Driving from Normandy area to Amboise to paris?
 

I have a transportation question re: car rental versus trains for my trip this fall. We arrive CDG airport at 10 am and then are heading to Rouen. Should we train and pick up the car there or pick it up at the airport? Secondly, we end up in Amboise with the car and then we head to PAris for 4 days. Should we drive to one of the airports and drop off the car in paris or take the train? When I checked Auto Euroe there is no drp off in Amboise and the Tours car rental is closed on Sunday! So I think we need to drive on the return!

Any advice is truly appreciated!

Pick up the car at CDG and drop it at Orly. That is what we did, and our route wasn't much different than yours: CDG - Caen - Lannion - Anger - Orly.

Since I don't believe you can get to Rouen without going into Paris to the train station, I think it would be easier to pick up the car at CDG and drive from there. After 10 a.m., the traffic should be relatively fluid, and it's not hard to navigate to Rouen.

On the way back, could you drop the car in Chartres maybe? Dropping it off would certainly seem easier than going to an airport and having to get back into town.

Dropping off the car in Orly might be a good solution. There is a connection from Orly to the RER and there is also a local bus that goes from Orly to Denfert-Rochereau.

We have dropped our car off in Chartres. There is a parking lot across the street where you can drop it off even if the office is closed. We got there 15 minutes before closing for lunch time, and the office was already closed and would not open for two or three hours, so we were very relieved to be able to just leave it in the parking lot. Then we just got on the train to Paris.

We picked our car up upon arriving at CDG and then toured Normandy. We dropped the car off at the train station in Paris after dropping our luggage at our hotel. Then we just scooted back to the hotel on the metro.

Coming into Paris via the Champes Elysee past the Arc d' Triomphe was fantastic although a bit hectic. Aww, what the heck, it made for some good stories.

Good luck.

Brian

Thanks everyone for your responses. Sorry about posting twice..when i checked for my original message I couldn't find it!

From the advice given it lloks like we will pick up the car at CDG and drive to Rouen. Separting we will either dropp off in Chartres as suggested or ORLY airport and then train or cab into our hotel in paris.

When we did this it was cheaper to return to Orly rather than Chartres. That combined with train fare and cab from the gare could add up.