Normandy trip itinerary - is this stupid?
 

Hi everyone; trying to formulate a long weekend getaway to Normandy for romance, relaxation, and all that WWII stuff.

Here's my tentative itinerary; I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to do it this way or if we need another day.

The only "Must do" is the D day stuff. The rest is pretty open; I want to keep it relaxed and laid back.

So here's my first pass itinerary.

Thursday: Drive from Brussels late afternoon to Gefosse-Fontenay (near Isigny, just north of Bayeux) arrive late evening and check into a chateau for 3 nights. (about 5.5 hour drive?)

Friday: Drive to Caen and see the Peace memorial, then explore D-day beaches and museums. Maybe go to Bayeux, see this tapestry everyone raves about

Saturday: Drive to St. Malo (1.5-2 hours?) and spend the day there. Go to MSM in the evening (if possible) Have dinner, leave after dark. Return to our chateau, do not spend the night in MSM

Sunday: Leave chateau, explore some other stuff; either scenic drives, or go to Honfleur. Drive back to Brussels that evening.

I think it makes more sense to go to the Peace memorial on Sunday, schedule wise, but I thought it would be nice to see it before seeing all the D-day stuff....

If you think about the different WWII related sights and what your plans for Friday are, there is too much.

Some WWII sights of interest.
The beaches (there are four I think)
Colleville (American cemetery)
Pont Du Hoc
Saint Mere Eglais(town & museum)
Arromanches (town & museum)

Enjoy your trip.

I don't believe it is possible to really do justice to the D-Day events on your own. I would strongly suggest a day-long tour and I would choose the British company "Battle Bus Tours". You can Google their website. Nobody knows D-Day better than the Brits.

Larry J

I'm not sure why you want to drive from Bayeux to St-Malo and then back to Mont St-Michel. It would be much simpler to see MSM on the way over to St-Malo, and you could do so in the morning if you leave early IMO, there's not enough in St-Malo for an entire day; you could also include nearby Dinard and then Dinan.

I'll agree with LarryJ - I would recommend a tour. It will add an enormous amount to your experience.

I used www.victorytours.com - Roel was awesome. We only could do a 1/2 day tour, but I wished we could have done a full day. Small groups are nice b/c he can tailor it to any personal desires.

good luck1

Ok, so how about

Spend Thursday and Friday nights near D day beaches.

Friday: Full day tour of D day sites (thank you for tour recommendations)

Saturday: Check out anything we didn't have time to see Friday, drive slowly towards MSM, maybe find a cider place to tour or something, stay somewhere with a view of MSM

Sunday: Go to MSM in early morning, then check out St Malo and drive home.

Sound more reasonable?

There are 5 WWII beaches - Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword. Omaha is the one most Americans think of because it and Utah were ours, for starters, and it saw the most bloodshed.

After Caen check out Pegasus Bridge and close by the Merville Battery - a quite interesting little "family run" museum in a bunker. (it may be more snazzy now, my last visit to it was in 1999). Continue on the D14 - if you have a good map spec'd out for D-Day points of interest you could self tour although I agree a tour guide would be great.

Don't miss Arromanches, definitely. The mulberries are interesting to see and they also have a good little museum.

When in Bayeux you MUST see the tapestry! Do a wee bit of reading about it ahead of time although when I went through they laid the history out fairly well. There is also an excellent WWII museum in Bayeux which is a must-see I think if you are interested in D-Day events.

Further up the beach yet are Point du Hoc and also St. Mere Eglise. Both worth a visit.

You'd be better off devoting two days to the 5 beaches if you could. (if your interest level is that high that is).

typo: D214 is the road number, not 14, sorry.

and *duh* forget to mention the American Cemetery - also a must see.

See? There's no way you can do all this in one day. You'd be quite rushed if you tried. Maybe a guide one day and do the rest on your own the other?

We found the German cemetery quite moving as well.

Thanks for all the information. I love Fodors :)

To clarify, the interest level isn't so high that we need to see everything related to D day. I don't want this to be a "WWII weekend," I just know that my husband wants to see some of the D-day stuff and I know it will be moving and interesting for me as well. I'd like to keep it to one day D day stuff and the other day and a half more "pretty France stuff." Do the guided tours include a visit to the peace memorial museum?

Most of the guided tours do not include a trip to the Peace Museum - from what I understand, that takes about 1/2 a day itself.

