Once inside the train complex, look for your train on the "big board" and wait for the display of the track it will arrive on. All tracks are upstairs. Then go upstairs to your track, and along the way or once you are upstairs look for a monitor which displays the train, the car numbers, and the position of your specific car on the train platform (A through Z). Then go walk to that specific platform position (A through Z).

There are places to get food at the station.

Stu Dudley

https://www.google.com/search?q=avig...w=1745&bih=864

Avignon-TGV station certainly is one of the most avant-garde modern looking of French train stations - you can see some of the things Stu mentions in his superb rundown of the station.

I'm surprised that I had not already stumbled into this thread with a link ot my Strasbourg in September photo report: http://tinyurl.com/Strassept

The helpful info for the rental car return and Avignon TGV station is appreciated, StuDudley and PalenQ. The station is unique looking.
I feel more at ease about the departure now. I could use some driving tips though. Using GoogleMaps for directions to a lookout point or a village is confusing because it can show driving in an area that tourists are not allowed into. Restrictions are unknown. How can you tell when a street or parking area is off limits?

Wow kerouac, what a fantastic report on Strasbourg! I will use that for future planning for sure. It's a shame we won't make it there this trip after all. Thank you for sharing.

We've spent 2 months vacationing in France almost every year since 1999 - and we are still amazed with how many wonderful things/places we still haven't visited.

Stu Dudley

The trip was a success and planning for it was so much easier with all the help given here. We decided to take the walk from Monaco to Cap d'Ail which did not go too smoothly but was pretty. We parked at the Monaco Gare and used Google for a path. I knew the walk should start somewhere near the Harbor, but my DH would not stray from Google's route so we walked in town for 45 minutes before getting to the beach in Cap d'Ail. We found the start of the walk behind a locked gate that warned of dangerous conditions on the path. But after the long walk to get to the path, and seeing runners coming down the path, we asked about the conditions and were told to walk as much of it as looked safe and we could always turn around. We climbed the gate and had a lovely walk. The seas were rough but did not crash up onto the path. No skinny dipping that day! We climbed over 3 or 4 more gates along the path . We took the train back to Monaco needing help from locals with the train ticket machine that didn't like our chip credit card. We gave them cash and they bought our tickets for us. The ride took 3 minutes. After that adventure, the rest of our trip went as expected. Thanks for your input.

Wow -will have to temper recommendations of that walk!

Were those gates meant to be climbed? May have been just to keep cyclists off? Or are they closed when conditions may be dicey? Don't expect you to know but just curious??? I don't recall any gates on my walk but that was several years ago.

We rented from Hertz in Montélimar back when the TGV made a stop there. Not sure whether that still happens, but it was very convenient.

PalenQ> The metal gates had warnings not to use the path and were not easy to climb. We saw many runners on the path as well as a few people relaxing in the sun and even one family out on a platform, across a low bridge connected to the path, playing in the sea spray from the big waves. It was very windy but the path was dry. Guess the gate keepers were being overly cautious and swimming would have been dangerous. Underhill> we were driving from Lussan so Avignon was not too bad a location to drop the Hertz rental and the TGV there had many direct trains to Paris that day giving us more options. The tiny, yellow Hertz signs were difficult to spot inside the gated area at the train station and although a roaming, Hertz staff guy finally came to check us in at the parking slot, we still had to go inside the building to get a receipt. Plus the outside guy kept our paperwork and gas refueling receipt and we had to go back outside and find him to get it for the inside, desk clerk. Not the smoothest transaction. Good thing we got advance advice here and arrived with plenty of time for mix ups with the rental car return. We also needed some extra time to get our train tickets. I bought them online using "trainline" and printed out the voucher at home. Once at the TGV station, we used the self-service kiosk machine to print actual tickets. The option we needed to select was in French, although we clicked "english", only one of the 3 options was in English. To print our tickets, we needed to select the 3rd option offered and used trial and error to finally get them.

thanks castles and falls! Gates were probably open the three times I walked that path and I did not notice them but can visualize high waves/surf being dangerous at times.