Random questions for North France

Re: Chantilly: I ended my trip there (enjoyed Chantilly a lot, BTW), and although I knew about the public transport options to CDG, felt uneasy about relying on them for catching a plane. So, I asked my hotel to call a shuttle service. It was 60 €, and worked out fine.

julesm,

I am happy to hear you have an interest in Verdun. I first saw it in 1974, and have been back twice. The battlefields are unbelievably moving...to see how the forest has grown over the humps and trenches from a century ago is a reminder of the futility of war....nature regains her prominence. To be there on a day of fog and drizzle, as I did when first there, sent chills up and down my spine. It is otherwordly. If you go there, there is a fairly new museum dedicated to Verdun...the Field of Battle. It is a comprehensive look at the story of the battle. We saw it after driving around the battlefield area. It is worth at least an hour of your time. Further along is the Douamont Ossuary and Memorial, overlooking a cemetery for the fallen soldiers. I encourage a visit there as well. They enhance the battlefield and historical experience. If you have a chance while seeing the battlefields, check out the memorial to the messenger pigeons used so effectively during the war.

Overall, I would give about 3-4 hours to the Verdun sights with a car. They are often overlooked by American travelers, and WW II is, of course, more recent, but let us not forget how much WW I affected both Europe and the U.S. More soldiers than we realize suffered and died from being gassed. If we look, many of us will find a veteran from that war in our families who was such a victim. We have someone in ours, and our dear, late Meme often spoke of him.

I hope you can find time to visit the Verdun area. (Just fyi, the last time we were there it was en route from Colmar to Reims, an easy detour.)

Bon voyage!

In checking my notes on my last visit to Verdun, I see that it is about 75 miles from Reims, an easy 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 hour drive on roads through the countryside, so a comfortable side trip while in the champagne region.

For our upcoming trip we’ve allotted 1 day for Verdun and the area. For some of the battlefield sites, depending on what you intend on seeing, it appears you’ll need to park and walk. We’ll be driving there from Metz. On the same trip we’ll also be stopping at a couple WWI forts and Maginot Line sites.

We will only be transiting Luxembourg and plan to stop at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial and the National Museum of Military History (MNHM) Asbl.

Since you’ll be renting a car in France, when planning your trip pay attention to the green/emissions zones in Germany. They are everywhere and the fine for driving in one without a sticker is pretty hefty. The emissions sticker that should be on your French rental is not good in Germany. That’s one reason we’re flying into Frankfurt. For our trip, the only French city in a green zone we’re visiting is Strasbourg and we’ll take the train to it. There’s a current thread on the German forum about environmental/green/emissions stickers.

Troyes is really neat, and it's great to be in such a picturesque town and not hear any English. It's always a matter of trade-offs, though, so I'm not going to tell you it's a must-visit.

I'm not really fond of Reims except for the cathedral, but then I have zero interest in champagne tasting. I know many other posters recommend Reims; I just didn't find the city itself particularly attractive. There's the small Surrender Museum, but I found it just about the least interesting WWII-related historical site I've ever seen (and I have seen many). YMMV.

I've seen little of NE France and plan to include the area in a future trip. I'm looking forward to reading about your impressions after you return.

@james, thanks and Ugg. I will only be on the road that hugs the Moselle. How do I find out more?
@Ann, always value your advice on towns. Definitely will have to go to Troyes. Maybe I should look at Epernay to base. We actually don’t love champagne, just want to see the area. Hoping we can find a couple less pretentious wineries. Also, just returned from Portugal. Loved the time we had on the Douro, and I confirmed that I hate Port wine.

I downloaded the “Green-Zones” app. It shows the locations of the environmental zones. Zone status can change at different times of day. Sometimes it may be green while other times it will switch to red. It came in handy when planning our trip since we are touching Belgium for a day and passing through Luxembourg. We too will be driving the Moselle and Rhine river areas. I didn’t see any zone between Luxembourg and Koblenz. There are a number in the Black Forest and Frankfurt areas.

I'll just comment on Laon: it has a fine cathedral, but not as impressive as Amiens, Reims or Troyes in my opinion. And the rest of the old town is relatively charming, but not exactly bustling. To me, it is an optional sight. if you drive by (e.g. from Champagne to Arras/Amiens), why not stop for lunch, but otherwise I would prioritize Compiègne and Pierrefonds in that area.

Laon is of interest in case you drive by, it’s indeed charming, but not directly bustling. Nevertheless liked visiting it years ago.

Judy describes well what to find in Verdun and the area around there. Compiègne is worth a visit too to my opinion and worth to combine with the Glade of the Armistice in the nearby forrest. Château de Compiègne is huge and if you are not accompanied by a horde of schoolchildren you wil have the place almost to yourselves. There is a little but intesting car museum in the basement, includes also a section with a nice collection of horse driven carriages but closed during my visit in 2018.

