Trip planning with focus on Normandy/Loire Valley

I highly recommend one of the small-group tours to the D-Day beaches. I assume you are aware that folks on the forum often recommend Overlord Tours and Dale Booth. I know that the former offers at least one two-day tour. Since this is a special request by your husband, this might be a time to go with the two-day tour rather than the one-day tour.

The area has a lot of WW II musuems. My one-day tour stopped at the Airborne Museum. The museum in Bayeux is good and will take a few hours for those seriously interested. I liked the Peace Museum in Caen very much, but it is massive (can take all day) and extends into the Cold War period. Opinions on it are distinctly mixed on this board.

There's good new museum in the small town of Falaise that focuses on civilian life during the war; it includes the Resistance. The town of Falaise itself doesn't seem to have much of anything of tourist interest; it was pretty much obliterated during the invasion. There is bus service from Caen to Falaise.

All of the museums I've mentioned have done a good job with the English information panels.

I didn't have a rental car while I traveled around Normandy. I opted to distribute my nights among Rouen, Caen and Bayeux. Caen is not picturesque, in general, because it was mostly rebuilt after the war. There's a castle and two abbeys, plus one short medieval street near the castle. The reason for staying there would be to take advantage of its superior transportation links, both rail and bus. Bayeux is not as convenient a base for trips by public transportation, because for most of them you must first get yourself to Caen.

I enjoyed the string of coastal towns east of Caen. I didn't get as far as Etretat but thought Honfleur, Deauville and Cabourg were all fun to wander around.

There are some very attractive sightseeing targets in eastern Brittany that aren't terribly far beyond Mont-St-Michel. Just in case you have time to cross that regional boundary, I enjoyed Dinard and Dinan more than St.-Malo due to the tourist load in the latter, but I may be the exception there. All of those places get a lot of visitors. Rennes in a very nice larger city with an interesting historic center. I especially recommend Vitre and Fougeres, really striking towns that had only a modest number of visitors. They felt like I'd step back in time a decade or two, in terms of tourist traffic. My visit to that area was in the second half of July.

Especially with the inclusion of the Loire and allowing for the extra travel to get to Normandy from Paris, I think you're going to want all the extra days you can manage.

Again, I managed all of the above without a car (except for the van-tour of the D-Day sites). I had 20 days but sort of poked along, taking my time.

Normandy was also on my husband's bucket list, and because of that I arranged for a private tour. We used Sylvan Kast who was phenomenal! He communicated with me beforehand to find out our main interests, and he researched the specific unit that a family member of ours was in during the invasion. http://www.d-day-experience-tours.com/ I can not speak to public transportation in Normandy, because we rented a car in Caen. Driving in the Normandy area was not at all difficult and it gave us the flexibility that we were looking for on our trip. We used the town of Bayeaux as our base. Enjoy the birthday trip!

To enjoy the Loire Valley it's really great to have a car. The chateaux are spread out and mostly not accessible by public transportation. I can recommend Azay-le-Rideau as a charming village away from the more touristy eastern end of the Loire region. It has its own chateau and is convenient to the Chateau of Villandry and the Fortress of Chinon; also not too far from Fontevraud Abbey. These are destinations you wouldn't get to on a day trip from Paris.

The Hotel Biencourt in Azay-le-Rideau is lovely, with extremely nice & helpful innkeepers and a delicious breakfast. The village has several high-end restaurants as well as more casual places to eat.

If you drive down from Normandy, the large rest stop at Alencon is a convenient place to stretch your legs. Be aware that going through Le Mans the different Autoroutes run together for a couple of miles and it's easy to panic thinking you've gotten on the wrong road. Follow signs for direction Bordeaux. And don't exit the Autoroute for Azay-le-Rideau until you are actually there, clear of Tours. (There is an exit sign in Tours that we followed, which put us on a slow, unscenic urban surface street for what seemed like forever.)

I'm not a fanatic about driving myself, but I agree that a car is best for both Normandy and the Loire. It sounds like your husband is in fact interested in "the D-Day beaches" and not, in fact, "Normandy". There is not question that there are many tour products available for the former, which make a car unnecessary for that part of your visit. We generally stay three nights per hotel.

We took the TGV from CDG to St. Pierre des Corps and rented a car outside the station (... closed for two hour lunch ... ) for the Loire. I found the driving un-demanding, although there was never enough parking. We chose to focus on the lesser Chateaux to the west, because we were driving in a clockwise circle to MSM and then a hotel-chateau outside Bayeux. We returned the car inside Paris, which was a terrible idea (!) This is a paste of our 2012 itinerary (we didn't go to every place noted.):

