Help me with some critical travel decisions please
 

Hello. So we will be flying into Beauvais France and renting a car. We will be in Normandy for a week and then need to get to Brussels. If you were in L'Aigle what would you do?
Drive the rental back to Paris Gare du Nord and then take a train to Brussels? Drive from L'Aigle to Brussels and drop it off there (where?) or take the rental somewhere else like Rouen and get on a train there? Help please. There are 5 of us traveling.

I would compare prices between the car + train idea and just dropping the car off in Brussels. Given there are 5 of you, the convenience of not having to drive into Paris and dealing with getting yourselves and your luggage on the train may be worth the drop off fee.

Looking at the map, another option may be driving to Lille, France and taking the train from there.

If you drop the car off in Brussels, your choices are Brussels-Midi station, which is in the south of the city, or Brussels National Airport (BRU), which is next to Zaventem, just to the north of the city. Both are well-connected. Brussels-Midi is the main entry point for international trains, and there are trams, metros and taxis there; BRU has its own train station, buses and any number of taxis, so either would be very easy if you then need to get to your accommodation. Both will however incur cross-border drop-off fees, but there are many people who drive from France and leave a car in Brussels. We have had French cars that needed to be dropped off back in France, that suited us well. But Lille would work also as it's on the train line to Brussels, it's a Eurostar stop (Lille Europe, not Lille Flandres).

I agree with KTtravel that you need to weigh up cost and convenience, so pick a few companies that service your combination of origins and destinations and do some maths homework. No way around that, I'm afraid :)

Lavandula

My general rule of thumb is that taking a train to a car rental or the other way around is a waste of time and inconvenient. Best to just drive all the way to where you going.

Do you still live in the US? If so, please note that you will not be safe to drive – not safe for yourselves or for ANYONE else on or near the roads – for at least 24 or 36 hours after your flight lands in Europe. So your options depend on how long you plan to spend in/near Beauvais.

As KTtravel and lavandula have noted, you need to cost out your options. Picking up in one country and dropping off in another can be very expensive.

The suggestion to avoid mixing transportation options makes no sense to me whatsoever. IMO, it makes sense to consider safety first and then to decide what mix of public and private transportation options best meets your needs.

BTW, if there are five of you, will you and your luggage all fit in one car?

Good luck with your planning!

I'd use rome2rio to get rough planning options.

5 people plus luggage is going to push you down the car route. Big van more likely.

Dropping a car in another country is usually much more expensive. Brussels has a low emission zone for which you will have to register the rental car even if it complies with the rules. Traffic in Brussels and the surrounding area is terrible. Drop the car in Lille and take the train.

I agree with the Lille idea. I also wonder if you've checked if you even could rent a car at Beauvais and drop it in a different country. Rouen is too far away and too complicated to get from there to Brussels by train, you'd have to go into Paris and then TX train stations. Train from lille would be direct. You could go to another station in N. France closer to Rouen but then you'd need to transfer trains, like Amiens or Arras.