I am a fan of Pierrefonds too and worthwhile to visit to my opinion. The castle there dominates the place, but a bit empty inside so not directly necessary to visit it.

Jules m,
I did Verdun back in 1990 and was very glad that I did. The hotel was not expensive.

The entire visit gave an huge insight into what WWI and that almost year long battle at Verdun was.
There are still areas where you can see trenches existed. The farmers have to be careful when cutting trees that were alive back in that period, since the sawdust likely contains mustard gas imbedded in the trees.

The huge Ossuary is filled with hundreds of thousands of bones from soldiers on both sides. The museum is excellent.

&Calvados. Thanks for your input. I appreciate your insight and see that my inquiry lacks detail. I’ve added additional info in the post. This is a longish trip. It will be about 3.5 weeks, parts by car. We do this kind of trip, a lot. But, I hear you. Few of our “bases” as many like to say, are less than 3 nights. Many are 4. For us, we’d rather pack up and move vs. backtracking or spending more than 1.5 hours in the car in a day trip.

In terms of war sights and Verdun, we have more of a WWII interest, but Verdun is such an important WWI site and we would like to learn more. I really like learning about resistance , battles and strategy, less so military vehicles and equipment. On the other hand, my husband, is interested in armaments, vehicles, etc., tho his primary interest is still WWII. Our interest in Verdun is strictly the war. Not looking for charming there. Hope this makes sense.

@James, thank you, you always have the logistical details!

@Balso, thanks for the detail

@geo, terrific insight/information for Verdun. Thanks

@Wil, thanks for the additional town suggestions. We may be dropping the car off in Lille. How much time does a brief visit to Lille old town need?

Laon and Arras are on/close to the route from Champagne to Lille. Drive time looks to be about 2.5 hours. Enough time for brief stops in each city?

It’s about 15min. driving to Laon from the A28 toll road and a place to park the car easy to find. Walking around takes about an hour or so. Driving from the A1 to Arras needs about the same time, the main draw there are the two main squares. One of the two is a huge parking, most of the time easy to find a parking lot there during shoulder season, but not if an event is going on or harder around noon. With the many sidewalk cafés a good place for a drink, think about an hour for a visit drinking included.

In Tergnier, a half hour driving west of Laon there is the Musée de la Résisance et de la Déporation de Picardie. However closed, no idea if it will be open again later this year. Never visited it, but maybe of interest. Easy driving back to the A28 from there.

Lille is worth spending between one and two hours, but if you want to see the Museum of Fine Arts you can easily add two hours. The birthplace of Charles de Gaulle is a museum nowadays, not so big so a visit will take about an hour or so. West of Lille near Saint-Omer you can find two huge former V2 launch bases for mainly attacking London during WW2, Le Blockhaus and La Coupole.

East of Paris in Meaux you can find Musée de la Grand Guerre, the visit starting with a time line explaining the tensions between France and Germany during the pre-war period. This in case driving from Reims to Paris.

About strategy. Most museums are most of the time too much focussed on the local or regional strategy and some give an overview of the Allied campaign as a whole, but a museum showing all ins and outs about prepairing, planning, discussions at the highest level, distribution of roles, risk analysis, strategy options like broad or narrow front, logistics and so on from both sides in a well balanced way, so that you can way more understand what happened has still to be realized. No plans so far as I know.

If you are interested in American cemeteries, there is a very pleasant one outside of Liege (sorry, cannot remember the name). The caretaker there was very helpful
We stayed in Reims for a couple of nights and found it to be interesting. The cathedral is well worth it. We stayed in a budget hotel, and they had parking, so it was not a hassle. Peter

"Main objectives are North France, Luxembourg, Moselle River." My primary interest area and focus in France is Northern France.

This is the area of the carnage and the "death of a generation" in WW1. If you're looking for the German, British, French and US ( they are located here too) war cemeteries from WW1, you'll find them here, ie, from the Somme to the Belgian border. Even in Lux. City there is the German cemetery from WW1.

In the surrounding area of Arras, you'll see the Canadian monument in Vimy as well as the French and German cemeteries in the nearby villages, which includes biggest German one in France.

I suggest setting aside a few nights for Arras, as it was the Gen. HQ for the British Army in France.

As suggested above, the WW1 museum is east of Paris in Meaux, itself a battle field area in 1914.

There is another large WW1 museum in the Somme area, near Amiens, (not reachable by train, unlike that in Meaux), located in Peronne. I've not seen that one.

RE: war sights and Verdun ...""We have more of a WW2 interest." All the more reason not to miss Arras in terms of war sights.

Memorial plaques pertaining to Arras in WW2 are located in the town's centre ville, eg., its liberation by the Welsh Guards in 1944 and the momentous and unexpected British armoured counter-attack in 1940 a week prior to Dunkirk.

