Normandy

If you are really interested in WW2 and plan to see the Caen Museum, definitely plan on being there for the whole day. Its massive. In retrospect, I would have skipped the Bayeux museum and done another activity with my time because the Caen Museum is so thorough.

5-7 days in Normandy will give you more than enough time to see all the highlights of Normandy, and there are many. As a home base, I would highly recommend that you pick one of the numerous B&B's in the area. They are far more fun than hotels, not to mention cheaper, and you'll have the chance to meet local French people as well as your usually very interesting fellow guests. A good place to look for a place is tripadvisor.com. Just do a search for "Normandy B&B's". You'll get very helpful reviews by actual travelers.

Hi Steve!
I was in Normandy in September and loved it. We stayed in Bayeux and in Caen. You will have a much easier time with a car, we didn't see nearly as much as we wanted to due to the fact that we didn't have a car. Caen is bigger and would probably have more of a variety of accommodations (we got a package deal from the Memorial Museum in Caen that included accommodations, lunch at the museum, entrance to the museum and a 5 hour mini-van tour, so we didn't have to look for accommodations). Lots of people recommend the Churchill in Bayeux, we actually took a mini-van tour out to Mont. St. Michel that was organized by the Churchill and it was great! Bayeux is a smaller, quaint little town. There is the cathedral and the tapestry and there is also a D-Day museum in Bayeux. 5 days sounds like a sufficient amount of time, I wish I'd had longer that 3 days, that's for sure! You will be able to find books there at the tourist offices if you are planning a self-guided tour.

I would recommend staying in Bayeux and taking an all day tour with Battle Bus. They have a new web site: http://www.ddayhistorian.com/

Re: "all day tour with Battlebus", a heads up: It's not just a change in website, unfortunately Battlebus as a large operation with 5 minibuses and 6 guides will only continue to operate as such until Nov 30. There's going to be a continuation service by Paul, the owner, but it will just be one guide and presumably will be more difficult to book in the future with only one guide, see this thread for more details.

5-7 days is more than enough to see msm and bayeux. caeon is pretty new so you can probably just stop by the museum on the way to bayeux. from bayeux it's a very short distance to the beach, and with a car you can discover many little museums around the area.