Driving Paris to Amboise

I think that getting a car right at the airport may be a good idea, depending on the time of day. Early morning weekdays from CDG to any major road in the Paris area is a traffic nightmare. Not sure, but I think after 9 or 10 am is a lot better. Getting on the autoroute system is pretty easy from there. Depending on how you are affected by jet lag and if you sleep on the flight, it may be a better bet to get a car from a rental office on the Port Orleans area because it's virtually on the southwest perpiphery road of Paris. In this case, take the Roissy bus from CDG to Paris and hop the metro to Port Orleans. The A10 is right there and you're on your way west. The less you need to drive in Paris, the better off you will be. I just returned from the area and Amboise is extremely crowded and congested this time of year. As for dropoff, just drop the car off at Orly.

There's nothing wrong with your idea, but we just came back from a trip. We arrived on time at CDG, had a non-refundable TGV ticket 2hrs 25 minutes later from CDG-TGV to St. Pierre des Corps (3km from Tours), and rented Avis in Tours. We returned the car at the Champs Elysee Avis, which could be counted as a mistake! I drive in NYC all the time but Paris traffic is a different, savage animal. My wife slept on the train, but I didn't manage to. I loved avoiding 2 hours driving on arrival day from the U.S. The drawbacks are the danger of missing your TGV (and perhaps having to go into Paris for a cheaper, conventional train) and the car rental lunch hour in St. P des Corps. We got in early, but Avis refused to give me a 2PM reservation at 11:30AM. So we had a nice lunch in the sun at a nearby cafe. It's very hard to be sure, but I think I may have saved a little on the rental, but "airport fee" wasn't broken out on the CDG reservation I made and cancelled. One option I'd overlooked, which Rick mentions in his book, is taking the train to a city you really want to see, renting the car, putting your luggage in it, and leaving the car in the (relatively secure) rental garage while you look over that city. If you go through St. Pierre des Corps, consider Chateau de las Bourdaisiere if you have extra time and like gardens and outdoor walking. I don't really like driving abroad, but it's great to have a car in the Loire, Brittany, and Normandy.

Sorry, my editing time expired, and I want to correct my post: I made an internet booking for an Avis car in St. Pierre des Corps, just steps from the TGV station there. There is a cafe which overlooks the same plaza, and that's where we had a rather good, fair-priced lunch-since Avis didn't re-open until 1:30 PM. (Hertz has a two-hour lunch there.) There are very frequent connections to Tours itself by conventional train, but we had no need to go to Tours, where there are of course rental car agencies too.

By TGV, Paris to Tours is just a bit over one hour. Well worth it, I'd say, to avoid Paris driving. But you would need to get to the right gare, which I don't think is the one at CDG.

There are direct trains from CDG TGV station, one at a bit after 2:00 which takes about 1.5 hours. All others take aboutr 2.5+ hours. Alternative is to take RER B from CDG to Eenfert Rochereau Metro/RER station. Transfer to the Metro 6 line direction of Charles de Gaulle Etolle and get off at Montparnasse Bienvenue station which connects to Gare Montparnasse from which the 1 hour trains to Tours depart. You can download RER and Metro maps at Paris by Train - google for paris metro maps. You can get train information at the baun.de site, which is the German rail site. I will let others guide you through the French train site.

We rented a car at CDG a few years ago and drove to Amboise, just as you're proposing. We had a printout of driving directions from viamichelin.com and had no problems. These days you could probably get a car with GPS. We also made a stop at Chartres on the way. Visited the magnificent Chartres cathedral and had lunch there as well.
Jet lag was no problem; our plane arrived in Paris in the morning and our adrenalin was up.

All the ideas above have made something very simple way the heck over-complicated. As usual on this site, you ask a driving question and all you get is that it's too hard and you need to toss in a bunch of trains for some reason. As far as the ideas posted about going somewhere else in the city, getting a car, etc - - they're all going to take at least an hour and a half, have a couple of line changes, and a hump to the car place. You've still got almost a two hour drive in front of you. Oddly, no previous replies have said that they've driven the route and it was easy - - or that they've actually driven it and it's hard. If you take a train from the airport, it's going to take you two or three hours to get to Tours, then you have to get back to Amboise. The truth is that you can drive from the airport to Amboise in well less than two and a half hours. If it goes smoothly, you can make it in two. In a blue gazillion trips into Roissy, I've never started the car in more than five minutes after leaving the rental counter (walk out the door and across the road). What you do is take the A1 toward the city as you come out of the airport. Within five miles, pick up the A3 until you hit the perpherique, follow it until the A6b forks off (if you miss it, go a bit further and get off at the A6a, no problem). After that, you're off an running with no more traffic. The only place you could have been slowed down was the four or five miles spent on the peripherique - - even at a dead crawl, it's not going to cost you fifteen minutes.

Coming back, if you drop the car at Orly, you're going to spend at least an hour and a good chunk of change getting back into the city. Drop the car at Paris Nord. What you do is hit the perripherique, circle clockwise (north, peripherique interieur) to the Clignancourt exit and head south. You'll be hemmed in by the tracks serving Nord to the east and a bunch of one-way streets running against you on the west - - it's impossible to go astray. From the turn-in garage under the station, you're a five-minute walk to a metro/rer station and fifteen minutes/two bucks to the center of the city. EDIT: Tom sneaked in while I was madly typing. He's got it right.

Thanks for the replies. I really wanted to try a train route but because I am attending an event near Amboise (wedding). I really need the car to get around for several days. One problem is that I arrive on a Sunday. The rental offices in Tours and Amboise are closed that date. I need the car early Monday morning so that suggested a need to rent the car in Paris on SUnday afternoon. Tom and Ed thanks for the encouragement. I figure it can't be too hard to get out of Paris- especially on a Sunday afternoon. Ed - thanks for some specific directions. That is very useful. I'll look into dropping the car at Nord. We're staying in the Latin Quarter so that will be my final destinations.

Yes, rent your car immediately from CDG (you'll be fine - get on the road, you're in France!). Yes, make certain the car has a GPS (but bring a map anyway). Yes, you'll love Amboise and the Loire countryside.
Yes, drop the car as easily as you can near your hotel and get out of the car (don't try to return it to CDG, much too far out of your way - and waste another hour back to Latin Quarter). Enjoy ---- I'm jealous.

With a GPS and a navigator, driving even in Paris is no big deal. It's harder if you don't have an interpreter sitting next to you... "this exit...? the third exit from the roundabout? this lane?" etc. The GPS are mostly right, tho one did route me straight up to the rear walls of the Papal Palace in Avignon- a real deadend with no parking.
If you can drive in L.A. you can drive in Paris. I wouldn't take a train to rent a car, just get the car and go. Don't forget your international driving permit from AAA.

We drove from Paris to Amboise in 2010. The only difficulty we had is that the GPS kept trying to get us back to Paris( I had dropped the unit and it reset) So take a map and the GPS and you'll be fine.