Just beginning to make the arrangements for a month in France - about three weeks in Normandy and Brittany beginning the end of August, and some time in Paris. We are a well-traveled Californian couple in our early to mid-70s, we will have a leased car, and plan to stay in gites or vacations homes for at least four days at a time (occasional hotels for shorter stay maybe), making day trips to surrounding areas. This will be our fifth road trip in France and will allow us to visit the final area we haven't explored. We love all French food, especially seafood, driving backroads, taking walks and easy to moderate hikes, history, and architecture. We aren't shoppers.

So far -

Arrive at CDG late afternoon and after immigration we will check into the IBIS airport hotel to recover from the nine-hour time change.

Next morning we pick up our leased car at the airport and head toward Normandy. We have considered staying in Rouen for two nights, but not sure if we want to deal with being there with the car. Maybe stay somewhere else for a longer period and train into Rouen for a day? Is Rouen a "not-to-be-missed" city?

Head toward the coast, stay in a rental in Honfleur. Make day trips from there - not sure how many days to stay

Short two or three-day stay in Bayeux. Join a day tour to visit the D-Day Beaches (my dad was a navigator in a plane flying over the invasion)

Four days in Dinan, Dinard or Saint-Malo - visit Mont-Saint-Michel. Make day trips. Lunch at Cancale (oysters) and maybe hike Pointe du Grouin - or part of it.

Five days in Quimper - Day trip to Concarneau, Other suggestions?

Four or five days in Vannes - day trips to explore the coast and countryside.


Head back to Paris, via Rennes - maybe Rouen would be a good stop on the way back?

Paris - turn in the car, and stay four final four nights before flying home.

Very rough outline here - looking for any suggestions for places we might love that I don't know about - or places I've mentioned that might not be worth our time. I've had some amazing suggestions offered here for previous trips in Europe - places I might never have found on my own.

Thank you!

Should be a great trip! Just a few comments:

Overnight is not long enough to be safe to drive – for you OR for anyone else on the road! Consider taking a train to Rouen and spend two nights there (the city easily warrants that time, if not more) before picking up a rental car.

FWIW: I loved Dinan, did not visit Dinard, and was not particularly impressed by Saint Malo.

My favorites in the area (in no particular order): the calvary closes in Brittany, the pink granite coast, Carnac, Giverny, Mont St Michel, Rouen, Bayeux, Honfleur, Dinan….

kja - Thanks for your concern and advice - we are not renting the car - but leasing - and there isn't a lease pick-up possible in Rouen. The train to Rouen was our first plan when we considered this itinerary and were going to rent a car, but renting a car is so much more expensive than leasing. We will be flying business with lie-flat beds, and we are good "plane sleepers," so I think we'll be fine driving the second day, 17 hours after we arrive. Thank you for your suggestions for places to visit!

Sleep is not the issue. Your circadian clock is the issue. Train to Rouen, back to Paris to pick up your lease, off you go! Or put your time in Paris at the start of your trip.

Here is the link to my trip report from two years ago (with pictures). I would love to go back to that area again, but I think my next trip will be to Paris and Provence.
Three Weeks in Beautiful Brittany, Normandy and Paris

Since you are being referred to trip reports, there is :

The Peabody Papers 2019, Paris and Brittany, Unmapped

I received a lot of useful advice on this planning thread, and you will also find my summary TR at the end
Visiting Brittany

Also recommend reviewing former Fodorite and France expert Stu Dudley's itinerary for Normandy & Brittany, many of which have been collated here also https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/all-stu-dudley-docs-in-one-place-1728594/

We lease cars for our trips. We last leased in 2023 and at that time, lease cars did not come with a Crit'air sticker. That may have changed, but you may need to check if it is required for Rouen. We do not drive into large cities so not a problem for us, but a nuisance for those who wish to.

Dinard is dull unless you like beach resorts. Dinan was key to the pilgrimage route and St Malo was a pirate's lair but ww2 Germans burnt it down {French rebuilt it)

Since you will be driving, I would focus on places you can't easily get to by train. For example, on your way back, instead of Rouen, stop at the ruins of of Jumieges Abbey and/or the Chateau Gaillard. Both spectacular.

Other terrific sites in Normandy you may not have heard of:
Beuvron en Auge, a stunningly gorgeous village. You could take a million photos here and never tire of looking at them.
Chateau - musee Crevecoeur
St Germain de Livet, castle surrounded by a moat.

My favorite D Day sites:
Pointe du Hoc
Arromanches
Museum of the Atlantic Wall, Ouistreham (very old fashioned)
American cemetery Colleville sur mer.

Closer to Paris:
La Roche Guyon
Troglydyte church of the Annunciation, near La Roche Guyon

This is a great area for a road trip. We love Normandy, though we’re not particularly fans of any cities in Normandy. We prefer driving the back roads. We always allow time to veer off our route for a panorama or a scenic back road (marked in green on Michelin maps) even if it doesn’t go where we want to go.

You’re only passing through a small part of Normandy. Take a look at the map and see how big the area is. Its southeast corner is hilly and forested (it’s just west of the very flat Beauce, where Chartres is). In the Perche, Belleme and Mortagne au Perche are small, quiet gems. Lots of good restaurants, lovely countryside. The influx of Parisians with weekend homes in the Perche has caused the towns to spruce themselves up, increased the number of upscale stores, and encouraged Paris restaurateurs to open outposts of their Paris restaurants.

In Cancale, we can highly recommend Cote Mer for lunch or dinner. You don’t have to take my word for it; check out reviews in French on Trip Advisor where Cote Mer gets high praise. I don’t trust English restaurant reviews on TA, but I’ve found that French reviews are more on my wavelength.

