A number of women friends and I were going to be attending a cooking school in Italy in early October. The school is located about 20 miles from the Pisa airport -- outside of Lucca -- and about 30 miles from Florence.

My husband and I and another couple, are going to fly over to Italy
a week before cooking school and do some touring around Tuscany.
While the women are in cooking school the men will go off to Normandy and the meet up with us after the school is finished.
Question: about how long a drive is it from Pisa to Normandy and does anyone have any Suggestion about visiting the battfield etc.( do's and don'ts)
Thanks

www.viamichelin.com is a great site for getting driving mileages, etc.

Tracy

ViaMichelin says 12 hours and about $250 in road tolls. I've driven most of that route in pieces, and I would plan on at least 15 hours. Getting around Genoa is a pain-in-the-a.., and Nice isn't fun either. You also need to get around Paris, which will be difficult. There will be at least 5 "deviations" along the way.

Why don't they visit someplace a little closer??? Why spend 2 entire days of your "too short" vacation in the car. Ninety-percent of the drive is not scenic. Visiting the battlefields properly will take 1 1/2 days minimum - so if they're doing a round trip, that means the battlefield visit will consume 4 days - not a good use of time, IMHO.

Venice is lovely - so is Rome, Nice, etc...

Stu Dudley

This HAS TO BE a joke!!!. Driving from Pisa, Italy to Normandy, France to view the Battlefieds??? How about flying from Pisa to Paris via Easy Jet and drivng from there? Have a nice trip !!! Mike

That sounds like an awful plan! They can fly from Pisa to Orly for under 60 euros, then rent a car and drive to Normandy. WAY more sensible than driving, IMO, and WAY cheaper and faster.

Please don't take this as rude - but have you looked at a map??

Driving from Italy to Normandy is really a two day trip each way - and a tiring 2 days at that.

They should fly to Orly -- heck, even flying to the UK and taking a ferry to Normandy would be better than driving from Lucca.

Surely not? At Normandy are graves, but for battlefields I'd go further. To the Somme perhaps?
It's a long way from Pisa to Normandy. People here say 2 days each way, but they'd be missing so much if they just zoomed through like that. By the time I lingered in Provence, the Tarn Gorges, the Dordogne and the Loire (all on the direct route) it would take me 2 weeks each way. Is there anywhere closer that takes their fancy - any of the regions I just mentioned, for example? (North of the Dordogne is Oradour-sur-Glane if it's WW2 war zones that interest them).