My husband, 13-yr. old daughter and I are visiting our elder daughter in Lyon in mid-July (she is taking French there for the summer to complete her college language requirements). We will leave Lyon on Monday and must be in Amsterdam to fly back home by Friday (open-jaw tickets -- used frequent flier miles for free air). We enjoyed traveling by rental car last year from Paris to Frankfurt, stopping for a day or two in different cities en route (I used this forum to plan our trip -- you guys are SO helpful!), but we aren't sure if we have enough time to do this with the longer trip from Lyon to Amsterdam, and we'd like to spend at least the day-before-departure in Amsterdam to see some of it. Should we rent a car, and if so, any suggestions on our itinerary? Or should we go via train, stopping at one or two places for overnight stays? Any recommendations?

Hello,
I studied French last year in Lyon as well with my University's language program. My mom actually came over before my classes started to do some traveling. We rented a car and had no trouble navigating through France. It was actually quite fun being able to get up and go when we felt like it and avoid scheduling trains.

Even though I prefer renting a car, there were some drawbacks as you might have experienced with your trip from Paris to Frankfurt, parking, getting lost, gas costs etc...

As far as an itenerary goes, driving through the Loire Valley and going wine tasting was fabulous. Paris, even though you have already been, always is full of things to see and do. And you must not miss Belgium. I had friends on the trip with me last year that took a train there just for the weekend and said Brussels was absolutely fabulous.

I hope that this gives you a start. I sure miss my time in Lyon and wish you all a great trip.

Trains are definitely the faster way to go. You can get from Lyon to Paris in 2 hours on the TGV and from Paris to Amsterdam in 4 hours. Once we drove from Paris to Lyon and it took something like 7 hours.

I think it depends on your tastes though. If you want to stop in small towns then a car should be your choice.

Amsterdam is definitely worth as much time as you can give it. Take time to scratch below the surface and see Amsterdam beyond the obvious.

If you do get the train, there is a direct TGV from Lyon to Brussels and then many trains leave from Brussels on to Amsterdam. Perhaps you could stop off and spend a night or two in Bruges?

Thanks for the info on the trains. I think I like the idea of driving, though, as Cate said -- you aren't bound by train schedules. But do we have enough time to drive in four days with time to stop overnight in a couple of interesting places between Lyon and Amsterdam? Bruges sounds interesting...

Maybe you've done this already... but try entering your itinerary on www.viamichelin.com - you can specify Bruges as one of your stop-off points and see what other towns are mentioned along the way (e.g. Beaune, Dijon, Antwerp...). I just had a look, and for the *whole* journey the site calculates 9 and a half hours. So you could easily break that down over 4 days.

Hanl, I am showing my ignorance here, but I tried the viamichelin site and entered city-to-city for driving directions, but they wanted an address and postal code for each city. What am I doing wrong?

Nevermind, I figured it out! Thanks so much for motivating me to do it, Hanl. I'm of two minds now: drive from Lyon back to Paris, dump the rental car, then take a train to Bruges for a two-night stay, then a train to Amsterdam for the last two nights; OR drive from Lyon to Bruge, stay two nights and drive around the area, then dump the car and take the train to Amsterdam. Any suggestions/recommendations here?