Normandy on our own?
 

We are a little behind on planning and are having trouble finding a tour guide for Normandy in August. Is this do-able on our own, with a rental car? The one tour I can find includes: -La Cambe german cemetery, St. Mere Eglise and airborne museum, Utah Beach, Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the Colleville sur mer American cemetery-
While we are staying in Normandy two nights, we will only have one full day. Would truly appreciate some input.

You can do a tour of some of the areas on your own, but with only one day to spare, a guided tour would be much better and more informative. Have you checked Overloard Tours? We did their full-day D-Day tour last fall with Stephan (www.overlordtour.com/overlordtour-tour-2.html) and it was excellent.

For more information, you might be interested in reading the newsletter: "Normandy Part 2 - Basse Normandie - In the land of William the Conqueror, half-timbered houses, Calvados, Camembert and D-Day"

Easily doable. We've done it ourselves.

There's a lot of things to see, some of which are interesting but not memorable afterward. Read up on tours, to see where they take people. Rank the sites a/b/c (musts/nices/maybes) to decide what you want to see.

Between the museum at the American cemetery and the cemetery itself (immaculately groomed), you could easily use 3 hours...maybe more. It's interesting to walk as close to the edge of the bluff, to imagine those 1000's of troops scaling them under fire.

Here are a couple links to help you:
http://www.westernfrancetouristboard.com/normandy.html
http://www.francetourism.com/practic...n-normandy.htm

Also http://www.ot-villedieu.fr/index.htm?lang=en
I include this because this is how the local offices of tourism websites read. ot stands for office tourisme then just add the town name after the hyphen. You can get lodging thru the OTs, but my main reason for providing this is that I'm sure you could get local, English-speaking guides thru the local OT. Just google a map of the Normandy cemetery, and look for towns east and west of it, then check out the OT in each.

Be sure to have at least ONE gourmet dinner while there. Nothing under 40 euro. It'll be worth it, and memorable.

Have you tried www.daleboothnormandytours.com? Highly recommend him, and he has great reviews on Trip Advisor.

You can do it on your own, but a guide is much, much better! My DH is a retired military officer, and so this was a must for us to go see the various areas. The first time we had a private drive, but not a guide. Even with our knowledge, etc it did not hold a candle to what we got out of it when we went with a guide.

The guide we used was with Battlebus Tours, which has since disbanded and many of the guides have ventured out on their own. The guide we had from there now has this as his business http://www.firstnormandybattlefieldt...tour-guide.htm . He is VERY good and I do not hesitate at all to recommend him!

We used CityVision Paris this April and were very happy with the tour. They pick you up and drop you off at your hotel. The tour included a very nice lunch at a B&B in Normandy as well,it was $620 for 2 people.

It makes for a long day but well worthwhile!

Do it on your own. Get a Michelin Green Guide to Normandy. True, a guide may give a lot of information, but sometimes more is less. You only have 1.5 days basically. You can do it.

Now that you have receive the usual load of useless information (tour from Paris, etc.) you need to consider what you'd like to accomplish with your brief time in Normandy. Having been to Utah beach three times over the last 30 years, I found that the guided tour was the best, and most informative experience.