Hi Everyone!
Because I have a soft spot in my heart for Normandy and D-Day, and really it is hard to tour D-day beaches/sites without a car, I bit the bullet and rented a car. We left Paris this morning. I could not avoid the tolls because also we do not have cellular data and all the GPS's route you to the toll roads. In Rick's books it says to bring change for the tolls on that route. However, I believe some things have changed since he last updated his books on that route which I believe was pre-Covid. I have a VISA card that has that contactless logo (sort of looks like a WiFi logo with the little waves) and that worked! At one booth that function was out of order and I simply put my credit card in, chip first, and it worked! We ALWAYS took the booths that said Euro's. I was afraid to use any others; even though we craned our necks to see, we could not see whether the other booths took credit cards. They were labelled with a lower-case "t"; I belive there is a special toll card that locals can get. Anywhere you can, bear to the right when a toll booth comes up as the booths that take Euro's are mainly to the right. Do not get stuck in a fast lane on the left for fear of getting dinged by your rental car company. And it's expensive!! 4 Euro's per toll (!!!) and I will estimate that I hit toll booths 5 or 6 times. The (unmanned) booths also took bills and made change. A few times we did see people trying to back up for whatever reason so if you end up in the wrong booth, just know that even locals back out of booths sometimes! No-one made any rude gestures at them, they all just backed up as well to let the people back out! I hope this helps! Keep on travellin'!