I’ll be in Barcelona in May for 8 days. I wanted to look at spending a few days before or after in Southern France. We love the castles, the outdoors, food, and wine. I’d want to be able to get back to Barcelona or to another major city to fly back so that I’d only have one stop. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
What I did is take a train from Barcelona to Perpignan, France, and rented a car from there to go to Carcassonne, Toulouse and the Dorgogne. Collioure is also nearby but miss that this time.
Easy.
Montpellier is 3.5 hours between both Barcelona and Paris. So any stop west of there will be less. Then it's 30 minutes from Montpellier to Nîmes and up north into Provence, or 1.5 hours across the Camargue to Marseille, but anything east of Marseille to the Riviera is on a slow, coastal train with beautiful scenery.
Your airports, connecting in Paris would be Toulouse, Montpellier, Marseille, Nice, or a direct flight Nice JFK, or high-speed trains to the CDG airport. If you stay near the Spanish border, you can return to Barcelona airport