My wife and i are going to be doing a trip this fall somewhat in this area (coming from Colmar towards Rheims) and I would add a few thoughts in case it helps (a) we are going to stop in Verdun (on the train from Colmar) and see Verdun for one day (and then get back on the train to Rheims), because Verdun I think is an incredible place to stay with so much history, and we booked a guide to pick us up and drive us around the battlefield (it wasn't expensive and figured she knows the way around much better). Her info is ingridferrand234@gmail.com and ingrid.ferrand1@orange.fr. and she has been super nice and helpful in planning so would highly recommend considering using her as a guide, (b) we are staying in Rheims for 3 days, using our stay to both see that City (I think there are lot of very interesting sites to see, and RS likes it and his book recommendations are rarely wrong, including the Cathedral obviously), as well as using it as a base to see the Champagne houses there, and Epernay and the surrounding wine country (looks beautiful), and (c) in case it is of any interest, the Via Francigena pilgrim path goes right through it and the wine country nearby (so I'm definately planning to walk a day's worth of that path).

I've been out of town, so I apologize for the delay in response. Thank you all for the really terrific information! I welcome any additional information. We are so excited about this trip, that we decided to go in September rather than wait to the future. I checked a couple airlines and I could get main cabin tickets for about $1250 from Minneapolis. This is quite high for destinations like Paris and Amsterdam. We decided to do it anyway, with a YOLO attitude. So I quickly sketched out an itinerary and ordered a guidebook for Belgium/ Luxembourg. When I had a better idea of days, I went back to scheduling flights. This was just a day later from my initial search. Now the lowest main cabin ticket (economy plus) is almost $1600! Yes, per ticket. I've been checking twice a day for almost a week now, and they are not budging. I am looking at Tuesday to Thursday, so typically cheaper days to travel. I also tried other days of the week. We can't go in October, but just checking, the rates are the same/similar in October. I also checked leaving from DC, thinking we could fly there, stay with a friend for a couple days and then head to Europe. DC flights were still $1100. So here I sit, back to dreaming about France. Obviously, no one has a crystal ball, but does anyone think these fares will drop? Is it worth watching them? Are there people willing to pay $1600 for Minneapolis to Amsterdam in an economy plus seat, out there? If they do drop, any thoughts on getting rooms in inns on shortish notice? This trip may get tabled until next fall, but at least, I have a pretty good itinerary ready to go.

I think it's always worth continuing to watch the fares if you can be flexible. However, I always buy plain-vanilla coach tickets, so I have no feel for what might happen with the costs of better seats.

I purchase the "vanilla, coach" seats as well. Interestingly, it seems to me, that the differential between the economy plus and the more pricey tiers is less than is typical. But, I never spend too much time looking at those tiers.

Champagne region, we enjoyed staying in At, next to Epernay . We toured the champagne houses and dined in Epernay, wonderful experiences! We found a nice BnB in Ay when Epernay was booked solid.

I'm nerdily interested in flight costs and consistently use Google Flights to check them. At the time I tried this all the things I tried for nonstop flights produced very similar price results in the $1400-$1500 base fare range. I'm providing the process below in case you haven't used Google Flights before.

Not knowing your exact new flight dates, I looked at leaving Minneapolis on 4 September and returning on 3 October. I first checked for RT nonstop flights for Minneapolis to Amsterdam and for Minneapolis to Paris. If you do that, you can click on a link to Dates below the list of Departing Flights.

The Dates link produces a date grid with the intersection of your 2 dates marked. You can see what potential dates are cheaper and what are more expensive. You can slide backwards and forwards in time, left and right for departure date and up and down for return date. From that same screen you can click on Price Graph to see a bar chart of prices with your chosen dates marked. That chart gives hints of when prices are lower.

Not being sure that you plan to do a RT flight, I also checked a multi-city nonstop itinerary, flying Minneapolis to Amsterdam and returning Paris to Minneapolis and vice-versa. Multi-city flight searches don't produce a Dates option.

You can pick the flight combinations you like best and set up for Google Flights to email you when prices change. You can click through to the airlines to see purchase options or buy tickets or you can go directly to them.

As I hinted above, I didn't check for flights with any stops along the way so I don’t know if that would be any cheaper. You're fortunate to live somewhere that you have multiple nonstop options to Europe.

Thanks Suki for the recommendation.

@Lo, thanks for the tips. We were going to fly into Amsterdam and out of CDG. We'd be gone about 3.5 weeks, entirely within September. I didn't use Google, but I used a similar method on Delta.com and some other sights. I usually start with round trip for both cities to find the cheaper travel days. Since I'm constantly checking fares, I'll give Google a try at some point. Sounds like setting up an alert for fare decreases would be a great idea.

