Suggestions for 10 days Pre-River Cruise
 

We arrive Paris (CDG) Oct 6th and board a river cruise in Amsterdam Oct 16th........

What should we do for those 10 days in between?? We will be staying in Paris after the cruise. On previous European trips we have visited: Paris, Loire Valley, Normandy, Provence, Cote d' azure, Brussels, Bruge, London and most of Italy. My husband, big wine enthusiast, would like to see the Burgundy region of France this trip. We have never been to Amsterdam and would both like a few days there before the cruise.

Questions:
*Suggestions for a place to base ourselves? More than one location?
*Hotel suggestions?
*Should we rent a car at CDG? Or take the train into Burgundy and pick up a car there?
*Best way to get to Amsterdam? Train from a city in Burgundy or drive back to CDG and take a train there? Will the CDG trains require a change in Paris anyway?
*How many days for Amsterdam? Area to stay and hotel suggestion?

Thank You!!

Burgundy would be an excellent place to begin. You could spend about five days in that region, then swing over to Brittany, do a bit of sightseeing, and then head to Amsterdam.

Thank you Underhill. Brittany seems a bit far north from Burgundy and I worry the coastal weather in Mid-October would be too unpredictable. My original thought was divide 7 nights between 2 places in or near Burgundy, then 3 nights in Amsterdam. Maybe we'll just do 6 nights in one place in Burgundy(base in Beaune??) then take the train to Amsterdam for 4 nights.

Any other suggestions for a town or two to base ourselves in and hotel/B & B suggestions, 3-4 star (200-250 E or less per night budget)

There's much more to Brittany than just the coast.

However, you can easily spend your entire time in Burgundy, but you might consider splitting the time between northern and southern Burgundy.

We have done Brittany twice in Oct and had admirable weather even on the coast!

Thanks avalon and underhill.

I am leaning towards staying in Burgundy, splitting our time as avalon suggests. My hesitation to go north is based on the weather during our trip last October. We spent 6 days in Paris and the weather was not good. Mostly overcast and some light rain. We only had one sunny day and it was pretty chilly. We were also in Brugge and Brussels for a day and it was rainy then too. I expect that is what we will have in Amsterdam. I do understand weather can vary greatly from year to year, heck, here in Northern California we've had an unusually cool summer. Maybe we'll get lucky and hit a stretch of mild autumn weather. Either way, we'll be happy to be in Europe.

We will be back in France next fall in early Sept. We'll plan for Brittany on that trip.

How about Beaune and Auxerre as the two bases to split our time? Sound reasonable?

As for transportation, it appears most trains to Amsterdam require a connection in Paris (with a station change too). Is there another route from Burgundy to Amsterdam I haven't found? We're going to have a rental car and will need to return it someplace convenient to catch a train.