Paris, South of France, Barcelona
 

I'm new to Fodor's and excited to hear back from others.

We are planning a trip this June to visit Paris, the south of France, and Barcelona. Ideally our travel would not exceed 2 weeks.

My thought is to fly into CDG and spend a few nights in Paris. We have been there before and seen the major sights, but who doesn't love more time in Paris. From there perhaps taking the high speed train to the SOF, and then again the train to Barcelona. We have not visited Barcelona or the SOF previously. We can rent a car as necessary. We would fly home from Barcelona.

Any suggestions that you can offer regarding travel between cities, and best places to stay would be appreciated

Welcome to Fodor's! You need to post this in the Europe forum.

You are on the board for technical difficulties :-)

I'll move this to the proper forum (Europe).

Paul

That's a LOT of territory for 2 weeks. Are you sure you can see and experience what you want in that time? If you haven't already done so, I would encourage you to consult a good guidebook or two and plot your trip out on a calendar.

Good luck!

Where in the south of France are you considering? Lots of wonderful places to explore.

I spent 4 weeks in the south of France on a trip and could have used more time.

Here is my pictorial TR with some captions. Each new area has the town written on the first pic and many of the pics have captions to further identify the location/history. Hope this helps!

https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...tures-1069822/

I also did a month+ trip to eastern France from Annecy up to Strousbourg. You can click on my name to find that TR.

Have fun planning and have a great trip!

Two weeks is not much time at all. You'll consume most of one day getting from Provence to Barcelona. So you now have 13 days. I hope day 0 & 15 are travel days, or you only have 11-12 days. If so - that's 4 days in each location. You'll loose a half day getting from Paris to Provence. This is a "doable" plan - but you might get home exhausted.

My wife & I have vacationed for 23 weeks in Provence & another 21 weeks on the Cote d'Azur. Plus several trips to Barcelona and I-don't-know-how-many to Paris. I developed a 35 page itinerary for the Cote d'Azur & Provence. I've sent this itinerary to over 3,000 people on Fodors. If you would like a copy, e-mail me at [email protected] & I'll attach one to the reply e-mail.

Stu Dudley

The south of France is enormous (some 225,000+ square kilometers, depending on how you define it, and including 40+ départements). Where exactly are you headed?

Have you actually researched taking a train from (anywhere in) the "south of France" to Barcelona? It's not a piece of cake.

Two weeks is an awfully short amount of time to take in this swath of territory, especially when you deduct your time in Paris and your time in transit.

Trains from Avignon-TGV to Barcelona are direct and take 4 hours - piece of cake it seems!

Spend maybe a week in Avignon area (rent a car) then train to Barcelona for a week? Could drive towards Spain and return car at another TGV station - like Montpellier.

Lots on trains - www.oui.sncf - book your own discounted trains involving France. www.seat61.com has great info on doing that. General info trains - www.ricksteves.com and BETS-European Rail Experts.

Sure it would be nice to have more time but IMO you can have a pleasant trip with 2 weeks - in fact I've done something like this twice with my HU and daughter. We did Paris, Arles and Barcelona. On one of the trip I wanted to add Coulire (sp?) but in the end, spent additional time in Barcelona. You can do it all by train or rent a car for a few days in Arles (or wherever you decide to stay). IMO it's a nice mix of cities and cultures - have fun planning!

Paris to Montpellier to Barcelona by train. Believe there is a TGV station in Montpellier now. From Montpellier (which has some neat stuff itself) you can train to Arles, Nimes and Avignon. Drive to Collioure.

In Montpellier, we stayed at New Hotel du Midi and loved it. A stone's throw from the pedestrian area. Can't say about its cost today.

We loved our Barcelona hotel but it was too far from the historic centre for me to walk easily--we took subway and cabs without problems. Hotel NH Les Corts: www.nh-hoteles.es/hotel/nh-barcelona-les-corts

Have a great time and please report back.

Collioure is also well served by trains - local trains from Perpignan to Spanish border at Port Bou with connections to Barcelona. No need to drive.

>>From Montpellier .... Drive to Collioure.<<

It is a 2 1/4 drive on an un-scenic autoroute to Collioure. That's about 45 mins beyond my day-trip driving threshold for a one way drive. Plus, if you are going to be in the Provence region for a few days - it perhaps is not a wise choice for a day trip.

You could head towards Barcelona by car & stop in Collioure for a night and then return the car in Perpignan & train to Barcelona.

There is one early train to Barcelona from Avignon, and 4 different trains to Barcelona from both Montpellier & Nimes (same trains). If you want to explore the Provence region by car, Montpellier is perhaps not a good location to use as a base. It is extremely difficult to drive in & out of, IMO, and perhaps isn't centrally located enough to the sites most people want to visit in Provence. If you want to explore the Languedoc/Gard region - Montpellier would be OK except for the in & out issues.

Stu Dudley

Thanks for Collioure clarification, Pal and Stu. Also, we trained from Barcelona to Montpellier and didn't change trains--is it different in reverse or have things changed?

Direct trains Montpellier - Barcelona about every 3-4 hours and v.v.

The 4 trips a day have no train changes

Stu Dudley