03 Jul 12 Tue 7:45AM Arrive CDG Paris, France Term 1
03 Jul 12 Tue 10:16AM TGV 9802 from CDG Gare TGV Car 2/23-24
12:00PM Arrive St. Pierre des Corps(Tours)
(Backup 12:38 IC 14047/Austerlitz,13:33 TGV 8333 Montparnasse, 14:03 TGV 8441)
03 Jul 12 Tue 2:00PM Avis St. Pierre des Corps
->Villandry or Chenonceau, Château de la Bourdaisière
03 Jul 12 Tue to Château de Marçay, 37500 Marçay - Chinon
06 Jul 12 Fri
Langeais,Villandry/Fontevraud/Chenonceau, Ambroise/Cadre Noir/rain:Orleans, Troglodytes
Gardens: Chateau de Villandry (1000 candles 6th), … de Sassy, Azay-le-Ferron, Richelieu, La Chatonnière
->Fougeres ruin,Vitré or Dinan, M.S.M evening

06 Jul 12 Fri to Villa Reine Hortense (bkfst extra)
08 Jul 12 Sun 19, Rue De La Malouine Dinard, 35800
Dol-de-Bretagne menhir, M.S.M.,Dinan,St. Malo,Paimpol steam train/Beauport Abbey/moonlight walk
Gardens: Coutances, La Ballue,Chateau de Caradeuc, Jardin Thabor, … de Beaumesnil, … de Bizy ...Vitré
->Coutances or Cider Route
08 Jul 12 Sun to Chateau de Sully, Route de Port-en-Bessin
11 Jul 12 Wed 14400 Bayeux Sully, 33 (0) 2 31 22 29 48
D-Day Beaches, Tapestry, Caen, resort towns/Lace workshop/war cemeteries/Honfleur
Gardens: Chateau de Brecy, ... de Canon, … de Harcourt, … de Vendeuvre,
->Rouen
11 Jul 12 Wed 2:00PM Avis Return Champs Elysees, Paris
60 Rue De Ponthieu 75008(33) 01 43 59 03 83

I can’t imagine trying to do any productive sightseeing in Loire without a car. The driving is pretty easy, the autoroute running east-west though there was an absolute breeze. Even with a car, you can really only see two chateau a day comfortably. Amboise was our home base and I would recommend it. The chateau in Amboise can be seen quickly and at your leisure. Amboise was convenient to Chenonceau, Chambourd (slightly less so), Chaumont, Azay-Le-Rideau and Villandry. Many people also recommend Azay as a base, and I could totally see that. One side note, many of these chateau (Chenonceau and Villandry specifically) had lovely picnic areas. I highly recommend putting together a picnic from all of the various shops wherever you’re based and picnic lunch rather than deal with finding a restaurant. It was a super way to unwind, and of course shopping for all the stuff was it’s own great experience.

What a wonderful way to spend a 65th birthday!
My husband and I, also 65, took a wonderful trip to Normandy 2 years ago. We always try to plan any France trip around a Paris visit because like you, we love that city. We flew into Paris and rented a car and drove from the airport to Gerberoy and Giverny where we stayed. We loved having a car in this area as we were able to see the small quaint towns and their charm. We have Parisian friends that encouraged us to drive through any town that was cited as one of the Most Beautiful Villages in France. There are lots in the Normandy area and stopping in a few for coffee and a pastry made our visit so relaxing. We loved Etratet, Honfleur, Gerberoy and the apple orchards near Bayeux. We took a day tour of the Normandy beaches with Overlord from Bayeux and enjoyed it. We wanted to see Mont St Michel, a bucket list spot for us, so we spent one night there. We drove into Amboise and stayed at the Manior Les Minimes which I would highly recommend. Amboise was a fun place to go back home to each night after seeing chateaus and the countryside all day. There are some great bakeries and coffee shops there to enjoy a pastry and a nice dinner after a long day. The Seine had flooded 2 years ago and that limited our driving access to Chambord only but driving to Villandry and the other chateaus was a delight. I do not know how we would have seen the Loire Valley without a car......and we found the countryside to be beautiful. It was easy driving.
We missed driving through Dixon and Beaune on our way back to Paris from Amboise because the flood had closed access through some of the roads so we drove to Paris without seeing these two towns.....sorry we missed them.
Have a great birthday and trip. We are on our way to Provence in May and again, a few days in Paris before we fly home.

A tour definitely seems like the way to go for the Normandy beaches if you're not driving (or even if you would be otherwise). But a car really helps with other sights in both Normandy and the Loire. Maybe the best plan is to take a train between the two regions, preferably not via Paris.

This website has train schedules. It shows some connections between Caen and Tours via LeMans. You may find other options if you play with it. If you can find a good way to go by train between the regions, you could rent a car in each region and save yourselves the long drive between them. Of course there are plenty of trains between both and Paris for whatever time you want to spend there at the start or end of the trip.

Ten to 12 days seems like enough for Normandy and the Loire. We spent a week in the Loire and it was a little more than we really needed. Three or four days in Normandy were enough. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks to everyone for all the great advice about the region. I am thinking of changing my approach to this trip because in my heart I know that my husband really doesn’t want to drive and even if it means not seeing everything he would be much happier hiring a guide (we definitely don’t want to do a bus tour where you have to get going early!) so my thought now is to maybe base out of Paris and then head to the Normandy area for 3-4 days, return to Paris for a few days and then head to Loire Valley for 3-4 days. Has anyone ever done something like this?