Paris to Normandy

We did that a few years ago. I suggest you take a train from Paris to Caen. Rent a car in Caen. There is an Avis or Hertz right across from the train station. make sure you get a GPS..I didn't and got real lost

Thank you so much for the info.

If you're going to take an all-day guided tour of the Normandy beaches after spending the night in Caen or Bayeux - and I highly recommend that you do - then you wouldn't need a car at all. You can visit the museum in Caen, the museum in Bayeux, and see the Bayeux tapestry your first day without a car.

We took the train straight from Paris to Bayeux, did a tour 2 days in a row and didn't need a car at all. Spent a lot of time walking around Bayeux in the evening, which is a beautiful, medieval town. Visited the War museum on one day, which is really worth visiting, and the saw the tapestry too. There is a British Cemetery in town that we visited, and the American Cemetery we went to on our tours, as well as the German Cemetery.

With our first trip to Paris, my husband and I took a Cityrama tour from Paris to Normandy. We stopped in Caen at the museum and visited the D-Day beaches. Since, we have visited Normandy twice and have rented a car each time. We enjoy seeing the little villages and the back roads. We always rent at the Paris airport and return the car to CDG. In my opinion, it isn't terribly easy or difficult to get out of the airport with the car nor return it. It can be done. A lot depends on how confident you would be in driving a rental car in France. In what town are you interested in spending the night? Do you feel confident about taking the train? I hope you enjoy your trip. It is beautiful there.

Amelia, Depending on how much ground you intend to cover in one day with specific sites in mind, I would not recommend at rental car. You can easily take the train from Paris St Lazare to Bayeux, which is what I did last month. The museum and the British Cemetery are about 25 mins. away on foot. A good number of signs direct you there. To get to the German cemetery, take bus #70 in front of the Bayeux train station at Gare Routiere, it's about an hour and 20 min ride...very doable.

We rented a car because we wanted to visited the WWII sites, and decided to not opt for a tour. We rented from CDG upon arrival. If you rent a car, secure it before you go. It will be much cheaper than doing it once you arrive and it's nice to have a car on reserve. I suppose it all depends on what you want to do in Normandy and where you are planning to spend the night. Can you give more info? What do you want to see in Normandy? You have gotten lots of varied answer, which will not make your planning any easier, so give us an idea of what you want to do in order to get more specific answers to help you out.

I did not want to drive in Paris, so we trained to Rouen and picked up a car there (after seeing Giverney). RE: Normandie
We got a great map at Tourist Information in Rouen. Perhaps the most poignant sight was the small British cemetery (There are 17.) in the Normandie countryside that we discovered on our map.

When we were in France last spring, we left from Amiens to go to Normandy. It was extremely nice to have a car for the weekend we were there. We stayed at a B & B in Bayeau from Fri-Monday. We did a guided tour on Saturday and then spent Sunday going back to the places my husband wanted to spend more time visiting. Without a car, we could not have done that. We did walk within Bayeau and left the car parked. And my husband borrowed a chip from someone with all the French maps but English instructions. He said on a previous trip the GPS in the rental car only gave the instructions in French and none of them spoke French. I had lots of French in high school and college but that was a long time ago. While I could translate most signs for my husband, the GPS and English instructions made life lots easier. We had rented car in Paris intially so after Normandy we drove back to Paris to return it. I agree with other posts, avoid driving in Paris at all costs. A fist fight broke out on the street at a stop light between the two car drivers directly in front of us while we were just trying to get out of town. Public transport would definitely be my first choice.

The name of the bed and breakfast was Clos de Fontaine. Their website is [email protected]. It is owned by a family and just has two rooms. The wife recommended a few less expensive places to eat which we loved. The breakfasts were typically french. The coffee was very good. If you can get in, I highly recommend it. In Paris we stayed at Hotel de L'Empereur. Also wonderful. We did the guided tour with Overlords Tour Company. It was eight of us and the guide in a small van. They paired us with a group of 6 from the US, UK and Canada. My husband and one man from the other group were "students" of WWII, so I think some of the talk was personalizd to go into more detail than typical. The tour began at 8:45 and we go back after 7 PM. Because we were there in early April fewer concessions were open (so no lunch in one of the small towns) but Overlord made arrangements for a nice boxed type lunch from someone they had connections with to be avaialable for 10 euros each. It was a large sandwich (think 12" sub), yogurt, chips, can of soda, fruit and a candy bar. I ate all the meat off my sandwich and half the bread and the yogurt and had the drink. I put the rest in my bag and took it with me. The next day when we were exploring, we had a snack of the rest of the bagette, the candy, chips and apple while driving to the American Cemetary. I can't give you any advice about renting a car out of Paris. All I know is that although my husband had business in Amiens and would have liked to just take the train from Paris to there and rent a car in Amiens rather than drive in Paris traffic, we could not rent a car in Amiens. That is why we had the "wonderful" driving experiences in Paris both picking up and dropping off the car.

We stayed in a 300 year old farm house in the tiny hamlet of Reyes. Found it in Rick's book. It was only 3 miles from Gold Beach, where the Brits invaded.