crcash

How far a drive is it from Paris to Tours? My fiance and I are considering a trip to the Loire and don't know whether it would be cheaper to rent a car or take the train to tours then rent a car for touring the Loire.

MAC1

It takes about an hour.
Bon voyage!

Underhill

If you take the train to Tours you will save the hassle of having to drive in and out of Paris.

crcash

How much is a ticket usually for roundtrip TGV? We are going to have to rent a car in Tours to get to our chateau and to see the chateaux in the region.

111op

I'm interested in this question as well, so I'll top this thread.

I did find a thread regarding Angers here:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34508723

It looks like a round-trip is around 90 Euros. I just tried a same-day return for a Sunday and the ticket prices out to 85.20.

I've also found another thread here that addresses the fast vs. the slow trains:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34485746

Are there any other tricks or useful information that one should be aware of?

Thanks!

111op

I've just priced a round-trip from Gare d'Austerlitz (that's a slow train) and it looks like it's 26.50 Euros each way.

Interesting thing, though, regarding the TGV option. The outbound in the morning is 35.80 and the return in the evening is 47. Not sure why.

Travelnut

There are 'discovery' fares if you are traveling together -and- staying over a Saturday night. That would be about 53E each way for BOTH of you up to 70E each way for BOTH. That's what I'm waiting to book on www.sncf.com as soon as my 60-day window arrives.
The car rentals are expensive - Avis is next to the St Pierre des Corps (Tours) train station - a rental for compact car for 4 days priced at 164E before adding on any CDW, etc. A rental for same 4 days out of St Pierre des Corps with www.novarentacar.com came to 138E incl CDW; to add superCDW it would be 170E.
I'm pricing my train out of Gare Montparnasse for the one-hour ride on TGV; a regional train (non-TGV leaves Gare Austerlitz, takes 2 hours but I didn't notice if there is any fare difference.

Christina

There isn't any way in the world you can drive from Paris to Tours in an hour. The TGV takes about 1:15 and that can go around 175 miles an hour. It's about 225 km or 135 miles distance.

If you are going to rent a car, anyway, it would have to be cheaper to only rent the car rather than pay for trainfare plus renting a car. If there are two of you, a car would have to be cheaper, even if you took the slow train second class, probably, even if you paid a one-day car rental fee. The slow train is probably around US$50 RT per person. It takes closer to the same time as driving.

PalQ

Some TGVs cost more than others depending on demand - peak period fares. Trains from Austerlitz take about two hours as opposed to ones from Paris-Montparnasse (1 hr). Most trains only stop at St. Pierre-des-Corps, Tours suburban station on Paris-Bordeaux mainline - rent a car here if going straight away to Loire castles as if you take the several daily TGVs that terminate at Tours in-town station, there can be horrendous "bouchons" or bottlenecks in the Tours conurbation - i know i've suffered through them many times when I lived in the Loire. St Pierre-des-Corps is really the main Tours station; "navettes", shuttle trains shuttle between it and the intown station two miles away. Lots of car rentals at St. Pierre-des-Corps, including AVIS in the station as they are in many SNCF stations. If driving from Paris, go via Chartres to see the stunning cathedral and then take back roads - perfectly well paved to the Blois-Amboise area, encountering very little traffic. Amboise, with its own famous castle overlooking the Loire, is a perfect small town base conveninet to the most famous of the castles - Chambord, Chenonceaux and Azay-le-Rideau. You could take direct trains from CDG Airport to St Pierre-des-Corps.

111op

Could you please elaborate some on the bottlenecks, PalQ? Do you mean that there may be train delays, etc.?

I'm thinking of taking the train to Tours and then joining a tour from the Tours tourist office. It looks like there's only one train that will get me in before the morning tours start around 9. (Well I just checked the Sunday schedule.) So if there're delays I should probably plan for them.

Thanks!

PalQ

No i was talking about driving out of Tours - bottlenecks on the roads. therefore renting a car at St. Pierre-des-Corps might be preferable over renting in town. there should be no train delays other than the rail strikes which have been popping up fairly frequently in France the past few months!