Hi,
We have a wedding in England next summer and want to visit the Normandy (France) & Mont St. Michel while there. The wedding is in a town called Bicknacre, about 20 minutes from Stansted Airport. From the US, we can fly into London (Heathrow probably) or Paris (CDG)and do our touring before the wedding. Preliminary plans are to fly into CDG, take a train to Bayeux and take a guided tour of the battlefield sights. Rent a car & go to MSM. Return to Paris and fly or take the train to London. Any advice on how to simplify this trip is welcome.
Thanks, Steve

Depending on your itinerary and the amount of luggage, please check out RyanAir who runs a lot of flights from Stansted.

From Bayeux to Mont St. Michel, driving time is 1:30.

From Paris St. Lazare to Bayeux, driving time is 2:45. The train takes 2:02. But from CDG, the train takes 3:30 with at least one change.

Just rent the car at you arrival point. Don't fool around with the train. Battlebus runs really nice tours of the D-Day beaches, leaving from Bayeux. We drove from Brussels, which is a couple hours further than Paris, but if you can save enough on the flights, this is always an option.

Also, for what it is worth, you can fly directly into Stansted on AA or a couple of the business-only airlines. Mostly leaving from JFK.

If you have more than a carry-on sized bag, I would avoid Ryanair. With even normal sized checked luggage, the tack-on fees they extort from you will quickly eat up any savings you might reap. And it is a pretty bad experience.

Evaluate crossing over to England from Calais instead of bactracking to Paris. Once we explored Paris and were ready to head out to Normandy, we rented/picked-up a car at the Hertz Office in the Louvre, drove on and explored MSM-Normandy, continued on a coastal drive to Calais (gorgeous!) and dropped the car at the Hertz Office located at the Ferry terminal port; could not had been easier.

From Mont-St-Michel to London, the easiest route is by ship from St-Malo to Portsmouth (www.brittany-ferries.com). You can have a good lunch on the French ship and get to London in the evening. There is no need to made a detour to Paris or Calais.

The ferry from Portsmouth (UK) to St.Malo (near Mont St. Michele) is an overnight one where you can get a room to sleep in. I did this with my kids and it was great. We woke up in St. Malo and had the whole day ahead of us.

You could fly into Heathrow, rent a car, drive to the ferry, drive the Mont St. Michele and Normandy part, drive back to Caen for a fast ferry back to the UK and get back up to your wedding.

By the way, the rooms with beds on the overnight ferries book up quickly for the summer so if you want one, book it as soon as you make your plans.