Quickest route to get to: CDG from Bayeux -and- to d’Orsay from CDG

I think it might be a little late in the day to get any direct advice from locals, since it is after midnight in France right now. Google shows you can go via Beauvais to avoid going through Paris, but is almost an hour longer drive time (4 hours vs 3 hours), although I don't know if 3 hours is realistic in the morning.

I would plan on arriving at CG before noon to turn in the car. Yes, take the RER B to St Michel-Notre Dame and change to the RER C to Musee d'Orsay. Should take about 1 hour from the CDG train station.

Do you have a plan to deal with your luggage?

I imagine that the OP plans to drop off luggage at the hotel when they check in. For a 2:30 PM ticket at the Musee d’Orsay and with dropping off a rental car and going to a hotel to drop off luggage, I would plan to arrive at CDG by 11:30 AM.

Our tickets are for 2:30. We’re hoping to arrive at CDG where we will a) return our rental car -and- b) check in to our hotel before making our way to Musée d’Orsay.

At this point it may be moot but google map has a 730ish Bayeux departure taking "3-4 hrs". ( via A13) Add time to gas up before turn in, I suspect a departure past 7 AM will make for a tense trip. The other routes all show a longer travel time.

Your hotel will let you check in before the typical 3PM check in time? Or do you plan to just store the bags there and check in after the museum visit?

Let us know how it turns out.

Good luck!

Hey y'all,

We returned home late Wednesday evening and are presently working on getting back into the groove of things here in Texas.

Thanks for your helpful tips! Much appreciated. We navigated our way through a bit of rush hour traffic - which pales in comparison to the Austin traffic we were used to, so that was doable.

Thanks to the handy navigation app, we had little trouble finding our hotel. Fortunately, the good folks at Holiday Inn allowed us to check in early. Yay! Yours truly, however, failed to anticipate the amount of time it would take if a group of travelers was in the process of checking in at the same time. Heh. Regardless, we were able to drop off our luggage in our room before heading out for the day. That was most helpful.

The greatest time gobbler was an unexpected delay involved in fueling our rental before turning it in. Good golly that was somewhat chaotic. Yikes! I'm guessing perhaps, the better alternative may have been to fill up prior to reaching the airport.

Nonetheless, we managed to make it to d'Orsay and the fabulous Van Gogh exhibit a mere 15 minutes late than our timed entry. WHEW! Oh, by the way... those timed entry tickets certainly came in handy. Thanks to the nifty tickets we were able to avoid the extraordinarily long line those without timed entry tickets had to wait in. Yay!

Thanks again!

WL

*We navigated our way through a bit of rush hour traffic - which pales in comparison to the Austin traffic we were used to...

It must have been a very tiny bit of rush hour traffic if Austin is worse. Paris rush hour can usually be very problematic if you are in the thick of it.