Tentative France itinerary Sept/Oct2022
 

I am putting together an itinerary for our trip to France in the fall, beginning the second week in September. We are a retired couple in our late 60s and early 70s, active and experienced in self-guided car travel. We have traveled in France before - five weeks in Alsace-Lorraine and Burgundy, as well as numerous stays in Paris (a favorite that we will never grow tired of).

What do you think of this?

Day
1 Flight from California to Paris
2 Arrive CDG in mid-morning. Train from CDG to Lyon. Check in hotel in city.
3 Lyon - explore city on foot, old town, cathedral. etc.
4 Lyon - more city exploration, walking tour, etc.
5 Pick up rental car, drive to Annecy, check into hotel (with parking)
6 Annecy - explore Annecy drive around the lake, possible hike.
7 Annecy - explore Chamonix (not a fan of switching up hotels for a night, but would it be better to stay in Chamonix overnight?)
8 Aix en Provence - Drive here and stay in airbnb with parking
9 Aix en Provence - Over the coming week, explore the town and surrounding countryside and villages. One of the days drive to the coast to see Nice.
10 Aix en Provence
11 Aix en Provence
12 Aix en Provence
13 Aix en Provence
14 Aix en Provence
15 Arles - drive to Arles, stay in airbnb - explore the surrounding countryside and villages
16 Arles
17 Arles
18 Amboise - will be a long driving day to Loire Valley - check into Amboise airbnb
19 Amboise Chateaus , vineyards, etc
20 Amboise
21 Amboise
22 Amboise
23 Amboise
24 Train to Paris - drop car in Tours
25 Paris - apartment in St Germaine
26 Paris
27 Paris
28 Paris
29 Fly home from CDG

I've booked a fair amount of these - mostly the airbnb's and the flights. So far they're all refundable, so any changes are still possible.

Looking for suggestions for not-to-be missed experiences, places and restaurants. We enjoy walking/hiking, sampling wines and local cuisine, and scenic drives. We are not much into shopping or super touristy places, although I know that obviously some of the "don't miss" places will be favorites of tourists, so no problem there.

The one area of France that I don't care about (after having visited), is the Savoie/Alps. No history, and the scenery is nothing special when you look at the Swiss or Italian Alps. Annecy is a very popular destination, but I have to say I can think of a hundred other places to go in France that I like better. Chamonix is fun, but not really worth the bother. Traditional villages are few and far between. You'd be better off visiting Le Puy (and nearby Polignac), which is sensational, one of the most unusual and stunning destinations in France. That at least puts you in touch with Auvergne which is a more satisfying travel region.

Aix is our favorite city in Provence, but it is not centrally located to visit the sites most people want to visit in Provence. It is probably too late to change plans - just expect to spent more time than you might like on the Autoroutes & small roades going "elsewhere". I would have stayed about 2-3 nights in Aix & the remainder in the Luberon near Gordes, Menerbes, Roussillon, etc.

Hope you really love Chateaux. We've spent 9 weeks there - so we are big fans of Chateaux. But the countryside & cities in the Loire are not as interesting as those in other regions in France.

I attach 4 itineraries
Provence & Cote d'Azur
Alps,
Lyon
Small on on the Loire..

Stu Dudley

Well, I lived in Grenoble in the early '70's (a few years after the winter olympics there), and I love the area, especially Annecy, and Chamonix-Mont Blanc. Both are beautiful areas!

I love Aix as well, and it's a great university town, but an over 2 hour drive (or 3 hour train trip) to Nice. Maybe you could break that up by spending a couple of those nights in Nice and check out the really lovely beaches in Antibes, Golfe Juan, Juan les Pins, and even the free beach in Cannes. Great fish restaurants along the coast . . . although now missing from Golfe Juan is the famous beach & restaurant on the beach, Tetou. It was hit by the wrecking ball about a decade after we'd last visited in 2009. But still some sun and eat places just east of Golfe Juan in Juan les Pins.

Yes the summer months would be too hot in Italy to do much sight seeing or waking around outside.

