slaacc

We are heading from Paris to San Sebastian and have a week where we want to stay in house/chateau/resort between the two cities and just do day trips sight seeing. 2 adults and 2 kids 14 and 13 boy and girl between June 29 and July 5. We can either TGV out of Paris and hire a car locally or drive out of Paris, stay somewhere for the week then drive on to San Sebastian. My husband will have his bike and would like to cycle/train during this week before his bike tour starts in San Sebastian. Such a big area with too many options for us to decide. Can you help?????

annhig

The obvious place is the Dordogne, which is approx half way between Paris and San Sebastian, and has loads to see and do for all the family. You can easily catch a train there [say to Brive or Bordeaux] and then pick up a car. Sarlat is a nice base - small enough to be friendly, large enough to have shops, restaurants, etc. or many people rent gites [cottages or houses] in the countryside or villages.

You could look at en.gites-de-france.com/Rentals to get started which is the official french tourist board site, though there are many agencies renting them out too.

Good luck with your planning!

rhon

I agree with annhig. You could get a train to Brive, rent a car and have a week in the Dordogne which has lots to see. Unfortunately, most holiday rentals run from Saturday to Saturday, while you are looking at Monday to Sunday, and it is coming into the busier season. As well as gites de France, there are lots of rental sites out there, so you could try to see if you could rent for some of that time. Some of the ones we have used are

http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/
http://www.abritel.fr/
http://www.frenchconnections.co.uk/accommodation/france

The town and village websites also have excellent advice and accommodation options.

Sarlat is a lovely town, but we found it busy if you want to get in and out each day. But that is just us. We stayed, in a gite, near the village of Cenac [ 15 mins south of Sarlat ] in 2014 and found it a good base to explore the region. Nice roads for cycling.

http://www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/en
http://www.france-voyage.com/en/
http://www.villagesdefrance.free.fr/index.htm
http://www.francethisway.com/

These sites may give you some inspiration.

You need to know that if you rent a car in France and drop off in Spain, there will be an extra charge. From where will you be flying home?

Bon voyage.

annhig

re the Monday to Saturday rental problem, if push comes to shove, you can always rent for the whole week and just arrange to arrive late. We did this once and though it was frustrating, in the overall cost of the holiday, the two nights we lost were de minimis.

tom_mn

I agree that Sarlat proper is too busy to deal with for a week.

StuDudley

I agree too - Dordogne. We stay near Cenac also. We've spent 10 weeks vacationing in the Dordogne. We had a 1 day delay getting to our gite once, because of flight cancellations. No problem with a Sunday arrival - we called the proprietor & made different arrangements for key pick-up.

We reserve our gites (48 of them so far) 12 to 15 months in advance - so better hurry.

Stu Dudley