Gardyloo

Can we circle back for a minute on the car question? Is renting a car, at least for part of the trip, out of the question? I'm thinking that in areas like Alsace or Normandy (or Provence for that matter) at that time of year, a car can provide protection from the elements as much as it can provide access to villages or sites that are otherwise hard to reach by public transport.

glenmd

Luxembourg is one of the few Western/Central European countries I haven't been to (the others are all micro-states - well, unless you count Iceland), so that is a useful bit of information to add the mix.

glenmd

For better or for worse, I let my driver's licence expire almost 30 years ago. Honestly, for my day to day life, I never missed it, and most of my travel has been to larger cities, where a car is at best unnecessary and at worst an expensive nuisance. I acknowledge it is inconvenient for places like Provence or the Loire Valley though.

lavandula

Luxembourg is quite a schlep by train from Paris or Brussels (figure on 2 - 3 hours from Paris, 3 - 4 hours from Brussels), but fairly close to Trier (Germany). If you go there, factor that into your planning (day trips for instance are almost unviable without a car).

Lavandula

annhig

It's hard, isn't it, Glenmd, when there is literally not limit to what you can choose to do? But having come new to this thread I think that the two things you seem to really want to do are to spend a few days in Paris, and to go south to Nice. And your reasons for wanting to do that really haven't changed. Then the idea of going to Strasbourg appealed and actually fitted in well with your arrival in Paris and not wanting to br locked into too long a journey on your first day. So the only other question is really if you want to try to fit in somewhere else eg Lyon on your way back to Paris.

There are no right or wrong decisions here, just what you think most appeals and whether you are a person who likes to linger in one place, or to see a variety of different ones. Fortunately you still have time before you would need to book the trains to get the best rates.

kerouac

Luxembourg is less than two hours from Paris by TGV, not at all 2-3 hours. One interesting thing to note is that Luxembourg has made all public transportation within the country 100% free -- trains, buses, funiculars and trams (since March 1st, 2020).

margo_oz

September this year I'm basing myself in Nimes. It has great transport connections, both bus and train, and some wonderful things to see in the town itself. I was there 30 years ago and looking forward to returning.

mjs

You do not have to just stay in France. There are cheap flights to many other cities in Europe.

glenmd

This seems like a very sensible idea. I am going to spend the long weekend (in Canada, this weekend is a 3 day one) evaluating my options, with an eye to planning two trips.
1) This years, which, barring a surprise change of heart, I expect to follow the East from Paris, then South to the Nice area and ending in Paris.
2) Next years, which will be 3 weeks in length and occur at the tail end of high season, starting in very late August early September. It will pick up the areas that either don't fit geographically with the first trip, or are, for someone without a car, better planned when more tours/tourist shuttles are running. Early candidates would include Provence, the Loire Valley, Normandy and possibly Burgundy.

Anyway, we will see what my weekend of research brings me. I hope to emerge with a very crude plan for each day (i.e. one day might be going to Luxembourg from Metz, but no details as to what I will see exactly - other than to confirm there is enough there to see to warrant the trip)

bilboburgler

Day trips from Trier... bus system is good and the trains go roughly up and down the Mosel/Moselle.

glenmd

Oh, I know. But the more I look at France, the more I realize I have neglected it compared to say Italy or Spain.

Waterloo12

HI Glen,
I absolutely love the area around Nice, and the public transportation in the area is wonderful. In the past I have based our holidays just out of Nice, my favorites are Villefranche-sur-Mer, St Jean Cap Ferrat, and vieil Antbes. All beautiful, although each with a slightly different feel. There are so many day trips to do in the area: for example take a bus to Eze Village and dine in one of their delightful restaurants, the view is spectacular, take a train to Monaco, there are gorgeous walks (or part of the walks) around the sea front at Cap Ferrat or Antibes, St Paul de Vence is worth a visit, or just simply roaming around the old pedestrian streets of old NIce. You can take a boat tour from Nice to see the coast from a different perspective (and see all the beautiful mansions from the water). Enjoy your trip to France! We have decided to go in September as well and also have an open slate (which is why I am reading your thread!)

glenmd

OK, I have a semi-finished plan (not all the details, but enough)

3 nights in Metz (Includes trips to Nancy and Luxembourg)
3 nights in Colmar (including trips to Strasbourg and Riquewihr)
5 nights in Antibes (includes time in Nice, Eze, Monaco, Villefranche-sur-Mer, possibly the walk in Cap Ferrat (if I am up to to it) Also, I will look into the boat tour that Waterloo12 mentioned)
4 nights in Paris either day trips (Reims, Chatres, Giverny among others) or spend the days revisiting my favourite parts of Paris (though this can be challenging about where to draw the line. I could probably skip the Eiffel Tower and Sacre-Coeur, but everything else I saw previously would stay on my list if I had time. In any event, St-Chapelle and my obligatory visit to where the repairs to Notre Dame continue (even if the entire structure is covered in scaffolding such that you can’t see any of it, I will still go and consider it time well spent))
I am still a little blurry on the Antibes/Nice question. I am strongly leaning towards Antibes (the 25 minute x 2 commute) is an acceptable price to pay for staying somewhere smaller.) I did notice, that whenever I do a search on the SNCF website for a train route that departs from Antibes, it adds 21 minutes of walking time to trip length. Are they trying to tell my something? The location of the station looks pretty central to me. The other question I have about the Antibes to Nice train is how busy is it likely to be in October. I assume the tourist numbers will be down, but there still could be a heathly number of commuters headed into Nice each day.