We love Aix!!!! Our daughter lived there for a few years so we visited quite frequently and really enjoy it. The old town is lovely with lots of squares, fountains, cafes, markets, etc. However, I do agree with Stu that Aix is not very centrally located to the Luberon villages and other places in Provence. So I would spend 2 or 3 nights in Aix and 4 or 5 nights in St. Remy de Provence, which is much better located. From St. Remy you can easily visit Les Baux and the beautiful Luberon villages. The asylum where Van Gogh spent a year is also in St. Remy along with the Glanum ruins. St. Remy is smaller than Aix but is very pretty with lots of cafes and restaurants.

Nice is a long daytrip from Aix. I would spend a night or two in Nice but that probably means deleting some nights from somewhere else. That would be up to you.

An outing to Chamonix can be done in a day. Rather dawdling in the valley, take a cable car up the mountain and then perhaps walk down. I think that Les Montets is doable that way, but I don't know how much time the hike would take.

https://flic.kr/p/29M5vY2
Going up the pass overlooking the lac d'Annecy is also a worthwhile excursion:

https://flic.kr/p/8pww7R https://flic.kr/p/8pwvSv
Both types of paragliding can be done with a professional, for a fairly steep price. I believe it was 80€ when the pictures were taken in 2003.

If you want a nice hike/walk near Aix have a look at Mt Sainte Victoire. A Grand Site de France and much painted by Cezanne, we stayed at it's foot, on a campsite a few years ago, and enjoyed some good walks in the area.

https://www.aixenprovencetourism.com...oire-mountain/

Your month-long trip has some similarities to the trip we're planning for late Spring. We also fly into Paris, then are going to Lyon. The more I look, the more there is in Lyon that I want to see! We're spending four nights there. We're also spending three nights in Arles, and also ending our trip with time in Paris. (Our other days will be in Narbonne and the French and Spanish Basque country)
On our last trip to France, in 2019, we spent our Provence time in St. Remy. We chose that town because we had been before and liked it, and we planned to spend time in the northern parts of Provence, and in visiting vineyards. While many people like the Luberon, it's not our favorite. One day trip we made, not for everyone, was to Chauvet, to see the reconstruction of the cave paintings. It was a pretty drive and amazing to see. Most of the visitors were French, but they do have some tours in English. On the way back we stopped at a lovely little restaurant at the side of the road for a leisurely lunch. From St. Remy, we also visited Arles and Nimes, which we hadn't been to before, but enjoyed it. A smaller site that we enjoyed was the Abbaye de Montmajour.

Could Annency and Chamonix be day trips from Lyon?

I like the idea of driving to the coast and spending a night or two in Nice or nearby. We could just keep the airbnb in Aix - pack light for the trip, and it would also allow us to look at the daily weather for the best days to go. Right now we are finding the airbnb rentals are incredibly inexpensive overall - that's why I have gone ahead and reserved (with cancellations allowable) because I think once travel really gets going again, barring some new covid variant, rates will go up. Thanks for the suggestion!

Well, we'd like to be based there, so we can do some day hikes. And some drives around the lake. Also - don't want to have a car in Lyon, will pick up our rental on the way out.

Yes - it does sound as if we will be traveling through some of the same areas - albeit on a reverse route. I agree that Lyon looks as if it will be worth a few days - initially I had thought of it as a one-night stopover to get over our jet lag and pick up the rental car.

We were last in France in fall of 2018, and spent about five weeks road-tripping through Alsace/Lorraine, the Mosel River area (Germany), a week in Kayserberg, and on to Beaune, where we stayed a week in a very old home in the village of Bligny-Sur-Ouche. Dropped our rental car in Dijon and took the train to Paris for our final week.

We love to take the back roads, using an atlas map instead of the GPS. We've made some fantastic and unexpected discoveries that way - and getting lost is always half the fun.

If you should decide to drive from Lyon to Annecy on a nice day, you might be interested in following the scenic route recommended to us by French Mystique Tours (who was a frequent contributor here when we were planning). His directions are in this thread:
https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...annecy-903775/

We did go up to the Semnoz plateau and I noted in my trip report: <<A huge thanks to you, FMT, for sharing your knowledge and enabling us to experience one of the best drives of this or any trip. The weather wasn't wonderful, but the scenery was, and we enjoyed being virtually alone on top of the world (except for the cows, of course) for a couple of hours. >>
https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...2011-a-911471/

Thank you for this! I have copied the link.