So annoying! Are there people that will pay $1600 for an economy plus ticket?

@Suki, can't find a city by Epernay called "At". Could it be Ay or Athis? or ?

I went ahead and purchased the plane tickets. For all I know, the price could be the new normal. I have an itinerary that I'm pretty happy with, until the end where I could use some help. The plan is as follows:
Fly into Amsterdam, 4 nights in Delft/Leiden, TBD, day trips
Train to Bruges, 4 nights, bike ride to Damme, day trip to Ghent
Train to Lille, 1 night
Pick up car and drive to Luxembourg, seeing Durbuy, Bouillon and Dinant, on the way as time permits (Super excited that route goes to Namur and close to the River meuse down to Dinant!)
Luxembourg, 4 nights, looking for a town an easy .5 hr train ride or so from Luxembourg City
Moselle Valley, some Rhine as time permits, 4 nights (we have done a Rhine cruise and been to Koblenz)
Drive to Reims/Epernay, spending most of day in Verdun
Reims/Epernay/some Champagne town, 4 nights (day trips into Champagne region and Troyes)
Drive to Lille to return the car, stop in Laon and Arras or maybe return the car later in the trip??
Probably train to Arras/Amiens and then to Chantilly??

And here is where I struggle. I have 4 more nights to work with. Other cities of interest are Senlis, Pierrefonds, Compiegne and Auvers. I know we can't see them all. We will definitely want to see Chantilly. Initially I thought of basing in Chantilly, it made sense looking at a map. But working with google maps for directions, the other cities don't seem to be convenient by train/bus or even by car. None of them are convenient from Reims/Champagne area, either. And what I thought was an easy trip from Chantilly to CDG, upon further exploration, I think we'd better spend the last night in Paris.

You have a lot choices stretching from Amiens to Lille and eastward to Troyes pertaining to history, WW1, WW2 and Napoleonic. NE of Troyes you can reach Brienne., where a major Napoleon museum is located, revamped and extended recently.

The towns between the Aisne, Aube, Marne, Seine rivers were all battle field sites in 1814 , eg, Laon, and 1914 to the end of the war, if you want to pursue them, not to mention those poignant war sites from Arras to Lille.

If you stay in Chantilly you can take the direct train from Saint-Leu-d'Esserent (north-west of Chantilly) to Auvers-sur-Oise and one with a change in Creil to Compiègne. Adding Pierrefonds with public transport think will be very time consuming. There is a bus connection between Chantilly and Senlis.

5 Years ago I stayed close to Saint-Leu-d'Esserent and having my own car daytrips to the mentioned places are doable including Compiègne. It's a nice place but combining it with Pierrefonds and the Glade of the Armistice is to my opinion necessary to make it really worthwhile. Best is doing this with a car. No idea how easy it is getting from Chantilly to Saint-Leu with the bus, get in contact with the hotel/B&B before booking about public transport options and if those I suggest are still up-to-date / frequent enough.

Thank you Wil and Fred. We have rented a car frequently in Europe, when we need to get to places not easily accessed by public transportation, but all else equal, we love using public transportation. I'm coming to the conclusion that we may need to keep the car if we want to efficiently see Chantilly and the other towns. A brief check indicates we could return a care in Amiens and CDG. We aren't too excited about returning to CDG, but can it be harder than O'Hare, LAX, Boston Logan or Phoenix?

Hi,

You're welcome.

To get the full extent of traveling in Northern France, ie from the Somme River to, say, Lille, in pursuit of the war sites pertaining to WW1 and WW2, ie, British and Commonwealth , German, French , even US cemeteries, even that of the Chinese outside of Amiens, the rental car is essential, such as for passing through the villages and little towns, St. Pol, Bethune, Douai, Albert, Beauvais, etc. to see the memorials and monuments related to these 2 wars. That part is very revealing. I would suggest doing that if you can set aside the time.

Signs along the road indicate the horrific events' timeline, especially that along the Somme.

Think this thread is worth reading if you want to know more about the area just north of Paris. The yellow cover Michelin Départemental maps are helpfull for planning car itineraries, in this area you need #305. Cost around €6 and easy to get in the larger supermarkets and gaz stations.
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/chantilly-senlis-pierrefonds-compiegne-reasonable-itinerary-for-3-days-4-nights

You are right, Wil! There is just a ton of info, there.

*Looking for suggestions for where to base for a few days--Chantilly, Senlis, Compiegne, Pierrefonds or?
*Amiens is an outlier. Worth going out of my way? Best visited from Arras and Lille? or Chantilly area? or?
*Seems like we'd keep the car until the end of the trip. We'd have to return to CDG? Comments? Our flight is at 3:40pm. We generally do not drive in big cities, though CDG looks like it is out a bit from Paris.