My wife and I will be arriving in Calais in early October and will rent a car to venture through Normandy for 2-3 nights before heading into Brittany. I plan to revisit the D-Day beaches and may take a tour. We are really looking forward to Brittany and love the ocean/coast and plan to travel along the coastal roads. Does anyone suggest the Quimper area and are there any suggestions for Brittany "must see" towns, villages, beaches, etc?

We've spent two weeks several years ago driving in Brittany, staying in St. Malo, Dinan, Dinard, St. Brieuc, Cote De Granit Rose, Pont-Aven and Carnac. We loved it all and went back for another stay in Pont-Aven a year later. The only place we weren't crazy about was Quimper itself, which was full of traffic and much harder to navigate than anywhere else we had been.

In Normandy, we went to the D-Day beaches, Honfleur, Bayeux, Contentin, and Mont St. Michel, all of which were quite wonderful.

The scenery is gorgeous, the driving easy, and the food very good. All of these places are "must sees" in our book.

Loved all the places mentioned just above.

If you go to the Quimper area, Chateau Guilguffin is an incredibly beautiful place to stay.

Between Dinard and Dinan several Fodorites have also stayed at the Manoir de la Rance. If found it a bit hard to find, but the setting was fabulous.

Click on my name and then look for my Ghent, Normandy & Brittany trip report. It might give you some ideas. To that report I would add that you should not miss the Bayeux tapestry.

Several years ago, DH & I took a trip similar to the one you are planning. We stayed in Honfleur (4 nights), Dinan (3 nights) and Moelan-sur-Mer near Pont Aven (3 nights). We were astounded by the natural beauty of Brittany!

We decided to split our visit to Brittany to the two coasts & took a leisurely day to drive through the Foret de Paimpont & stopped in the picturesque village of Rochfort-en-Terre before arriving in Moelan-sur-Mer. Here, we stayed in the lovely Manoir de Kertalg.

Our friends have stayed at the Chateau Guilguffin closer to Quimper. They enjoyed it very much!

You have chosen a lovely part of France to visit! Enjoy!

2010

We love Brittany too. We stayed 2 weeks in a Gite near Dinan, another week near Pt Aven, and then 2 weeks near Penvenen close to the Cote De Granit Rose. Our favorite area for a "first timer" was the Dinan region - but for our 4-5th week in Brittany we just loved the Penvenan area. Near Penvenen, we stayed in a lovely Gite almost directly on the water (when the tide was high - at low tide we could not see water at all). We did not find southern Brittany to be as scenic as northern Brittany - especially away from the coast.

We visited the D-Day beaches as an overnight from Dinan, and then we spent another week wandering through Normandy. We visited Mt St Michel as a day trip from Dinan.

Rennes makes my "Top 5 cities in France" list. And Vannes makes my top 5 villages list.

I wrote a Normandy & Brittany itinerary for a friend. If you would like a copy, e-mail me at [email protected]

Stu Dudley

2010 mentioned Rochefort-en-Terre. We were not impressed with the village itself. (Maybe we'd seen too many 'most beautiful' villages).

However, we stayed at the nearby Chateau Talhouet. Wow! Another wonderful place to stay. DH said the fireplace in our bedroom would swallow a whole Paris hotel room.

The Irish Wolfhound and I fell in love.

Extremely valuable input. Since it will be our first time in the area, it sounds like we are going to be very pleased. I am going to definately check out the towns and overnight locations everyone has mentioned.

Thanks again.

If you click on my user name you will get our trip report from May 2008 - we spent 10 days in Brittany

We did a lot in a week in Brittany 2 years ago, and enjoyed it enormously, as you can see at http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&x=0&y=-24d4pe

SemiMike,
We are in Australia and will be travelling to France in late October - this for the first time. We have read some of your posts and wonder if we could email you to ask some questions about this trip. Most of what we may ask is probably off the point of this forum topic and cuts across a few.

Sue, of course! I am [email protected]

Sue, when we went through Normandy and Brittany May 2008 we used some of Mike's postings, some from Underhill, some from Stu Dudley.

I've never tried to post a report link before. Will attempt it here:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...t-thunders.cfm