mdtravel

Hello all.

I'm looking for some info on Paris to either St. Michel, Normandy or both.

Are they both doable in the same day? Are they both accessible by train, then walking? Basically any information on getting from Paris to one or both of these sites.

Thanks folks.

cmeyer54

Just my humble opinion, you cannot do both in one day. There are day tours from Paris to both places so that is one option but it would be a cattle car and two very very long days. You can take the train to Bayeux from Paris and get a tour from there; the trip via train/bus/etc from paris to Mont St Michel is much trickier and probably not worth doing. We rented a car and spent a 6 days in Bayeux - toured the beaches, museums, cemeteries (3 days), Mont St Michel(1day), St Mere Eglise, Utah beach (1 day) and sites around Bayuex (1 day)like the cathedral, tapestry, churches, etc.

nytraveler

Agree that this is not doable in one day. If you are really interested pick one and rent a car - these are areas where public transport just won;t get you exactly where you need to go in any reasonable time frame.

cmeyer54

this may also be redundant but June 2004 is the 60th anniversary of the D- Day invasions and the entire normandy area will be packed.

StCirq

mdtravel: you've been asking a lot of questions here lately about your trip to France,which leads me to believe you are pretty serious about this trip. If you are,now is the time to get yourself a good map and familiarize yourself with its scale and how far one thing is from another. You can get a great Michelin map of France at any Border's or Barnes & Noble or good map store.

It would be inconceivable to do le Mont St-Michel and Normandy in one day from Paris - utterly impossible. It is theoretically possible to do one or the other, but still a very, very long day.



You cannot do either one by train and then walking. When you go to the bookstore to get the map, pick up any decent guidebook to France, too. It will explain these things.

My understanding is that the Memorial Museum in Caen runs trips to the D-Day beaches. But that museum alone sucked up 4 hours of our time without us even realizing it - trying to tag onto a D-Day Beach tour on top of that would have killed the day.

Le MSM is a good 4 hours from Paris. You need to spend an overnight there or else plan to see it on the way to something else. I suppose it can be seen from a tour bus on a day trip, but I wouldn't recommend it.

clevelandbrown

Our initial plan included something like this, but it soon became apparent that we would not be able to see everything we wanted on daytrips, so we moved up our departure date and spent four days based in Caen; it was a memorable visit, as we had plenty of time to see all we wanted. One problem I had noted was that none of the affordable tours covered all the invasion sites I wanted to see, so I took the best from all their tours and hired a cab for our own tour. We didn't have the advantage of a knowledgeable guide, but we had the advantage of being on our own, and not having to conform to the group tour, and in the course of planning this I learned enough that our tour was very meaningful.

cmeyer54

While the feasibility of this may depend on when you're planning your visit, we had a fantastic tour with Col. Michael Chilcott. You can google and find him on the web. We had a full day tour of the beaches, cemetaries, Pointe Du Hoc, etc with him. He tailored the tour to our interests and provided so much poignant and compelling information in a very personalized setting. highly recommend him if he's not booked already.

rex

Up early this morning, so I'll see if this helps to add some perspective. I think that comparisons to US geography can assist you in understanding why "we" think that the answer to your question is self-evident.

It's as if you are

flying into Hartford, CT and you want to know if you can "do" Kennebunkport and "Massachusetts" in one day...

or

flying into Nashville, TN and you want to know if you can "do" Cincinnati and "Kentucky" in one day...

or

flying into Los Angeles and want to know if you can "do" the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas in one day...

While the exact scale is not a perfect match in any of these cases - - hopefully, you know one of these areas to get the point.

And as an aside, I guess you can tell that I don't care very much for the verb, to "do" a location...

I am always left wondering, what is it you plan to &quot;do&quot; TO these places you want to <i>visit</i>?

Lest this simply seem to be negative or sarcastic - - and that's not my intention with any of it - - let me encourage you to look at www.normandy-tourism.org to get an overview of this wonderful region of France. With one, two or three days of short visits or overnight stays, you can start to get a taste of Normandy beginning less than an hour away from Paris.

Best wishes,

Rex

mdtravel

Rex, I'm glad to offer you an opportunity to 'do' your best sincere yet sarcastic answer. I understand the point you make and appreciate that. Personal pet peeves are always welcome, but perhaps you should start a thread just for that.

Christina

I haven't been actually to either place, but from researching for others, I know you can do each in a day trip, but not both. A day trip is actually pushing it for one of them.

St Michel is not that easy to get to by public transportation and it doesn't leave you a lot of time there, but it can be done. I think I posted the bus schedule on here previously for someone, but basically you take the TGV train to Rennes and then can take a local bus to the Mont, repeat on return. It's at least 3 hrs each way, as I recall, and with the train schedules, you don't have a lot of time there, maybe a couple hours. There is also a bus from Pontorson, which is the last rail stop (local from Rennes), but I don't think you save anything by going there instead of taking the bus from Rennes. I think it may actually be the same bus.

For Normandy beaches, I think a lot of people take the train to Bayeux and there are day tour companies located there which you can find on the web -- probably you can find some on site but I might like to plan in advance.

For both of these, there are day trips by bus companies like Parisvision which could be a lot easier and aren't really that expensive in comparison to the train+entry fees. I think the bus tour from St Michel can come back in early evening, for example, but the only public bus leaves there around 3-4pm.

If you really want info on St Michel as a day trip, I can try to find the URL for bus schedules tomorrow at work.