Picking up rental car in Paris?

My question is, can anyone recommend a location in or on the outskirts
of Paris where we could rent a car and get out of the city without too
much trouble?

I would say your original plan of taking the train to Normandy, is your best choice.
Less stress.

This is not your only choice, what I have done when I needed to rent a car to go to places like D-Day beaches that are not served by train, is to go to CDG, which is, as you asked, "on the outskirts of Paris."
There are other choices that people here may mention. But try to assess whether other suggestions you get are going to meet your objective of "a simple route of out town, to minimize the risk of taking a wrong turn.

But I would suggest that you give strong consideration to taking the train to Caen (larger city) or Bayeux (smaller) and picking up the car there. It will simplify the return process.

You stressed that you are looking for a "simple route out of town, to minimize the risk of taking a wrong turn." When I read that, I thought, well, you really want to simplify by taking the train to Caen or Bayeux and picking up/returning the car there.

Thanks Kent. Actually we plan to return the car in Toulouse, so there will be no need to return it in Paris even if we pick it up there. But it's good to have a vote for the train. Thanks also for the CDG idea; this would be fine as long as the rental does not cost more (as airport pickups do in the USA). We did that last May, picking up a car at Edinburgh Airport and then heading for the highlands; that was easy, even driving on the left.

Hi Joel,
I'd go with your original plan of the train.
Airport rental car pick ups normally do cost more, there is a charge for the convenience, but that assumes you're arriving at the airport. Obviously in this case you are not.
The key item I saw in your original question was: having a simple route out of town that minimizes the risk of taking a wrong turn.

Kent gives good advice as always. (Must be the air or water here in the NW!) Caen would be a good place to pick up the car as the rental offices, I'm told, are right by the station. Bayeux not so easy on that score. BUT let me offer some other considerations.

If budget matters, you'll be paying train fares and a day's car rental on the same day. Driving can save the two train fares. In the same vein, renting from CDG will indeed cost more because it's an airport. The airports in Europe, like those here, have figured out they can tack fees onto your rental cost for the convenience of getting off the plane and into the wheels.

So if you do decide to rent the car from Paris, instead of CDG let me suggest Gare du Nord or Porte Maillot, both northern/western locations with relatively easy runs to the Peripherique. There's another recent thread where Bets (another reliable source) dislikes Maillot as being too close to the Peripherique, putting you on the freeway before you're ready for it. That would probably also be true of CDG (I've returned a car there but not taken one out). And, as Ed would say if he were still posting, "it's just streets." Paris is no place to use a car for transportation, but it's not that hard to drive out from one of the stations or outlying rental offices.

More than you want to know, I expect, and you'll hear from others soon! Have a fun trip.

IMO, it is very easy to pick up a car from EuropCar in La Defense (easy to get to via Metro Line 1 so cheaper than going to CDG or Orly) and then an easy drive to the highway to Bayeux or Caen. I've done both -- driven to Normandy and also taken the train from Paris ti Caen and renting a car and both are good options.

My only comment -- are you comfortable driving standard (stick) transmission, or do you need automatic? Might be easier to guarantee automatic at airport locations.

Kent, Dick and JHK, thanks for suggestions about pickup locations; and Laura B, fortunately I'm OK with a manual transmission. As usual with this excellent forum, I now have the information needed to make a good choice. Now the fun part really begins, weighing all the various possibilities against one another at great length :-) As a relative novice to European travel I am finding that this fairly intensive planning process is actually part of the fun for me.

We picked up our car in Versailles. I pre-printed at home directions on how to get out of Versailles and onto the freeway we needed. (It was pretty easy). We wanted to pick up the car in Paris, because we planned on stopping at Giverny. Driving in France was easy, so it worked great for us. A couple of things to remember:

We did have to walk to the car rental place from the train station. (we did not take the train that goes to Versaille, but the one that went to Chartiers since it was closer)
Small town locations do no have the long hours that airport locations do. In our case, we had to pick up before 7:00 PM, which was fine with our schedules.

All in all, it was a good solution for us. My husband did not want to drive in Paris.

Connie, thank you, I was wondering about picking up a rental in Versailles. Another good possibility.

Thanks Brad, Montparnesse goes on the list; and I will definitely ask about the car engine stopping and starting at lights etc.

Hi all, thought I'd wind this up. We're going with JHK's suggestion, and picking up a car at La Defense metro station. It's at the end of the #1 Metro line (outside the Peripheral), so there will be no missing where to get off. Once we pick up the car, it looks to be no more than 400 feet to the A14 to Bayeux. It should be hard for me to screw this up, but if we wind up in Brussels I'll let you know :-)