super-safe parking in Honfleur?
 

Hello - I have realized that I'm "assuming" something, and you know what they say about that.....so here's my question.
After a week in an apartment in Paris, we'll pick up a rental car on Monday, 9/22, and be headed towards our b&b in Bayeux. We're diverting to Giverny since our friends haven't been before - the vehicle will be holding all the luggage for the four adults for almost a month in France! I never feel comfortable parking a car and leaving it if luggage is in the back and it seems rental cars don't provide covers in the back of the non-sedan vehicles so DH (who's been to Giverny 3 times) will stay with the car.
Current plan: head to Bayeux, drop bags at b&b Manoire St-Victoire, quick lunch nearby, head to the landing sites for the time we have. The next morning early, head an hour away to Honfleur - visit, tour, lunch, drive back towards Bayeux and head to D-Day areas again. Final morning: visit the tapestry, wander the market, and after lunch, head to Mont-St-Michel for the night.
Here's the question: it would be so much better to head from Giverny to Honfleur and visit that delightful spot for the afternoon rather than backtracking the next morning, but we'll have this packed vehicle. That way, perhaps we could even fit in a return (for DH and me) to Caen for the Peace Museum. So, I am *assuming* that there's not a super-safe spot to leave the loaded car, but thought: maybe someone on here knows differently? If not, we'll still have a superb visit there, so no spilt tears, but I'd kick myself if I find out later we could have made this work!
Thanks for any help - and I am promising to publish a trip report for this odyssey!

I'm thinking you will need to ditch Honfleur, sorry.

Or: You chop off a night from Paris and do this: You go to Giverny and spend the evening in Honfleur and overnight there instead of your 7th night in Paris.

The next day, i.e. you head to Bayeux as planned and do some D Day landing sites - I doubt you'll have luggage problems there - and then overnight in Bayeux as planned. This is very fast for D Day sites (we spent 2.5 days viewing them) but I realize time is tight for you.

Then you see the tapestry and then head to MSM for the night.

I can't see you doing it any faster unless you ditch something, and the 7th night in Paris seems to be that night.

I think you can drive by Honfleur and have lunch maybe by the quayside. I think there is parking on the road there perhaps. But Caen will not be in your future.
If you can't just drive through Honfleur, then I agree you may have to ditch it.
Personally, I would ditch MSM as an alternative.

Sorry, I might have misunderstood - you seem to have 2 nights in Bayeux and 1 night in MSM.

In that case, you don't have to cut a night in Paris - but I still would, I'd still swap a night in Paris for Honfleur. This gives you more time for both Honfleur and the D day landing sites.

Luggage should be fine, my husband and I had no trouble leaving our luggage in the back, on the street in Honfleur or MSM's parking lot. We had an SUV, which did come with a retractable cover for where the luggage was stored.

Our itinerary went like this: Giverny-Etretat-Honfleur, Caen(for museum only)-Bayeux, D-Day beaches-MSM, MSM-Paris.
It was a quick Thurs-Sun trip. If I did it again I'd add an additional day.

Have fun!

Also the Caen Peace Museum took us about 3-4 hours to get through. It was a great museum.

<i>it seems rental cars don't provide covers in the back of the non-sedan vehicles </i>

Not true. I do not recall a hatchback that I have rented (and usually the cars are hatchbacks) without a cover.

Take along a retractable ski cable or a thin bicycle cable to link all the luggage together. Even if someone breaks into the car, it might make it more trouble than its worth.

Another tactic is to back up the car against a wall so that the back lid cannot be opened.

Always back up to a wall to be able to escape the kidnappers faster ;-)

I also don't know if this is a problem or not. To me, a sedan is a distinct style of vehicle and I've rented many cars that are not sedans that have covers for stuff in the rear (hatchbacks of various kinds). They all edo, as far as I know, although I don't own one. My own car is not a sedan, but it has a trunk, also (it's a 2-door coupe). Of course luggage for four adults means some big car, I presume, to even be able to hold it, so who knows what kind of car or van you will have to do that.

If the luggage will be visible, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it, either. I have never personally seen such a car, van or anything, that does not have a closed area for cargo of some kind. I don't know what it has to do with rental cars in particular, or just regular car design.

I would never take any car in which I couldn't fit the luggage in the trunk. Nothing should ever show in any car parked anywhere. Even in a hotel garage things can disappear from a car.

What type of car are you getting? Someting wrong with a larger sedan?

You guys are the best! Thanks for all the responses.
yes, it will be a quick trip, but our friends (first-timers for France) want so many parts of the glorious country. DH and I have done two 8 day bike rides w/Butterfield & Robinson in Normandy, so we're pretty good on a breezy trip - it will all be a fun refresher for us. And I'm a happy and obsessive planner, so we won't waste much time - yet will still smell some flowers - as we guide our friends through it all. I was just trying to find the extra time if there was someplace that was a sure-thing safe spot. And - depending on how the Citroen C4 Grand Picasso looks when we pick it up, maybe we'll rethink and rearrange the progression as we are at Giverny - maybe I'm thinking of the bigger SUV's we rent for skiing here in the states, but luggage covers have been scarce.
We've got a week in Paris in an apartment we've used before in the Marais, 2 nights (plus much of a day) in Bayeux, one night MSM (which I've wanted to see since high school! please don't tell me to ditch it - I'm hoping to enjoy the heck out of it!), 3 nights Brittany, 2 nights Chateaux country based in our favorite: Chinon (Brittany is new for us, our friends really wanted chateaux), then 3 nights St Remy, then TGV back to Paris. Lots of ground to cover, pastries to sample, laughs to share, "aahs" to sigh.
Thanks for the help! I'm putting this idea to rest now (and I concur on Caen - we had probably 3 hours there, and didn't get to it all. I think it's masterfully done.)

One time I rented a quite small car and discovered only later that the board that is meant to cover the trunk of the hatchback was missing. Although I don't leave my luggage in a car overnight, I do often leave a number of purchases in their bags in the trunk of the car. While a visiting a hypermarket (and making even more purchases) I saw that they had acrylic blankets on sale for something like 8 euros, so I bought a black one. Once I had spread this over the trunk area on top of the various bags, even without the masking board, it became absolutely impossible to see that there was anything in the trunk -- it just looked like the floor.