We actually chose to skip that - my perception of it was that about 1/2 of it was devoted to the Cold War and post WWII stuff. Interesting, I've heard, but not what I was looking for.

The American Cemetary at Colleville is amazing! We had about 45 minutes to wander on our own... and it wasn't enough. I wished we had longer because I was so intrigued walking around reading all the individual crosses information. I thought it would become 'repetitive' after a while, but it only became more and more interesting.

I think the idea of 1 day of WWII 'stuff' - maybe a 1/2 day tour + Peace Museum will be good.

We stayed in Honfleur (and loved it!). Have you thought about stopping there ? Its less of a drive than MSM and there are many mixed reviews about MSM. We also visited Etretat and loved climbing the French version of the 'white cliffs of Dover'. Is a 'touristy' town, but not Americans tourists, just Europeans.

If it's one day, and on your own, I'd try to do this:

Caen
Arromanches
Bayeux Tapestry and the landing beaches
American Cemetery
Point du Hoc

I think you could do that in a day.

Just to follow up: we ended up having an extra day, which made things MUCH easier. I had forgotten to mention in my post that we were traveling June 1st-5th. This is apparently an extremely popular time for D-day tours, as it's between Memorial Day and D-day. As a result, every recommended tour group was full (Victory tours, Battlebus, and one that Battlebus recommended as an alternate) but Michael Chilcott had the day available. the D-day stuff was a big part of the trip so I wanted to make sure we had a guide, so I booked him.

Drove from Belgium to Normandy Thursday afternoon, arriving around 8 p.m. Ate dinner at a really mediocre touristy place in Grandcamp-Maisy.

Friday: Full day D-day tour with Michael Chilcott. Saw the American cemetery, Omaha beach, Longue-sur-mer, Point du Hoc, Mullberry harbor at Arromanches, and British and German cemeteries. Ate dinner in Bayeux

Saturday: Visited (on our own) Utah beach and St-Mere-Eglise; drove around the countryside, visited Bayeux again to see the Tapestry and the cathedral. Had some lovely shoreline cliff walks as well as walkign along Omaha beach at sunset.

Sunday: Drove leisurely towards MSM, stopping in Villedieu-les-Poeles, visiting the Abbaye de la Lucerne, and drivng along the coast of the Cotentin from Champeaux on down. Stayed in Pontorson, visited the Mont in the evening, then drove around the bay and found a beautiful, totally isolate place in the sheep fields to watch the sunset over the Mont. then drove back up over the causeway to take some neat pictures of it all lit up.

Monday: Slept late, enjoyed a car festival going on in Pontorson, went back to MSM to get/mail a postcard (1. not possible because the post office was closed (holiday) and NOBODY other than the post office sells stamps on MSM 2. They charged us 4 euros to park! I guess I wouldn't have been surprised except that the evening before we parked right up front and diidn't have to pay anything.) To get our moneys worth we decided to hang out and have a drink . It was just miserable the number of people there. It was like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, just wall to wall people, you have to sort of "float" along with the sea of people goign down this narrow street....I'm sooo glad I saw it the night before. Stopped at an auberge on the way to the motorway before driving back to Belgium

Pictures can be seen at http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...0&y=vkmddc

In summary:

1. You're right. Even if you're only a little interested in D-day stuff, you should go ahead and dedicate a day to it. We spent a day and a half and we didn't go inside a single museum, and we didn't see ANY British or Canadian stuff other than the cemetery.

2. Col Chilcott's not worth it for just 2 people IMHO. He spent the tour talking to my husband more than to me, because I didn't know what he was talking about. "Normandy for dummies" he is not. It was a looooooooong day and I was pretty "done" around 4 p.m., but we kept going until after 8 p.m.

3. We loved our chateau; the only minus was that it was on a working farm and it smelled a little "cow-y" if you opened the windows. But at 60 euros a night, it was so worth it. I felt stupid having "splurged" on the Hotel Montgomery in Pontorson for over 3 times as much for a special room, because our 60 euro room at the Manoir de la Riviere (http://www.chez.com/manoirdelariviere/)was so spacious and full of character! It's not particularly close to Bayeux, but it's kind of in between Bayeux/Omaha beach etc and Utah beach/St-Mere-Eglise, so in a place like this where we spent most of our days driving and touring, it was just fine. But very remote and bucolic, if you like that sort of thing.

