We are a family of 5 with all kids older than 16. We are renting a car in June and traveling from Paris to San Sebastian...have about 4 days. Any suggestions on where to go? Limoge? Beaches? Bordeaux? Dordogne? Pyrennees?
Posted by
Long Beach, Ca, usa
1655 posts
Jjason.peel,
If you plan on renting a car in France and dropping it off in Spain, be prepared for a hefty foreign driop-off fee (500 to 1000 euros). It is no simple matter for a company to return a car to the country where it is registered. This isn't like between states in the US. If you plan to return to France with the car, be sure the rental company allows you to drive it to another country. Some do, some don't.
Posted by
Washington DC
28787 posts
The ViaMichelin website isn't working for me at the moment, but I think the fastest drive would take you through or past Poitiers and Saintes rather than Limoges. Poitiers has a beautiful historic center on top of a hill and some very early churches. Limoges is also beautiful. It has multiple decorative-arts museums, and not far away is Oradour-sur-Glane, site of a Nazi atrocity during WWII. There's a fine museum/memorial at Oradour, along with the remains of the burned-out village. A full visit to that site, including the museum, takes multiple hours.
There's a great variety of things to do and see in the Dordogne and the Lot. It's a great destination, but trying to combine a visit to that area with the very long drive from Paris to San Sebastian (or to a money-saving place on the French side of the border to avoid the international drop charge on the rental car) will not allow a great deal of time. You can get to Bordeaux by train a lot faster than by car.
I wouldn't spend precious time on a short trip to France/Spain going to the beach, but that's just me. You should expect any easily accessible beach to be really crowded during good weather, and I don't know what sort of water temperatures you'd encounter in June. (You can Google for historical data on that score.) Ile de Re, off the coast near La Rochelle, is a popular island. There's a bridge, so you don't have the sort of delays you can encounter with ferries. However, I don't know whether a non-resident can freely take a private car over to the island, or what sort of toll there would be. There is bus service across the bridge from La Rochelle.
Bordeaux has a handsome historic center. As you're probably aware, the area is popular with wine-lovers.
Posted by
35 posts
You might consider an overnight visit to Puy du Fou theme park near Nantes. This is not an amusement ride type park, but lots of big outdoor shows.
This would be followed by going on the autoroutes through La Rochelle and Bourdeaux then to San Sebastián