dan_woodlief

Our family of 4 is traveling to France the first day of July. Most of this trip will be spent in Normandy and Paris, but we decided to spend a few days on the Cote d'Azur, staying in Nice, at the first of the trip. The first stop in Normandy will be Mont St. Michel, which I know will be crowded, so we opted to stay on the island overnight. It was difficult to make the decision to go south, given that we would have less than 3 days before going to Normandy, given most of a day by train to travel between the two. I am considering flying instead, from Nice to Rennes, which looks like about 3 1/2 hours in the air on Air France, versus 9-10 on the train. This would put us in Rennes mid to late morning. I plan to rent a car and drive to Mont St. Michel. Has anyone out there in Fodors land done something similar? Does this seem like a good plan to save time? Is Rennes a good place for car rental?

After an afternoon, night, and morning on the Mont, we will drive to Bayeux, where we will be staying for 3 nights. 4 more nights total in Normandy before 5 days in Paris (this is my second trip to Paris). We are planning a guided tour of WWII sites for one of the days in Normandy.

Thank you for any input.

thursdaysd

If you really want to save daylight time you could take the night train to Paris. (You'll have to change in Paris in any case.)

greg

The flight on this segment are mostly on HOP, Air France's regional codeshare. The 3.5 hr involves one layover. There are also a few direct flights with less than 2 hrs air time. In a country where there is nothing in between two distant destinations, I might do something like this. But in France with attractive destinations everywhere, I try to avoid this kind of destination paring. If for example, you come back to France and visit Provence, you might be arriving or departing from Nice even if you did not specifically include Nice in your itinerary.

Pvoyageuse

Volotea has direct flights Nice/Rennes. See www.volotea.com

Christina

I wondered how it could possibly take 3.5 hours, it wouldn't if nonstop. I've flown HOP, a good budget airline if you really want to do that. Haven't flown into Rennes but have Nice and that airport is fairly easy to deal with given right at the edge of the city, so no long trips to it. If Volotea is nonstop, I'd definitely choose that, I don't care that much about planes if it's such a short flight.

I just checked the schedules and HOP flies nonstop anyway, on that date, at a better time than Volotea (which is a night flight, unless you want to do that the night before, which could work). HOP/Air France is 12:55 pm-2:40 pm flight. Personally, I would not book the AF flight with connections that takes 3:30 as it goes through CDG with a 50 minute layover. If I were going to take such a flight, I'd book the one at 6:50 am, just 15 minutes earlier, which goes through Lyon and only lasts about 3 hours total.

As for have I ever done such a thing, sure, I use short distance flights when it makes sense rather than spending 6+ hours on a train.

dan_woodlief

Thanks for all your replies. For some reason, I was not finding the night train to Paris when I was doing my search. That could be a good option too. As for the suggestion about saving the south of France for a later trip, I agree in that Provence is definitely on my future list. My reason for Nice was that my daughter is 17, and this may be her last trip to Europe with us, as we plan to travel outside of Europe for her high school graduation next year. I discussed the Loire and other areas with them, and both kids preferred Nice. It has taken me a while to decide on the beginning portion of the trip due to the logistics. The end in Paris is set because for as long as I can remember, due to my background in French history and interest in photography, I have wanted to spend Bastille Day in Paris. One really great thing about going to France right now is that a new non-stop Paris flight starts in Raleigh, NC this May!

thursdaysd

"a new non-stop Paris flight starts in Raleigh, NC this May"

Really? I missed that. Which airline? Not having to fly through LHR would be welcome, but all my FF miles are with American. (Although I'm thinking of flying Icelandair this year, for the stopover in Reykjavik.)

dan_woodlief

Delta Airlines is now going to have a non-stop Paris flight.

dan_woodlief

I thought of that Iceland flight too!!

thursdaysd

Thanks. If it's Delta guess I'll go back to looking at Icelandair for this year.

dan_woodlief

We ended up taking the 6:30 flight from Nice to Rennes, which worked beautifully except for getting up before 4:30. We were able to pick up our car in Rennes and drive to Mont St. Michel and park before 3:00 pm. We enjoy long train rides sometimes for a break, but in this case it was nice to be able to save part of a day. Watching the tide come in was great. We saw the highest tide of the month, and a local told our family when to watch for the wave that comes with the tidal surge.

michelhuebeli

Dan, thanks for coming back to let us know.

PalenQ

second thursdaysd suggestion of perhaps taking the overnight train to Paris - book a 4-person compartment and bring food and drink aboard and have privacy - your kids - not sure how old they are - may love it and remember it much more than a plane ride.

Rennes is only a few hours from Paris by TGV trains - another neat experience for you - nearly 200 mph.

For lots on overnight trains and trains in general check www.seat61.com (good info on discounted tickets you can get to make both train trips really really cheap) and www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

Take a taxi between Paris-Lyon or Paris-Bercy where that night train comes in I believe to Gare Montparnasse or take the metro!

HappyTrvlr

Glad your flight worked out so well!