flieder

Hi,
My husband and I are planning to visit France for our little over two week vacation in early September. We are flying in to CDG (from LAX) and spending 4 days in Paris. Our plan is to take a TGV train to Avignon or Aix and spend about 5 days to explore the area (by car) and move onto Riviera and spend another 5 days doing sightseeing. From there, we were thinking to drive up to French Alps and stay in Annecy to get a taste of the Alps region. Our departure flight leaves from the Geneva airport. When I checked the drive from Nice to Annecy, I’m not so sure about our order of regions. The map shows that we would have to back track the way we came and take the same routes which pass thru Aix and Avignon (Route A8 then E714) to go to Annecy.
Is there a suggested direction for what we want to do? Should we train to Nice or somewhere around that area from Paris and drive west and north to end up in Annecy?
I really would like expert advice on this, as we need to make train and hotel reservations and I just realized this
Thanks!

Michael

If you use viamichelin.com and specify the scenic route, you will be going through Gap and Grenoble rather than Aix and Avignon. Or specify Briançon as an intermediary stop and you'll get to the high Alps.

Christina

You don't have to go that way, you could easily go east along the coast on the A6, then when you get into Italy, go north on the A26.

If you check mappy.fr and say you want to go to Geneva airport from Nice, that's the route it shows you and ANnecy is just south of the airport, so easy to turn off to get there. In fact, I'm not sure why it doesn't show that route if you put in Nice-Annecy since it claims it is shorter.

flieder

We also wanted to spend a day in Verdon Gorge, so would it make sense to do it on the last day of our stay in Nice and drive from the gorge to Annecy? Or, it doesn't really add any benefit?

Michael

I would do the Gorges du Verdon on the way from the Provence to Nice. That's what we did. You might want to take a look at the last third of my trip report on Paris, the Dordogne and the Provence, 2012.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-july-2012.cfm