From which airport in Paris is it easiest to drive out of the city?

If you're going to Normandy, CDG is the place to leave from...otherwise, you'll have to circle around Paris to get to the north. Conversely, if you're heading for the Loire, go out of Orly...you'll miss going around Paris and have a bit of time to nap on the connecting bus if you wish. BTW, it's 3 hours to Dijon from Paris....about 2 1/2 to Caen. Remember....if you feel tired....pull over and stop!

I think the obvious answer is to land at the airport, take the train to where you want to go and pick up your car from there. You won't have to deal with Parisien traffic and you won't pay the hefty surcharge for picking up the rental car at an airport. If your choice is the Normandy coast you can train to someplace like Caen or Bayeaux and pick up the rental car there.

You can profit by flying into the airport your airline uses and taking the train to your destination. Pick up your car at a remote office (not Orly) where you avoid the high airport fees.
Do not consider any airport.

In doing that you also avoid driving in the congested traffic around the airport and in the city. Choose a suburban rental office to take your car. The auto rental agency will have several you can choose from.

You can normally return it to any airport without penalty.

Once I had the opportunity to speak to Rick Steves on one of his radio broadcasts. My question was about renting a car and driving to Normandy from CDG. His advice: ride the train to Bayeux and rent your car there. His reasons were among the very ones you mention. Fatigue, Paris traffic, never experienced driving in Europe before.

We took the train to Caen & picked up our rental car there. Pretty drive to Bayeux. We were staying in a tiny area called Crepon on the way to Arromanches so our GPS was a great help.

Driving through the French countryside is lovely and easy. You will probably enjoy it.

I agree driving through France is fairly easy and there's definitely some beautiful landscapes along the way. Just be prepared to pay tolls out-the-wazoo.

But, Tim, there are lots of National and Departmental roads, almost always more interesting than the Autoroutes, (which are toll highways) that will get you where you want to go. We have never used a GPS and maybe they are programmed for the toll highways. If this is the case, looking on a map for alternative routes is my suggestion.

When you say lease car, are you leasing from AutoEurope or another place for an extended period? That's what I did two years ago. I flew into Frankfurt. They picked us up at the airport and transported us to where the vehicle was. A few minutes later we were off and running to our first stop, Freiburg. I was a little concerned at first about a 3 - 4 hour drive right after flying for so long, but it was no problem at all. We turned the car in after we arrived in Paris. Outside of the city, driving in France was not hard. I would suggest you study road signs before you go and have a good road map. GPS would be helpful too. I would just get the car at CDG and be on your way. Have a great trip!

Thanks to all of you for your informative replies. We are leasing a car through Europe by Car, not renting, so there are only a few places we can pick it up, and since we want a "loose" itinerary we want to pick it up at CDG or Orly rather than another city hours away from Paris. I'm wondering about the GPS question. Is it worth the extra money? Can we bring one from the states and use it in the rental car? (I saw a Tomtom advertised that was "plug and play" and preloaded with european maps.) We're doing a backroads wandering type of trip. I'm inclined to go the oldfashioned way with paper maps but thought I'd ask about GPS's advantages.

Two months ago, we picked up our rental car at Orly, then drove to Chartres for a brief stop and on to Chenonceau for two nights before heading into Brittany, also on a wandering the back roads sort of trip. Getting out of Orly was fairly simple. We used the AA France road atlas and the Michelin map of the area (very similar) and did not encounter any problems getting to our destinations. However, lots of people like using GPS. Both systems work fine. Two driving tips we wish we had known before we went---the diesel pump says Gazole and you can't use your American credit card at most French gas pumps. The attendant in the booth will take it---the attendant booth pumps are the lanes closest to the booth, usually to the left. And be sure you have euros on hand for the toll booths.

Hi Sandy... We always pick up our rental car at Hertz at Orly. It is because it is so easy to go south from there on the A6.Make sure you have euro coins for the tolls. Do not be afraid to stop at the little restaurants on the tollway. They are very interesting. We will be taking our own GPS in October when we travel in France. Usually a GPS comes with mid-sized cars , but they try to charge now so we are taking our Garmin.Last year we were upgraded to a Prius at Hertz and it got great gas mileage. Really great.

Sandy,

Last Fall, we travelled by car from Paris (Versailles) to Arles, Nice, Grenoble and back. We put about 2100 km on a car. Our routes included toll autoroutes, Marseilles city streets and country roads. We were both a bit afraid of driving in France. It turned out not to be a problem once we figured out how to navigate. Hint: don't look for highway numbers, look for signs listing the next village. We did get to see Ales late at night because we kept thinking that "Ales" on the signs was "Arles" The french by and large are good and courtious drivers.

That said, the other posters who reccomended the train to Normandy or the Loire to pick up a car were right on. OTOH we saw sights we never would have if we had taken the train to Arles.
A really cool town in the Loire is Beaune. The hotel "Le Hotel" is a really nice place with nice people.

Bonnes vacances

Jeff