A week after Paris
 

A friend and I are planning a week (May 2-9) that we will have after 8 days in Paris. We will be using public transport, either air or rail. We don't want to spend a lot of time on travelling from one place to another, because our travel agency wants us to to return home from Paris. We have considered Barcelona and Lisbon, but would even consider a location in France if we could find enough to do to allow us to stay in one place for the week. I have been to Paris before, and although I know one can never get enough, I would rather see something new. I know this is broad, but any thoughts or experiences?

London would be easy. We spent five nights in Lille and enjoyed the city. I loved the Palais des Beaux Arts. 7 euro and no lines. It is the second largest museum in France. You could do some day trips. We did a great tour of Ypres with a private guide. Brugge by train or Ghent.

I would think we need to know a lot more about your interests before we could suggest anything.

??? Why does what your travel agency want make a difference? If they can't meet your needs and interests, go elsewhere! And for that matter, why are you working with a travel agent at all? I could be mistaken, but it would seem that this trip is one that you can easily arrange on your own.

From Paris, you can go easily and affordably to many, many places for a week. Go to skyscanner.com. Type in "from Paris" and for destination put in "anywhere." You will see flights available to several dozen countries with 20 or so under $100 per person each way. Our recent favorites from Paris have been Nice (great rail service to French Riviera), Barcelona, Swiss Alps, Austria, Italy and more. If you focus on one place, I am certain you will have lots of suggestions of things to do.

You don't even need to fly anywhere! You have an extraordinary array of options with easy range of public transportation from Paris -- much greener, if that matters. :)

Why does your travel agency want you to return from Paris? That makes your whole trip more difficult because you have to spend time and money backtracking. Sorry, but that's just "dumb." I'm not sure why you needed a travel agency to begin with, but I'd tell them you'd like to be on your own from here on out.

Yes, it is too broad a question to provide useful answers. In France alone you could explore Provence, the Alps, the Southwest, the Atlantic Coast, Normandy, Brittany, Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon, the Pyrenées, the Riviera....plenty to keep anyone occupied in any of those places for a week or lots more.

Once you get into visiting other countries the choices expand exponentially. We don't know anything about you except that you seem to have chosen an ill-advised travel agent, so you'd need to expand a lot on what you want to get out of this week. Almost everyone who posts here has vast "experiences," but we couldn't begin to guess which of those might be relevant to your wishes.

On one of our trips, we based in Barcelona, Montpellier, Nice and ended up on Paris. Maybe you should consider Nice or Lyon if you have committed to returning to Paris. We always tried to fly into one city and out of the last.

When we were in Nice, we van toured and enjoyed it. On a different trip, one of our bases was Menton (easy trip to Nice and towns along the way). A neat city and we trained over to Italy for our day trips.

You could easily fly into Paris and then home from Nice?

Dumb? Based on the limited info we have? Although I’m not a big fan of travel agents, I am guessing (but I don’t know) that the flight already has been booked, in and out of Paris. I am sure the travel agent is recommending that they keep this, since the cost of re-writing a ticket, especially one on an open-jaw basis, may far exceed any costs to return to the same airport. The extra return cost from say Barcelona, mentioned by OP, likely would be a lot less. And, of course, the options and pricing from CDG may be the best departure airport anyway if they decide to stick to various options in France.

Yes so many places are short enough train ride away - like Avignon area with many neat places within a small area - less than 3 hours by train from Paris - rent a car or take local transports around. Any way not matter where you go book your train tickets far in advance as possible for prodigious discounted fares which are however limited in numbers on each train so early bird gets the worm. French Riviera would be neat IMO.

For lots on booking your own trains check www.oui.sncf - French Rail site - www.seat61.com - erudite advice on booking your own tickets; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

And yes ignore travel agent - you can do everything they do and probably get cheaper prices - fly into Paris and out of Barcelona or London or Amsterdam, etc saves time and money returning to Paris. Book your own flights - so easy - and your own hotels - no reason for travel agent IMO.

An open jaw ticket, fly into Paris, out of London or Brussels.

I did not feel it necessary to go into details, but just to avoid comments like yours, we are with an organized tour in Paris. They can extend our departure, but it has to be from Paris. Otherwise we have to bear the additional cost of our return.

Our stay in Paris is with a tour group. We have prepaid for our departure from Paris, and the travel agency can change the departure date but not the city.

Have you thought about taking the train to a city in another region in France, then renting a car for the week? Burgundy, Normandy, Brittany, the Dordogne, Provence, the Languedoc... just to name some high-profile options. I'm an avid hiker and culture vulture, so personally I would look for an area with good walking/nature as well as some sites of historic and/or artistic interest.

Ah, that makes sense - thanks!
I still think we would need to know more about your interests before we can make meaningful suggestions about where you might spend your time.

after Paris
 

My friend wants to fly to Barcelona for a week (Thursday thru Wednesday) and then return to Paris Thursday thru Sunday (which we must because the tickets are part of a package we have already paid for) and go by train to perhaps Normandy. It would be ideal for me if we could stay in Paris (to avoid lugging bags, which is difficult for me) and take day trips. However, if there is a suggestion for a place that would be ideal for a two or three night stay, I am interested. Our interests are history, culture, food, scenery, architecture and art. It would be hard to find a place in France that did not hit two or three of those if not all. Neither one of us is interested in staying at the most posh places, but we are old enough to value comfort.

You have an extraordinary range of day-trip options from Paris. You could do a search of this forum to identify them, or consult a guidebook -- the better ones cover quite a few options.

Likewise, you have a wide range of options for a place that would satisfy your interests and that might make a nice option for 2 or 3 nights. Maybe Toulouse? You could take a train from Barcelona to Toulouse, spend a few nights there (perhaps with a day trip to Albi) and then a train back to Paris.

Hope that helps!

I do appreciate the non-judgmental comments. One might assume that people have reasons for what they are doing and not that they are just stupid. I chose to ask for broad suggestions because I am open to about anything. The filtering comes later. I appreciate the suggestion to visit Toulouse. That would make good use of our travel time.

Does anyone have thoughts about Lyon?

For a week, you could really go lots of places if you are willing to fly. But by train, any place in France would be doable wihtin a week. I'd go to Provence. You can easily get back by TGV from Avignon or Marseille in a few hours.

Sure, I have a lot of thoughts about Lyon, a city I love and have visited often. What do you want to know?

If you do a car tour of say Normandy and or Brittany your bags stay in the car until the hotel parking lot - visit D-Day Beaches and Mont-Saint-Michel. Take a train from Paris to say Rouen - pick up car - drive to Bayeux- lovely place to stay for D-Day area and bop over to Mont-Saint-Michel and end in Rennes return car and blast back to Paris via TGV train. Book train tickets early as I said way above.

Loire Valley
Provence around Amboise
Burgundy & Lyon
Alsace
Dordogne
French alps
Riveria, etc

all could be same TGV to car to TGV back to Paris.

Barcelona could be a neat one too - work way down to Barcelona by train say via Toulouse and then fly back to CDG Airport for flight home.