How old are you children and what are your interests?

Our children are 20 and 13 and they both love to travel. This will be our third trip to Europe, but first to France. For all our previous trips I used very helpful information posted by Fodorities and also Rick Steeves books.
Our interests are casual traveling - sightseeing, museums, nice food, shopping.

My only experience in France is an unplanned overnight layover at CDG where we did a three hour nighttime tour of Paris (which was tons of fun), so can't really help there.

We spent our spring break in London with our 17 year old. My trip report is at:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2&tid=34771547

Here is another family trip report from London:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2&tid=34730329

Here is a thread with lots of info about London with young teens:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2&tid=34774808

Here is a link to the "London Superthread", which is a bit older, but has TONS of information:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=2&tid=34548473

Be sure to go to the "destinations" tab up above on the fodors.com site and check the recommendations for London

If you want to go to Normandy before really seeing Paris, you might want to avoid Paris initially. (Forgive me if you've already looked into this!) It seems redundant to take the train all the way into Paris just to go out again. You could take a ferry or hovercraft (do they still exist? we took one when I was in 7th grade!) to Calais or even to Le Havre if that's feasible from London, then pick up your rental car there. You'd be in Normandy from the get-go, and not have to deal with traffic in and around Paris.

I've rented cars a few times in France, through AutoEurope. Most recently we picked up a car in Chartres and returned in Tours without a problem. (I wouldn't recommend car pickup in a city as small as Chartres. But Calais or Le Havre should be fine.)

Also, you could shave a day off the Loire and add it to Paris, depending on your interests. As much as all the chateaux are beautiful and unique one to the next, I find I get my fill of them pretty quickly - two or three are plenty!

Other than that, I'd say your trip will be brief, but good. Of course you could easily spend all that time in just one of the places you chose to visit, but it will be a good first taste (literally and figuratively!).

We took our 10-year-old son on a very similar trip last fall (hubby and I had visited all those locations previously). We had 4 days in London, took the train to Paris, rented a car, spent 3 days (less travel time) in the Loire Valley, then back to Paris for the remainder of the trip.

The less-convenient part of your trip is that Normandy is, of course, north of Paris, and the Loire Valley is south. I THINK that there are trains between London and Paris that stop in Le Havre (maybe not the high-speed Eurostar, though); if you got off there, you could avoid travelling into Paris, then back out. I assume you have definitely decided you want to visit both Normandy and Loire Valley. If you visit Normandy, try to make time to see Mont St. Michel - it's wonderous! The best time to visit there is to arrive in the evening, when all the millions of day-trippers are leaving, spend the night there, and then leave in the morning.

If you go directly from London to Paris, you could also take a plane. We took the Eurostar because we thought it would be easier for us, and because my son wanted to take a high-speed train. That was interesting for about 5 minutes; after that, it was just transportation! If you take the Eurostar all the way to Paris, you'll arrive at the Gare du Nord. It's pretty easy to rent a car from there, and it's a pretty straight shot from there to the ring road (peripherique) that encircles Paris; you'll get the autoroute up to Normandy from the ring road.

We picked up the rental car at the Gare du Nord and drove from there to our hotel outside of Amboise (we picked up pasties at the train station for a picnic lunch in the car).

While if it had been just me and hubby, we would have stayed right in the town of Amboise, and little town that is cute and the right size for us, our son was very taken by the thought of staying in a chateau. While us grownups had previously stayed at Chateau de Pray, and enjoyed it, he preferred Chateau de Noizay, right outside of the tiny hamlet of Noizay, becaues that Chateau has suits of armor! I would recommend either place, if you want to stay in a chateau. If you're the types who like to walk around city streets in the evening, then I'd stay in Amboise. Blere is another nice (though smaller) town; on another trip, my mother and I stayed at Le Cheval Blanc, which is also a Michelin-starred restaurant.

The length of time we were in the Loire worked for our small group (especially as we'd been there before). The first afternoon we were there, we visited Clos Luce, in Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life. The chateau has life-size models of some of his inventions in the park below the chateau; our son LOVED them. The next two days, we visited two chateaux each day, a variety of older and newer, bigger and smaller.

oooo I'm jealous, can I join your family? I did London and France in 2003 and it was great!

I agree with the poster about trying to get to Mont St. Michel. It really is magical. If you can stay on the island (?) itself, please do. There are only 2 hotels that I remember on the island so there are few tourists at night and it is a different place but beautiful!

I did stay in Amboise for my Loire journey and it was a perfect location. The daVinci house is great but I loved the gardens even more. I was just daydreaming about them today....There are models of some of daVinci's designs in the garden and it is great to see them come to life.

As far as chateaus, I would suggest Chenonceau and Chambord. I think they are very different but lovely in their own regards. The groups at Chambord are more expansive and if I remember correctly, you can have a lovely picnic there. Chenonceau has dining facilities as well.


Have a wonderful time!

We did a London-Paris trip with out daughters, age 13 and 17, last year, and they loved it. In Paris, we rented an apartment from Vacation In Paris:
www.VacationInParis.com
and it was a good choice. On most nights they preferred to shop for dinner ingredients and cook "in" rather than go out---although they are both pretty sophisticated about food, they were defeated by the Parisian menus.

Thank you so much for very helpful and detail information.
Where do you recommend to stay in Normandy?