First time to Paris-need help on a 2 day trip to Normandy/Mont St Michel
 

We are arriving CDG at 8:35am and planning to rent a car immediately to drive to Lisieux to sightsee spending the 1st night in Caen. We are planning to visit Normandy beaches the next day and wonder where to spend the 2nd night as we will tour Mont St Michel the following morning before returning to Paris that afternoon to check into our Marais Apartment. Any help on car rentals, roads to use, place to stay would be greatly appreciated!

Marzie54, that will be a very long third day, as you probably already know. We did a similar side trip 2 or 3 summers ago over 4 days, driving to (just outside) Bayeux the first day from CDG in order to visit the beaches and memorials. We got up very early one morning and drove to Mont St. Michel on the advice of this board, to beat the tourist buses, which worked out great. It was an easy drive, no traffic - we just used Michelin maps. We followed the advice to head for the top first, then come back down the ramparts to beat the crowds, which were astonishing by mid-day. We actually left and had lunch on the way back, so your plan is feasible at a fast pace, regardless of what some might say.

(We think it's better to do something too quickly than miss it altogether - I loved being at Mont St. Michel, albeit briefly.)

Can't recommend a place to stay really - we found Bayeux much easier to navigate than Caen. We returned our rental car at Caen in order to take the train back in to Paris and got a bit lost! But once we found the car return, the train ride was quick and easy.

Have a good trip, and hopefully others can recc a place for your second night - is Caen a must for the first night?

Jespere

Thank you Jespere for your response and information. Yes - we are committed to Caen for the 1st night as we already have a hotel stay there. If we have just one short day at the beaches and memorials - are there any highlights you would recommend? Shall we try to drive to Mont St Michel that day to spend the night there in order to tour early in the morning?

I'm a little unclear about how many nights you have between CDG arrival and checking into the Apt in the Marais.

If you have 2 nights available outside of Paris (3rd night in Paris) here is what I would do.

Day 1 - Lisieux, and spend the day visiting the Normandy Beaches. Stay in Caen (hotel reservations can usually be changed)

Day 2 - visit more WWII sites in the morning (it took us 1 1/2 days). Head west into Normandy & visit some of the wonderful coastline and cute villages around Dinan. Stay in Dinan or Mt St Michel.

Day 3 - visit Mt St Michel in the am (early in the AM - Jaspere's advice is the same as mine). When you finish MSM, drive to Rennes, dump the car, and take the 2 hr TGV train back to Paris. Trains leave 5 past the hour starting at 1PM. I would encourage you to visit Rennes too - one of my top 5 cities in France.

Stu Dudley

>>Day 2 - visit more WWII sites in the morning (it took us 1 1/2 days). Head west into Normandy<<

Slight mistake

head west into Brittany.

Stu Dudley