Personal peeves–St Malo was rebuilt after the war and is architecturally monotonous. Honfleur was more crowded than anywhere else we’d ever been in France and I didn’t even want to get out of the car. Rennes is a city marred by graffiti. I used to live in one of those cities in the US and just couldn’t see past the graffiti to appreciate Rennes.

Instead of Rennes, may I recommend Laval? We visit Laval on every trip now, stay at a great B&B, have a favorite bakery and restaurant and café by the river, and every day walk the old towpath along the Mayenne river. Last year, spring and fall, every day was cold and usually rainy and we still loved it.

Sorry, I think I have way too many opinions about this part of France! We know what we like, but I realize that we don’t know what you’d like.

Have a great trip. You really can’t go wrong in Normandy and Brittany.

Definitely Laval! We were hoping to cycle the towpath on our trip but probably will save it for another time now. You can rent bikes if you fancy riding a bit of it.
Suisse Normande is small, hilly and delightful.
Maybe you would like Vitré too.

We too love both areas, but avoid most of the cities and bigger places. We love inland Brittany with it's myths and legends and tiny villages and unexpected chapels, plus of course all the Megaltihic stuff you stumble over away from Carnac.

Meneham is worth a visit as is the Cairn de Barnenez.
We are especially fond of the Crozon peninsula, but love all of Finistere.

I recommend you have a look at https://www.brittanytourism.com/ and https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/ as well as doing some more searches for more off the beaten track places.
Be prepared to wander and let serendipity have it's affect occasionally.
A good map is very useful as it will mark on it things of interest as well as the roads. Don't rely solely on Google/Apple Maps.

We are staying at a gite in the middle of Brittany in May, but previously we have toured in a camper van and stayed in a mobile home on a campsite, simply because we loved it's location when we previously stayed there with the camper van. I won't link to the gite, as I have no idea if it is any good! It is placed such that we can get to the coasts easily enough,

Don't miss the magnificent castle at Fougères.

As for jet lag, if you're traveling from the west coast of the US to France, you'll traverse 8 time zones. The more the time zones the more jet lag impacts you. I personally follow the Mayo clinic's recommendations on how to lessen the impacts. First about three weeks before your flight, start adjusting your sleep patterns by 1 hour early. Make that both sleep and wake 1 hour early. Adjust that time by one hour if possible each of the next two weeks. (1, then 2, then 3 hours) Also, try to use room darkening shades when you are in the process. Reduce the light you get by a couple of hours this way to make it closer to the sunrise/sunset times in France. It will start the adjustment of your rhythm. When you arrive in France, the earlier the better. This allows you to have more sunlight to see in the morning. If you can effectively reduce the time zone differential in your rhythm by three hours, recovery in France is much easier. And quicker.
We leave from the midwest so were on a 6 time zone difference. I use this method for the three weeks prior religiously. I assist my sleep at home earlier with both melatonin and blackout shades. Once I wake up earlier, I also turn on several LED lights while I prepare for heading to work. The day of the flight, I also immediately change my watch to Paris time and use that as my guide. DW actually has more of a difficulty with her prescriptions that are either morning or night. I've always used this practice for the past 20 years and have never had an issue. My various family or travel partners rarely do it and they are always nodding off once we arrive. It became substantially easier when we started flying business with the fully flat seats too. I have never felt any effects on day two in France using this method.

I imagine our leased car will not come with the Crit'air sticker. I can't buy one in advance, because the website needs the automobile info, and of course we won't have that until the day of pick-up. The only place we would need the sticker would be Rouen - and I think we could park outside the area that requires it and walk or taxi into the city center. We're not going to stay in Rouen, so I guess we'll figure it out when we're in Normandy - hope it's not such a hassle we have to skip Rouen.

You could also drive from Paris to Les Andelys (not too far) and spend the first night there. There's a wonderful chateau from Richard the Lionheart with a gorgeous view of the seine river. I'd also personally just stay right in Honfleur afterwards and do Rouen as a day trip - but that's because I personally prefer staying overnight in towns/villages. Other day trips from Honfleur include Le Bec Hellouin, Lyons-la-Foret, Etretat, or Pont-Audemer. Another recommendation would be to stay in a quaint historic village in the Pays d'Auge along the route du cidre instead of Bayeux as I personally found Bayeux quite dull architecturally and a bit lacking in charm. Personally, I'd stay in either Beuvron-en-Auge (there's a wonderful estate hotel called Le Manoir de Sens) or Cambremer. I'd highly highly reccomend a stop at the Chapelle Saint Michel de Clermont-en-Auge with it's magnificent view. Of course, Bayeux is still absolutely worth visiting for the tapestry!

For day trips while in Ille-et-Vilaine (Dinan/St. Malo area), I'd highly recommend Fougères, Vitré, Josselin, Saint-Suliac, and Moncontour. The medieval chateaux at the first three mentioned locations are all wonderful. Dinard I found absolutely tasteless and boring, but again that's just me.

Some suggestions for day trips while in Quimper would be Locronan (probably my favourite village in all of France), Douarnenez (alleged birthplace of the Kouign-Amann), the Menez Dregan grotto, and the Chapelle Saint-They overlooking the sea. From Vannes, Rochefort-en-Terre, Auray, and the Domaine de Suscinio castle are lovely.

Happy travels!

apersuader65 describes a good method for resetting one's circadian clock and so reducing the risks of driving after crossing multiple time zones. Unfortunately, most people are unable to implement it effectively because work or life interferes or because it takes a lot of self-discipline to implement properly. Still, worth considering!