Train Travel in France

Perhaps when you are leaving Paris, take a train to Orly or even Chartres and rent a car there, then you avoid all of the paris traffic!
You can do a lot more in Normandy by car too.

In some cases when you want to take the train from a city in one part of France to a city in a different region, you find yourself routed into Paris and back out again, very often on expensive TGVs. To make it even more fun, you may have to transfer between two of the many Paris train stations. Such hub-and-spoke routings can be surprisingly costly in terms of both time and money. If the two cities/towns are relatively close together and you are lucky, there will be a bus option that avoids the unwanted visit to Paris. I have not generally been lucky. Before planning to rent a sequence of cars, be sure your planned rail hops make sense, schedule-wise.

Unfortunately, there are a million ways to do this. A couple of years ago from London we took the Eurostar to Lille, picked up a car and spent a week through Normandy, basically the Lorie Valley, and dropped the car in LaRochella and flew back to London. You could do the same but work you way to Paris instead and home from Paris. Lille was a very convenient place to get a car -- about ten minutes right at the station.

Thanks everyone for very helpful suggestions. We do like car travel, so will re-evaluate the train strategy in light of your comments.

I think the train strategy is perfect, though Bordeaux is a stretch after Normandy.

The trains are great, leave one rested, and often much faster than the car.

Here's a better way to connect those dots: Take the train to Lille, rent a car, and tour Normandy. Return the car in Caen, Bayeux, or Rennes, and visit Paris for your 3 days. Then take the TGV to Bordeaux (if that is really where you want to spend your time).

The train to Bordeaux only takes 2 hours! You can fly home from there.

Short-term car rentals are not especially expensive if you reserve before you go.

Tyrker, I'm aware of the regional-train option and generally choose it when it exists (I'm all about the cheap), but most travelers don't want to spend 6 or 7 hours getting somewhere if there's a 4-hour option. I think that's understandable on a 2- or even 3-week trip. It's not like they'd have time actually to visit those nice towns along the way.

I can't imagine visiting Normandy without a car. There is extremely limited public transport there, and there will be many, many places you simply cannot visit unless you have a car.

Just a few places off the top of my head I don't believe you can get any public transportation to:

Utah Beach, the La Fiére Causeway, Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Angoville-au-Plain, any German cemetery, the Canadian Cemetery in Reviers, any little calvados distillery, Azeville gun battery, Longues-sur-mer.

I'm sure there are many, many more, but I could easily get to all of these and then some with a car in 2–3 days. I maintain these are all very worthwhile places to visit in Normandy, and that public transportation in this area is "extremely" limited. Those few places that are served by a bus have very infrequent service.

My too sense...

"...any German cemetery...." There are two in Normandy.

Before Bayeaux's train area was undergoing reconstruction which entailed tearing up the street, etc, the bus #70 across from the train station used to go out to La Cambre, don't know if that bus still goes out there.

Agree with Pharmerphil. If you intend to do some intense tracking of battle field sites in Normandy, ie, the Villers Bocage, or where the tank battles took under "Goodwood" and others took place, then you most definitely need that rental car, just as if you were tracking down WW1 sites (cemeteries, museums, battle field monuments, memorials, etc) from the Somme to Arras.

"...you don't have to take the route suggested by SNCF site." That's exactly what I do in France and, especially in Germany, where I tailor my own routes, not always those suggested by DB, often times to get to my destination, avoid transfers, certain routes, etc, you name it.

No need to follow exactly the routes given my DB or SNCF, such as no night train from Berlin to Paris. Yes, there is, if you put it together, you can be in Paris the next morning ca 09:30 hrs.

Thanks for that information, I'm aware of that connection. My route for Berlin - Paris (night) is via Offenburg. Time it right, you'll be in arriving in Paris Est by 0935 hrs.

I don't think most casual visitors to Normandy expect to see a large number of D-Day sites. If they did, they wouldn't be planning to day-trip from Paris (as so many are), or to spend just one night in the area. As someone who depends solely on public transportation with the very rare bus-tour thrown in, my philosphy is that I don't have to be able to get everywhere by train and bus; I just need access to enough interesting places to fill the number of days I want to spend in the area. If there's a specific point of interest of special interest to me that's off the transportation grid, I can decide to look for a tour that includes it, hire a guide with a car, or get as close as possible by train or bus and spring for a taxi.

Someone with a hobbyist's (or scholar's) interest in the subject is a different matter and would be well advised to rent a car or hire a private guide for a day or two (or more) to get to places of interest inaccessible by train and bus.