Southam

I suggest reversing your itinerary. Most of your stay would still be in the temperate south. I would fly into Nice or Marseille to start with, probably requiring a transfer through a gateway airport, but that first day will be diminished by jet lag anyhow. A couple of days was all I needed in Nice and the Riviera is, for me, a matter of curiosity. Marseille is more to my taste, a slow train ride to the west. I enjoy the smaller locations in its vicinity, especially Avignon. Then north by train. Strasbourg is indeed intriguing enough for a couple of days, but a long haul from the south. It has good train connections to Charles de Gaulle, if that's your return departure port.

You probably know that the trans-Atlantic flights, including the extension to Nice or Marseille, can be arranged on a single itinerary using a multi-destination search function. Saves time, and sometimes money.

kerouac

Even France has "Indian Summer" in October, so I would absolutely not worry about the weather. There are no guarantees, but that includes no guarantee that the weather will be better in the south. More and more often, northern France unexpectedly has better weather than southern France except for people who love extreme heat in the heart of summer.

Christina

I don't know what you are doing with the SNCF website, saying it adds "walking time". It must be you are picking some location that isn't a train station, I really don't know, as it generally only does that if you are trying to connect from metro to train or something. I just put in "Antibes (toutes gares)" to "Nice (toutes gares)" and it doesn't show any walking time. If you pick a departure point some other address within Antibes, not the station, it adds walk time and even sitting waiting around on a bench time. So you aren't selecting just to look for train routes, you need to select the train station as departure point. You have to kind of go out of your way to do that, also, as the train station list comes up first with a heading Gares & Stations and then other points within the city are at the bottom of the page under the heading "Adresses" (what appears when you start typing "Antibes" into the search box). You must be picking even a different location within Antibes than the central as it only estimates a 12 min walk when you do that, although it does give you 9 min boarding/waiting time but it is clearly marked as walking (marche) versus embarquement time.

glenmd

Well, the flight to Paris is already booked and is not easily changed (I don't think I am allowed to change the final destination for example). Indeed, that is what started this thread in the first place. However, I am flying to Paris with AirFrance, so maybe I can reach out to them and see if I get an extension to Nice on the same ticket (so I would be protected in the event of delays), that might might save me a long train trip (I like traveling by train, but it is almost 6 hours from Antibes to Paris). Thanks for the suggestion.

FTOttawa

It is a good principle to be in the city from which you plan to fly home the night before the flight. Too much can go wrong with train schedules. Ending in Paris works well.

Colmar to Antibes will be another long day of travel. Would you break it up with an overnight anywhere?

I tried a few ways to send your train down the more interesting ride through Sisteron etc. Nope, though there might be bus options,

glenmd

When I first looked at it, I had thought about stopping in Lyon along the way for 2 nights, but while I am sure there are things to see in and around Lyon, it really wasn't grabbing me as the best investment of two nights. However, subsequent developments have removed the 9 hours on a train problem. (See my next post).

glenmd

OK, we have finalized an itinerary:
Fly to Nice directly on the first day - this was something I was initially reluctant to do, but:
1. As Southam pointed out, it does make more logistical sense
2. I have flown to Europe and back 9 times, and only once has a flight been more than an hour late (and that was 5 days late, which would obliterate any plan I make anyway)
3. I have nearly 5 hours as a layover in Paris, which should be enough to cover any non-disaster related delay. (and both flights are with AirFrance.

4 nights Antibes
4 nights in Provence (almost certainly based in Arles) I did note the recommendations for Nimes and Aix-en-Provence, however neither were logistically as good without a car.. And as for Avignon (my initial idea for a base... well, in addition to the feedback here, I have a friend who has been to Provence 5 or 6 times. When I indicated that I was thinking of using Avignon as a base, she looked at me as if I was purposing we go out and behead puppies. She suggested Arles.
3 nights in Colmar
3 nights in Metz
1 night Paris Airport.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice, particularly to kerouac, for suggesting the Alsace/Lorriane regions and Southam, for pointing out that flying to Nice to start would help (for the record, it saved about 7 hours of train travel)

On to the next stage, accomodation hunting!

Glen