There is nothing particularly interesting about driving around the lake of Annecy.

Gee. We stayed in a gite in Tailloires for 2 weeks about 10 years ago. We loved driving around the lake and admiring the views.

Stu Dudley

I can't think of any reason to spend so many nights in Aix. Avignon is a better place for regional exploration: the Mont Ventoux, L'Isle sur la Sorgue, Gordes, Lacoste, Orange, the Pont du Gard and numerous other places (the Haribo factory?).
If it were my trip (which of course it isn't), I would go from there to Montpellier for a day or two and then drive up the A75 to go north, crossing the magnificent Viaduc de Millau. You might even want to spend a night in Millau, which is an excellent stop for one night. But I would not rule out Arles, especially if you go to Aigues-Mortes for a day.

As for Amboise, yes the châteaux of the Loire valley are impressive, but in terms of visiting them, once you have seen two or three (possible all in one day), the rest are just overload, even though it is nice to drive past a few more just to see them from the outside.

We really liked Amboise, though we didn't visit the chateau. Just liked the town. We walked past a house where a guy was building a small aeroplane in his garage! It is also of course the place where Da Vinci died - you can visit Clos Lucé.
If you stay there head over the river to near the campsite and watch the sunset colour the chateau and town.

If you go to Aigues-Mortes wear insect repellent, even that late in the year. A little way out of Aigues is the Tour Carbonniere, which we found interesting, with a small nature reserve by it, and a good chance of a kingfisher, and maybe some flamingoes or Camargue bulls, if not horses.
Aigues was heaving when we wanted to visit so in the end we just went to the Tour and found a funny little campsite on the edge of town for the night before moving on.

Amboise was actually our least favorite base on our Loire trips. We preferred Angers for the western Loire and Bourges/Sancerre for the far eastern part. We also liked Loches and Fontevraud. On our trips there (most were driving trips lasting about 10 days) we kept chateau visits to just four or five -- for example, Villandry for the gardens (and because they hold some really nice craft shows there), Angers for being in a city not so heavily focused on tourism, Chambord for the boat cruise around the canal system, and a small one like Montresor or Ainay-le-Vieil. Ainay-le-Vieil had no other visitors the day we stopped by so while my husband toured the castle, the cocker and I had the gardens to ourselves.

I'm presumptuous enough to offer a rearranged route that could be more efficient.

Fly trans-Atlantic to Marseille to start. This likely will require a plane transfer but will still be quicker than working through Paris. The Provence/Marseille airport is between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.

I like Marseille well enough to spend a couple of days, then move on by bus or local train to Aix-en-Provence (or Avignon).

North by fast train to Lyon. Then on to finish in Paris.

Using a multi-destination search function you should be able to set up the full air itinerary on a single ticket and it won't cost much more than a simple round trip including the expense of returning to your arrival city. The time saved will be substantial.

Thank you for so many great ideas and other suggestions.

I think I should have stressed more clearly that we aren't looking to cram in as much as possible in as short a time as possible. This isn't our first road trip in France, nor will it be our last. "Efficiency" isn't a goal for us. I am definitely going to look at shortening our time in Annecy to allow us to drive to the coast and stay a couple nights somewhere near Nice, but other than that we aren't interested in "stopping over for a night" just about anywhere.

During the days we are booked for more than just a few days at Aix-en-Provence and Arles and Amboise, we will use those homes (they are not hotel rooms) as bases for long and leisurely drives on back roads to see the countryside and villages in the surrounding area. The one thing we have learned about ourselves and European travel - is that we don't enjoy moving from one hotel to the next. We much prefer settling in a bit - shopping in local markets and preparing some of our own meals. Relaxing in the evenings. Taking walks and getting to know a neighborhood.

We stayed in Annecy and did a day trip to Chamonix. It was a nice day trip. We also did a boat tour of the lake and enjoyed ourselves. One thing we did on our drive to Aix was stop in a very small town for lunch. It was my favorite meal of the entire trip. https://www.lebistrotdelaplace.fr/ It’s in Clelles.

