Beginner travelers on a budget to Marseille
 

Looking into visiting Marseille in May 2017. Friendly older couple going to visit relatives in Marseille and Lourmarin. Would it be best to fly into Paris or directly to Marseille? Will be traveling for approx. 3 weeks and will be renting a car. We have just started planning our trip.

Why would you fly into Paris if you want to go to Marseille? Especially if you need to rent a car, it's easy to get one at MRS. I just don't see any point to flying into Paris, unless you personally would rather take the train from Paris to wherever you want to start. It's your choice. I've done that a couple times and always just fly into Marseille to make it easier. It's about the same price as flying to Paris for me (I think once it was actually cheaper, which can happen on Air France, sometimes end point cities can be cheaper than ending in Paris where they connect), and since I always book Air France, they are responsible for the entire flight in case of delays.

It may take you longer if you take the train, but it's hard to compare without knowing your options of connecting flights versus possible trains. IF you book the connecting flight on the same ticket, they will be responsible in case of delays, but for trains, many people then book large layover times to make sure they don't miss the train they book. So ultimately, you can spend even more time than flying for travel time and that layover reasons. It won't be cheaper, at least never has been for me, as I said, the airline ticket is never more than to Paris.

Of course, if you arrive at MRS and do not want to rent a car, you have to get into the city but that is fairly easy to do from there, there is a cheap airport bus for one method.

oh, many people also book large layover times for flight changes. I don't and have never missed one, but as I said, I always book the two flights with the same airline. I do ideally like about a 2 hr connection time at CDG.

If your going to Marseille then definitely fly there directly to save time and hassle!

>><i>Why would you fly into Paris if you want to go to Marseille? Especially if you need to rent a car, it's easy to get one at MRS. I just don't see any point to flying into Paris, </i><<

But on the other hand -- do you plan on spending your entire 3 weeks in the Marseille / Lourmarin area. Possibly not. What other part(s) of France do you want to see.

If you do plan on seeing other regions, then it would make more sense to me to do an open jaw (often called multi city) such as in to Marseille and home from Paris or vice versa.

But first tell us where else if anywhere you are going . . .

>>> on a budget
>>> will be renting a car
These two may or may not be congruent depending on where you are going and what you are doing.

If you have done an analysis to come to the conclusion that a driving trip would be the only way to accomplish you want to do within your constraints, then driving makes sense. However, this does not seem to be the case:
>>> just started planning our trip
Lourmarin is a PITA to get to without a car. Not clear where else you are doing. If you are thinking of doing Paris-Marseille by car, it is one long boring drive.

Unless you want to see things between Paris and Marseille then fly to Paris.

If you really just want to go to Marseille, and especially if you have the option of flying direct to Marseille, it makes no sense to fly into Paris.

Thank you for all the information