Normandy in October
 

Hello,
My husband and I, with our 16 month old daughter, are looking at spending 1 week in Normandy in mid October. We plan to hire a car and stay at a self catering holiday rental (gite?). We will be staying in Paris beforehand, and traveling to Switzerland afterwards by train. So a few questions -
1. Where would be a good place to hire a car? Would it make sense to catch a train to an outlying town and hire from there (to avoid the Paris traffic)?
2. Can anyone recommend a nice area to stay in? We would prefer a rural area or small town/village. Some of the places we would like to see are the D-Day landing beaches, Honfleur, Suisse Normandy as well as Mont-St-Michel, so ideally somewhere that is within decent driving distance to these areas.
3. Since the weather may not be very nice this time of year, does anyone have any recommendations for indoor sights/activities in the region in case it's raining?

Thanks

For car rental info use the website www.autoeurope.com. They are are a brokerage company that works with all the major car rental agencies. Often you can pick-up in one place and drop off in another with no surcharge. As for where to pick-up the car you can either get it in Paris or take a train to Caen (which is a large city central to the sites you want to visit). You can use www.viamichelin.com to get driving times and directions and toll and fuel costs. The times don't consider stops. For train ticket info you can use www.capitainetrain.com and buy tickets up to 3 months in advance for the cheapest prices, which can be as low as 15€ to 20€ one way, though last minute fares are only about 35€ one way. You can compare toll and fuel costs vs. train tickets and see which you prefer. Some people don't like driving out of Paris but others don't mind.

As far as your criteria of staying in a rural village there are literally hundreds of such places that would be central to the sites you want to visit. Before I could make any recommendations you should consider that small rural villages have very little in the way of services, stores and amenities, which isn't surprising because a village usually has less than 1,000 inhabitants so there's not enough population to support commerce. Further, most such places are serving the people that live there, not tourists, so will it be important to you to be able to walk to stores and services and have a wide variety to choose from?

I personally like staying in rural places since I don't care about being able to walk outside my door and have everything I need within a block. If you really want rural then that is not a problem but I'm just trying to let you know that if you really want rural you may have to drive 10 or 15 minutes to get all your shopping done.

Perhaps a good compromise would be to stay in a small town or village that is close to a larger town that has lots of services. This is what I usually do so I can have the rural location but have all my essential shopping needs within a 10-15 minute drive. So with the list of places you want to visit someplace that is within a 10-15 minute drive from Bayeux would be a good idea.

I'll suggest getting a Michelin map of the scale 1:150,000 for Lower Normandy and you'll see that within a 10-15 minute driving radius from Bayeux there are well over 100 villages. Buy the map here:

http://www.michelin-boutique.com/gui...th=33_34_35_47

There are many websites where you can search for self-catering accommodation in France. The three that I always use are:

www.gites-de-france.com
www.abritel.fr
http://www.homelidays.co.uk/

Here are links to several more (in no particular order):

www.airbnb.com
http://www.gite.com/holiday-homes/index.php
http://www.fleursdesoleil.fr/
http://gitelink.com/
http://www.french-country-cottages.co.uk/
www.clevacances.com
www.holiday-rentals.co.uk
www.frenchconnections.co.uk
www.papvacances.com
www.cheznous.com
www.vacationinfrance.com
www.francelodge.com
www.vrbo.com
www.ownersdirect.co.uk
www.sawdays.co.uk
http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/
www.cottages4you.co.uk
http://www.french-guesthouse.com/
http://www.logishotels.com/en.html

To learn about what to see and do check the local tourist office websites.

Honfleur: http://en.ot-honfleur.fr/

Deauville: http://www.deauville.org/en/

Trouville: http://www.trouvillesurmer.org/index.php/en

Caen: http://www.caen-tourisme.fr/en

Bayeux: http://www.bessin-normandie.com/

Suisse Normande: http://otsuissenormande.e-monsite.com/en/

Mont Saint-Michel: http://www.ot-montsaintmichel.com/index.htm?lang=en

You might also consider cheese and cider country in the Pays d'Auge: http://www.lisieux-tourisme.com/

http://www.madeinpaysdauge.com/en/

You can also visit some wonderful places in eastern Brittany such as Fougères, Saint-Malo and Dinan among many places.

Dinan: http://www.dinan-tourisme.com/

Fougères: http://www.ot-fougeres.fr/welcome

Saint-Malo: http://www.saint-malo-tourisme.co.uk/

As far as indoor activities there are museums in Caen (great war memorial/museum here), Bayeux, Honfleur and in just about any larger town. Perhaps the Cité de la Mer in Cherbourg:

http://www.citedelamer.com/en/

Or the Bell Foundry in Villedieu-les-Poêles:

http://www.ot-villedieu.fr/index.htm?lang=fr

There are dozens and dozens of other worthwhile places you could visit or things you could see that are in the vicinity of the area you want to visit but they are so numerous to mention it would be impossible to list them in one thread. I'd suggest to start by looking at the tourist office websites for the area and get a guidebook or two from your local library. I've only given you enough info to start some research but I'm sure other posters will have many other suggestions for you.

I'm booking your response for my next trip to Normandy! The Bell Foundry is pretty cool and caused us to miss Mont Saint-Michel on our way there so we had to skip Dinan as we back peddled to the Mont.

I'm not so sure the weather will be poor - we often travel that time of year and it is cool, but not so much we'd have to stay inside.
I'm think around Caen or Bayeux is where you should stay for the week. Near enough to an autoroute to save some time.

Thank you for all that info, so helpful!
I think we will look for somewhere within 15min drive of Bayeaux, although those towns in Eastern Brittany sound lovely too

FMT that list is just about perfect.

:)

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