Bicycles in France- week long rentals?
 

Can we rent a bike for a week anywhere? Can we take bikes on the trains, metro? Has anyone used the new paris bike system with an American credit card? We are visitng Versailles, Paris, Chartres, and the Loire and I want a bike in every location but don't want to pay seperate fees.

You can rent the Vélib municipal bikes with an American Express card. Other American cards do not work.

I certainly would not want to rent a bike for a week, because I would not want to worry about locking it up everywhere I went. You can take bikes on trains but not on the metro.

yes, you can take bikes on the trains and metro, but not just wherever you want. The metro is very limited to certain days/times/cars and only one line. You can more easily take them on the RER. YOu can only take a bike on the metro on line 1 on Sundays and holidays until 4:30 pm. On the RER, all day on Sat/Sun and holidays, other days most of the day but NOT between 6:30 am and 9 am and not before 4:30 pm and 7 pm.

I don't know the SNCF rules entirely. I think generally you cannot on the short, local trains. For some long distance trains you can but you have to pay for it and have a reservation. As for the TGV, you must have a reservation and there are usually places in certain cars (I think there is a sign outside those cars). There is generally room for bikes on the TGV ESt but not some other lines (SE and Atlantique, no). There aren't places for bikes on the duplex cars.

Almost every tourist office in France will be able to give you information on where to rent bikes, so when you know where you want to stay, contact that tourist office. I don't know of any outfit that would rent you a bike for a week in four different places, though. They'd rent you one bike, and presumably you don't want to schlep it all over the country with you. What's the downside of paying separate fees?

My bank- chase- says their new debit cards have the chip- anyone know if it works in france? If so it should work for the bikes right?