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''southern'' France ...3 options

Posted by (Montréal, Canada ) on

Hi !
We are planing our annual summer trip. We are 2 adults with 2 teens (12 ans 16 years old). We will have around 28 nights of travel budget/time. The trip would be in July.
Our idea was to get flight in France (Bordeau, Toulouse or Marseille), rent a car and head to the road ! The choice of our flights will depend of the price. Right now a mix of the three options are the same prices (toulouse-bordeaux or Marseille-Bordeaux or Bordeaux-Bordeaux ...)
We would keep 7-10 days for the France part.
In Spain we want to :
- Pyrénées (We know it's also in France and that part is exclude from the France days)
- North Coast (San sebastian, Bilbao, Oviedo, to St-John)
- Madrid and Segovia then head back to our departure

For the France leg we have 3 options:
1) Arrival and Departure from Bordeaux. Bordeaux itself, Dunes du Pilat and around, some coastal sight and then head to Pyréenées.
2) Arrival in Toulouse departure from Bordeaux. Toulouse itself, Carcasonne and ??? and go to pyrénées
3) Arrival in Marseille departure from Bordeaux : We would find something in or near Arles for 5 nights and do daytrip from there (Marseille, Pont du Gard, Nimes, parc de Camargue) and go to pyrénées

What should be on our list ? What option seems to be the best ?

We have been in France last year (Paris, Britanny, Normandy, Dordogne and Alps).

Is it enough (or too much) time ?

Thanks !

Posted by
1582 posts

Salut Bucephane! Comment ca va? - I would choose option 3 for the France leg. Marseille is a wonderful city and there are several places nearby you can visit with so much activities to do. Are you planning to be in that portion of your trip for 5 nights only?

Posted by
361 posts

Bonjour/Hi !
Of course 5 nights isn't much. We dont want to see/do Provence (we keep that for another trip).

Posted by
6897 posts

If you aim to go to Provence at a later time, I would skip option 3.
Also, you can take your French car to Spain, do the Spain part of your trip, then finish back on the French side.

As an example, you could start in Bordeaux, go to Arcachon, Saint Jean de Luz, then cross into Spain. Bordeaux could be a day trip from Arcachon, to minimize changes of hotels.

And on the way back from Spain, assuming you cross into France from Aragon, you could go to the Cauterets area (Pont d'Espagne and Gavarnie are beautiful), then head to Toulouse or Bordeaux again for the flight back.

Posted by
26 posts

Why not fly into France and out of Spain, rather than double back?

Posted by
6897 posts

Why not fly into France and out of Spain, rather than double back?

You need to return the car in France. It makes sense in your case. it is fairly easy to plan a C-shaped route in Spain that would bring you back to France without doubling back the same way, anyway :-)

Posted by
17 posts

Hi,
A side comment here, referring to your Spain bit. I guess that you have read the Rick Steves book, hence Segovia as well as Madrid. Last September on our Spain/Portugal trip trip we drove from Madrid to Segovia - but the highlight was stopping at The Valley of the Fallen and El Escorial on the way. You possibly already have this in your plan and it would be easy to visit these two places on the Segovia. We stayed the night at El Escorial but you wouldn't need to (we're a bit older and slower now!). Segovia doesn't need long, we walked through the town and visited the castle mid-late afternoon then went to the Cathedral in the morning before we headed off. We did go to the Ingresia de Vera Crux (fabulous Knights Templar round church that you can see from the castle) on our way driving out of Segovia.

Back on topic... Carcasonne is fabulous. It must be hideously busy now (first went in 1991, stayed a night, magic. Returned for a couple of hours in 2005 with daughters - good, but busy) so you you can do an overnight there that is perfect.
On our Spain and Portugal trip, we did lots of research (initialy triggered from this helpful forum) and we found the best option was to rent a one-way car in Spain, got ourselves over the border (mydaytrip.com, expensive but way cheaper than keeping the car, could have taken a train or bus) then a one-way car in Portugal.
You could fly in to France and out of Madrid.
Happy planning

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