Have a great time.

FYI, our Aix visit starts at the end of post #3:
https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...ndwich-446896/

This is a great way to travel, and it has given me so much pleasure over the years.

BTW, I wasn't suggesting you add hotel stays to your trip or extra destinations. Le Puy is stunning, and when you drive form Arles to Amboise, you can choose a route that takes you right by there.. Very few people have Le Puy on their itinerary because it is out of the way for them. But not for you! Hence why everyone has heard of Annecy but nobody goes to Le Puy. What I am suggesting to you is to swap the locations. Le Puy/Polignac and Auvergne for the Savoie. Even though this will not be your last driving vacation, honestly it might be the last time you will be going to pass right through one of the top sites, not only of France, but one of the most unique landscapes of Europe. The side trip to Annecy and Chamonix in this case is actually out of your way.

Thank you for this advice. Le Puy looks wonderful, and yes, aren't we fortunate it will be on our route. What I am thinking now, is to shorten our time in Amboise by a couple days, which will allow us to stop over in Le Puy on our way there. Certainly looks like a great way to break up what was going to be a long driving day. I think two days in Le Puy would work for us, as I am already beginning to think we have given too much time to Amboise. Do you think two days is about right?

Do you have a favorite place to stay in or near Le Puy? It looks as if being in the village would be nice for evening walks and restaurants, but we will have a car, so parking might be an issue. I am thinking a hotel, rather than an apartment rental for just the two days. Any suggestions you are willing to share would be much appreciated - thank you!

(In addition, we will likely shorten our time in Annecy and head to the coast for a day or two on our *backtracking* way to Aix)

Two days in Le Puy is fine. Just make sure that those days are not Sunday or Monday when many things are closed. Wed & Sat are their market days. We visited le Puy about 15 years ago, and we are gong to stay there for 2 weeks in a gite in 2023.

Stu Dudley

Looks like we will arrive on a Friday and leave Sunday morning. Thanks for the info.

On Saturdays, in addition to the morning farmer's market, the also have a flea market.

Stu Dudley

Fine tuning this itinerary - Sept/Oct - initially we were really set on staying in Annecy, but now I am rethinking the itinerary, as Antibes sounds pretty wonderful.

Landing at CDG mid-morning, taking the train to Lyon, where we will spend three nights. Our plan was to rent a car on the last day in Lyon and drive to Annecy for three nights, before continuing on to the airbnb we have in Aix for a week.

Now I am considering taking the train from Lyon to Antibes, staying three nights and renting the car while we are there. There is an airbnb in Antibes that looks great with a pick-up from the train station. We can rent a car at the train station in Antibes for the rest of our trip which will include Aix, Arles, Le Puy, and Amboise. (Dropping the car off in Tours before we take the rain to Paris for our final six days)

Anyone weigh in on whether one plan is better than the other?

Antibes is quite nice. But you are from California and have probably seen/visited better coastlines (IMO) in Laguna Beach, Corona Del Mar, Hwy 1/Big Sur, Pt Lobos, Carmel, Pacific Grove, San Mateo county coast, Marin/Sonoma/Mendacino coasts, etc. No medieval villages, however. Perhaps visit Antibes instead of Nice from Aix. It will be easier to get in & out of Antibes than Nice.

I've lived less than 1/2 hour or directly on the California coast for all of my 74 years. But I've vacationed on the Cote d'Azur for 21 weeks.

To give you some diversity, I would stick with Annecy with a drive in the Alps & Mt Blanc, See my attached Alps itinerary (above) for descriptions of the drives we've enjoyed around Annecy.

Stu Dudley

I spent a week at a theatre festival in le Grand Bornand in the Savoie. It was awesome. But none of the touring we did was all that special, whether it was to Chamonix, Cirque de Fer a Cheval, Annecy, Col d'Aravis , or points between. I flat out prefer the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas, and because there are few traditional villages, it lacks the charm of Europe. Save your Alps experience for Switzerland, Italy, or Austria. And if Chamonix gets socked in with clouds on your day there, then it's a truly questionable experience.