours .. THEN rent a car for a few days.. drive around the Loire.. return car in Tours and take train back to Paris and from there to Amsterdam.
Way less stress and extra expense. Buying train tickets well in advance will be much cheaper also.

Gas is like 10 bucks a gallon btw.

Parking in cities is 20-25 EUROS a day.

@Pat... I think they are picking up and dropping the car in Amsterdam

French gas is running under eight bucks a gallon and a small car will get at least forty per.

Last June I stayed in Montguillon a hamlet close to Disneyland Paris. I parked my car for free on the parking of one of the large supermarkets near RER line A station Val d’Europe. From there I needed 45minutes to go to Chatelet-Les Halles. It was just for a daytrip, have no idea if it’s safe to leave the car there for several days. You can look for hotels, preferably for the safety of the car with their own parkings, in the suburbs of Paris close to RER stations. As Val d"Europe is one of the most remote RER stations, travelling from other stations to the city centre will be much quicker.