BBlaze

Hi there, My fiancee and I have booked flights to France for 2 weeks at the beginning of October. Ideally, we would like to travel throughout the country and end up in Paris for the final 3 nights. I know this is a little vague, but we were looking at heading through Burgundy region, down to the, Riviera, acoss to the Bordeaux area, up to Brittany/Normandy and finishing off in Paris. Obviously, this is going to require a lot of planning, but I was wondering if anyone had suggestions as far as length of stay in each area goes. We are not looking to blow the budget ($5000-6000 US, excluding flights) on this trip, and are more than willing to stay in B&B's or other quaint hotels along the way. Also, we really want to have a leisurely, yet cultural travelling experience. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated!!!

jamikins

I think bobthenavigator was helping in another post and gave some good guidelines:

3 nights in each place

no more than 4 hours between desitinations

And I cant remember the other hint. I would suggest for 2 weeks maybe 3-4 desitinations tops, you dont want to sepnd all your honeymoon time packing up and traveling

Will you have a car, or be using the trains?

Where are you flying in and out of?

Are there certain areas that are must sees?

Provide us a bit more info and we can maybe help you out more!

jamikins

Here is his advice exactly:

Average 3 nites per destination

Never more than 4 hours to next one

Equal time in big cites and small towns

rex

I fear that you have confused the size of France with the size of Connecticut. What you have described sounds appealing for a trip of two months, but not two weeks.

Fdors-Dijon-Nice 603 miles
Nice-Bordeaux-Quimper 848 miles
Quimper-Bayeux-Paris 385 miles

from www.viamichelin.com

Subtracting three days for Paris, that means 183 miles on average EVERY day - - or at least the equivalent of three 11-hour days in transit.

Burgundy, the Rhone Valley and Provence would make more than enough to add to 3 days in Paris.

Whatever your decisions, congratulations on your new life in marriage.

Best wishes,

Rex

rex

Geez... what was THAT typo?

It should read Paris-Dijon-Nice

BBlaze

Thanks for the quick replies, I really appreciate it. Jamkins: I think that travelling by rail is probably going to be a big part of our trip, but renting a car for touring the country side is definitely something we'd look into. We are flying in and out of Charles De Gaulle in Paris. Our flight gets in at 6:30 am, so I think we both would like to start off by getting to the Riviera for a few days, and then work our way back to Paris, perhaps via the route that "Rex" suggested. Once we look research eachlocation a little bit more in-depth I thnk we can establish the "must sees" I think our primary concerning was not to cram too much into each day, afterall, it is our honeymoon!

hopingtotravel

I stayed up late 2 nights plugging cities into viamichellin for mileages/hours. Discovered one has to be careful. St. Cirq was right about taking the freeway from the Riviera to Sarlat for instance. Michellin route turns north at Montpelier and plots through several tiny towns--adding about 2 hours to the trip. If you're using them in planning, you might want to ask at what speed their computer assumes you are driving.