Hi, all.

I have friends who want to do a day trip via TGV (an escorted tour would be fine) to both Mont St Michel and the beaches of Normandy.

Most of the day trips I see advertised seem to allow you to book just one or the other.

Does anyone know of an escorted tour that would allow you to see both in one well-planned day? If not, is it possible they could see everything by themselves? Thank you.

You friends won't be able to make the trip on the TGV; it would have to be the regular trains. Seeing both MSM and the Normandy landing beaches makes for an extremely long day, something like 14 hours--much of it on a bus. For details, check out the web sites of parisvision.com and cityrama.com. Tours run around 175€.

If MSM is a priority, your friends could take the TGV to Rennes and then the special bus to and from the Mont. Unfortunately, there's no TGV service near the beaches.

I would highly doubt that a day tour trying to see both sites would do either justice. the D-Day sites alone could take several days and Mont St Michel is really a day in itself as well. I suppose if you just rode by everything with someone pointing out 'there's omaha beach, there's the cemetery, there's the abbey, there's pointe du hoc'....it could be done.

Hi, Underhill.

I checked both sites and do not see a single tour where you go to *both*. Am I missing something?

Should they maybe take the TGV to Rennes, and then rent a car and drive around to all the sites?

My booklets are from 2005, but I'm pretty sure I saw a tour posted here that did both sights on the same day. Would your friends settle for one of the 2-day tours? They'd be able to see a lot more if so.

Another possibility would be for them to take the TGV to Rennes, pick up a car, visit MSM and the beaches, then take the train back from Caen to Paris. It will still be a very long day, however.

It is a really bad idea IMO. One can do a reasonable day tour to MSM - OR - a semi-reasonable day tour to the DDay sites. But tot try to squeeze in both on the same day is crazy. Hours and hours and hours on a coach and minutes at a few sites.

I have not been to the Normandy beaches, but I did take a day trip from Paris to Mont St. Michel. It is a full day in itself. We left around 6:30 am. We spent about 3.5 hours at the site, and then ate lunch. We got back to our hotel around 8:30 pm or so. It was a long day, but completely worth it, as it was one of my favorite places in France. I cannot imagine visiting the beaches as well.

It's simply a bad idea. You could not do justice to both. It's hard enough to do justice to either one on a day-trip from Paris.

Please don't do this.

We are looking for a day trip to Mont St Michel from Paris in May. I ran across

http://www.westcapades.com/pgb_day_trip.htm

and it seems like a very reasonable schedule. 7:30AM TGV to St Malo; they pick you up in a mini bus, give you a short tour of St Malo and Dinans and then on to MSM then back to the train and you get back to Paris at ~9PM.

Has anyone taken this trip?

ESLamberson, Charleston, SC