How to see both Mont St. Michel & D-Day beaches in 2 1/2 days from Paris

Posted by drmusic on 04/09/14 09:00 PM

My wife, daughter and I will be in Bruges in two weeks and want to go to see the D-day beaches & Mont St. Michel before settling down in Paris. I would have rented a car in Amsterdam but the drop off fee in Paris was rather high. So we're taking the train from Bruges to Paris on a Saturday and then will either rent a car there or take the train to Rouen or Caen to rent a car. Which place is better to rent? The first day will be travel, rent car and maybe see some beaches. Then we spend Sat. night in Bayeux. On Sunday we drive to Mont. St. Michel and see it and then should we stay there overnight or return to Bayeux? Monday we need to make our way back to Paris. Does this itinerary seem correct or could it be improved?

Am I making a mistake by not just renting a car in Amsterdam and dropping it off in Paris?

Posted by Ed

Pensacola

04/09/14 09:16 PM

9110 posts

The Bruges train chugs into Paris Nord. There's a rental car joint in the station and the cars are underneath. You can escape straight north to the peripherique, circle the nw quadrant and be lined up on the A-14 in twenty minutes. You'll be in Caen in two and a half hours after pulling out of Nord. You can't beat that with a train by the time you metro across town to Saint-Lazare.

Finish all your beach business and then go spent the night on or near the Mont. It's going to be too ragged to head back east for the night.

Come back to Paris by the southern route and it'll take four hours instead of three and a half. You can make a stop in Fougeres or Chartres, or both

Posted by Laura

Rick Steves' Europe

04/10/14 05:26 PM

16895 posts

Ed has you on the right track. Since you can't get a train departing from the same station, you might as well get a car departing from that station. You need not return the car in the city; Versailles or Chartres could be a drop-off option without much additional fee. Drop off fees in a second country are much higher.

Posted by drmusic OP

04/10/14 07:25 PM

2 posts

Thanks Ed for your response. If I rent the car at Gare Nord and am returning from the south, won't it be a problem getting through Paris back to Nord? Can we drive around the city to get back to Nord? We're going to be staying in the Latin Quarter, and our landlord said that Montparnasse is the closest to our apartment. Maybe we can drop the car there without excessive fees.

On another note, is it better to stay in Arromanches or Bayeux? The beach sounds better to me but there are less choices. Any ideas?
Thanks!

Posted by Charles

Austin, Texas, USA

04/13/14 04:14 AM

573 posts

We did something similar a few years ago. There are car rental options right accross the train station in Caen.

Posted by Ed

Pensacola

04/13/14 09:07 AM

9110 posts

You can return it anywhere you wish without additional charge.

The return at Montparnasse is hard to hit coming in from the south - - I know the city well and just about have to Braille my way to get to the car place on the first pass from the south, I've no idea what a GPS would do.

You can easily drive around the peripherique to get back to Nord, figure about thirty minutes for a hundred eighty degrees, but I don't know where 'south' is or the time of day youre thinking about.

You're splitting hairs on metro time to the Latin Quarter between the two car places, there's more to metro timing than precise distance between stations.

Were i coming in from the dead south, I'd be thinking about Gare de Lyon.

You'd probably be happier in all respects staying in Bayeux rather than Arromanches.