Family of three (19yr old daughter, father, mother) will be going to France in May for 10 days (2 days are travel days). We will be flying into CDG and are considering renting a car at the airport (would the trains be better?) and driving into Normandy for 4 days then returning to Paris for 4 days. I need some help in finding a home base in Normandy from where we will visit D-day beaches, Honfleur, Rouen, and Mont St Michel. I'm not sure what will be the best place to stay. Also need suggestions for hotels. On the way back to Paris we are thinking about visiting Versailles then going into Paris. Should we drop the rental off somewhere other than in Paris? I'm not happy about driving into Paris itself after all I've read about the insane driving. While in Paris we need to find a reasonable hotel with triple room. I would like to pay no more than $150 USD if at all possible. Clean, quaint, quiet, non-smoking, friendly staff, and near reasonably priced cafes and boulangeries preferable. Am I asking for too much? Finally getting to visit after 30 years of wanting and waiting! Any help is appreciated.

Unfortunately I can't get to the information from our recent trip to France, which included a 4 day trip to Normandy. I can tell you that you're post asks lots of questions, which could be answered by "searching" the archives. Do you know how to do this? You said you're new to the site. If you know how, I suggest you begin there. Because it's the middle of the day (EST), you might not get much of a response. Why not do some legwork on your own?
Enjoy your trip!

I like to recommend the chateau de lignerolles in Bayeux, Normandy. Great location for exploring Normandy. Chateau is lovely and includes breakfast. I have some pictures at www.happytotravel.shutterfly.com In additiion Roel does highly recommended D-day tours. The site is www.victorytours.com for both the chateau and tours. They are also recomended on trip advisor.

The last two trips, we've done both Paris and Mont St. Michel/Omaha Beach and such. We stayed at the Hotel de la Porte Doree, which is not in the "attraction" area that most are looking for, but inexpensive and quite nice for a small hotel (and a very nice, non-touristy area).

We rented from the CDG airport. I didn't enjoy that either time, we'd train to Bayeux and rent from there next time, definitely! Or anywhere out of the city. We stayed at Mont. St Michel and that was our base, but it is a bit far from the D-Day beaches, so you probably will want to have a home base in Bayeux or somewhere like that. Of course, you could spend a couple of nights at each.

I'd personally make Versailles a separate trip from Paris, I've not been yet but the exit was on the drive from CDG. We have photos of Mont St. Michel, Normandy, Dinard (which was a REALLY nice, short day trip from Mont St. Michel), Paris, etc. at www.neesie.org, if you are interested. The hotel we stayed in is pretty inexpensive - but there are other well-reviewed, inexpensive hotels I'm sure in Paris (though whenever I was looking for them, it seemed that it was always more expensive than advertised).

For the Normandy portion, look into Deauville and its sister city, Trouville. Deauville is more upscale (Coco Chanel's hometown; her first boutique still open and going), but they are both by the ocean and absolutely lovely.

As far as the other questions, they are pretty basic questions for which there are hundreds of responses already posted. Just browse and evaluate what sounds like a good tip for you. Be mindful of how bad the dollar is doing against the Euro when setting up hotel costs threshholds.

As far as Versailles, an infinitely easier trip to do by train from Paris than driving to/from.

I wanted to add that we took the train to Bayeux and rented the car there, Roel made the arrangements for us. It was simple doing it that way, but I'm not sure if you could return the car any other than Bayeux.

By the way, you have several threads going with the same topic, lots of good info on both.