Normandy - Mont Saint Michel
 

Hi guys,

I am planning to have 02 days out of Paris. I want to visit Mont Saint Michel & one day for any French countryside views such as vineyard, wine tasting, ect...

Can anyone please help to suggest a journey (together with public transportation as we could not rent a car in France).

Thanks in advance.

I mean any French countryside views around/near/on-the-way to Mont Saint Michel, to save time. Thanks.

There are no vineyards in Normandy. It's not a wine region. As I had mentioned in your other thread about Burgundy, you can't really explore the countryside by public transport. Trains connect larger towns and cities so the train won't bring you to the countryside, although it certainly passes through the countryside.

You can get to MSM on your own taking a train from Paris but it will be 4 to 5 hours from the time you leave Paris to the time you are actually on MSM. Look at this thread and click on the links in post #7 for instructions:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic...de_France.html

If you want to see a bit of the countryside near the Mont I would take a train to Pontorson and then rent bikes there to go to the Mont. The bike rental places in Pontorson will also give you a map of the area that shows roads you can bike on. There is a bike trail between Pontorson and the Mont so you don't ride on a road with other cars.

You can find out a bit more info looking at this link:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic....html#47634180

If you want to stay on MSM overnight then go to the official MSM page to book a hotel. I stayed in the Auberge Saint-Pierre
and I can recommend that hotel. We had a room that looked out over the bay. Here are some Facebook photos of MSM in the evening, night and early next morning from when I made that visit:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1&l=d8a4bffa87

As FMT says Normandy is not wine country, though it is cidre, calvados and soft cheese country. If any of this interests you can visit sites and taste. Google route du fromage and route de cidre if this is of interest. Alternatively you need to do a day trip out to say Rheims/Epernay for Champagne tasting or Colmar for an Alsace tasting, but since you are also going to Burgundy you should get tastings there as well.

If you're going to end up with a car, I would spend a couple of nights in MSM and take a day trip to St. Malo.

Beautiful old walled city, with nice pedestrian area.

Thanks so much all of your advice.

@FrenchMystiqueTours: Please kindly advise me how can I book online this?
http://www.raileurope.com/us/point_t...ultId=67666950

I did not see any button related to 'Booking".

Thanks a lot.

vietnamese - I had given you information in your other post about how to book tickets in France for those trains requiring seat reservation (the local TER trains don't require seat reservations) and advised you against using the RailEurope site unless you are sure they have the same ticket prices and schedules available as the other sites I gave you. Please look below at my instructions for booking tickets on trains that require seat reservations.

To buy your train tickets to these places you'll get the cheapest prices by booking as much as 3 months in advance. Use www.voyages-sncf.com (in French) or www.tgv-europe.com (in English).

If you use the website www.tgv-europe.com don't forget to uncheck the box marked "Direct Trains" to see all possible options. If the TGV site redirects you to the RailEurope website then try again and enter Great Britain or Antarctic as your ticket collection country. Other countries may also work but just try to find a country that doesn't get you redirected to RailEurope. The RailEurope website often doesn't show all the trains and generally has higher prices but you can check just to compare. For trains that require reservations you can buy tickets up to 3 months or more in advance and the earlier you buy them the cheaper they will be. The discounted tickets are known as PREM tickets but these are non-refundable and can't be exchanged.

Here is a website that will tell you how to navigate the TGV website:

http://www.nickbooth.id.au/Tips/FrenchTrain.htm

An excellent website to learn all about train travel in Europe is www.seat61.com.

Thank you very much FrenchMystiqueTours, I have not read carefully www.seat61.com & thought that it should be better to pre-book online. Now I understand clearly about this and once again, thanks a million :-)

Have a wonderful day!

Good luck. :)