4. We could have easily done St. Malo on our last day, but we were just worn out from 3 days of constant going, so we elected to just take it easy and then head home.

5. I thought the super hubbub over the Tapestry was a bit silly, although I'm glad I've seen it. (Cultural intelligence and all that...)

Going back to the Normandy this weekend, although further north-east (Honfleur/Etretat probably as far down as we'll get). Thanks to everyone for their input and helping me realize how unrealistic my itinerary was. I would have been very disappointed if I'd tried to carry it out. :)

Thanks
Carrie

Carrie, thank you for posting back! Did you get to go inside the house? I ask because one of the photos they have framed there (of him, Rosemary, and a few friends) I took over the June 2004 celebrations - on D-Day's anniversary. aren't they just lovely people? The map room is something else, huh.

I really enjoyed your photos and commentary. you are witty!

Normandy is one of my favorite places, glad you enjoyed yourself.

Carrie, I really enjoyed reading your report! I want to go to Normandy even more now that I've seen your great pictures. What kind of camera did you use?

flygirl: We did go into the house: We had coffee, they even offered us breakfast! My strongest memory is of the hundreds of books about Cricket in the bathroom. don't remember the photos, but sounds like a nice memory to have for you!

Lucy: I just have a Kodak point and shoot DX4330 digital camera that's several years old. I keep secretly hoping that something goes wrong with this one so i can buy a new one, but it's served me well. I'm torn, because I really wish I could get better zoom pictures, but I already complain that this camera is too big! I need a teensy camera with a really strong flash and a 100394X zoom and then i'll be happy! :) Thanks for reading

Carrie

LSUvetgirl!

Fantastic photos. Thank you for sharing. We have just one and a half days to visit Normandy.
What would you suggest we see?
Where should we stay?
We land in Paris.
Should we drive, take a train, or a tour bus to Normandy.

Thank you!
Apempel

Thanks for your update on your trip. I'm planning a Normandy trip, so your report was quite helpful. I loved your beautiful pictures!

apempel: there is so much to do in Normandy, your choices for activities should probably be made based on what you enjoy doing.

If you're really interested in the D-day invasions, I would recommend a day tour of the major sites. Definitely use one of the companies recommended here: I have a friend who did some other company and it was terrible. You could easily spend several days seeing various sites, but we did 1 day on a tour and another half day driving around the countryside seeing various sites as we went.

If you're a gourmand, I think seeing Normandy by tasting-routes would be fun: visit a cheese factory, drive the "cider route" or the "route des traditiones" to try calvados, cider, apple juice, honey, etc; try some of the amazing restaurants and regional specialties (there is an extremely affordable 1 michelin star restaurant in Honfleur I've heard very good things about)

If you're a nature lover I would probably do a coastal trip: go for a walk along the cliffs near Etretat (I didn't love the towns in this area but the scenery is lovely,) wander the beaches along Omaha beach, drive through the Bocage across to the other side of the cotentin peninsula and then down along the coast to Mont St Michel, then back to Paris.

I don't have any experience with doing this trip by train, although I met several people who were doign that. It would limit your activities a bit (less countryside driving, and your visit would be concentrated more in the towns) and I think going to Honfleur or Bayeux for one or 2 nights would be a great little trip. I really enjoyed Mont St Michel and I hate to tell anyone to skip it but if you have limited time, you will burn a lot of it just getting to MSM and back. It's kind of like deciding whether to go to Zermatt in Switzerland just to see the Matterhorn. It's not on the WAY to anything, so it really all depends on just how badly you want to see it. I will say that we had the worst accommodations and the worst food on the MSM part of our trip. by far.

If you want to hit the "high points", i think with just a little bit of time I would either:

Train: go to Bayeux, stay in Bayeux, take a 1/2 or full day D-day tour, visit the cathedral, the tapestry, and wander around the town

Car: Drive to Honfleur, spend the evening and the night in Honfleur, then either drive south to do the D-day stuff, cathedral, tapestry in Bayeux or drive around in the country to do cider and cheese tasting. (Neufchatel and Camembert are the most famous cheeses from this area). The drive in the countryside is very peaceful and lovely, and you get a bit of a taste of authentic rural France.

I will try to post a trip report of my second weekend in Normandy soon.