We are planning a trip to France for the last 2 weeks of May this year. After a bad experience in Ireland, my husband swears we will never rent a car in Europe again, plus we both love train travel. I realize there%26#39;s a lot we would miss by not having a car, but I%26#39;m trying to figure out some nice places to get to by train. I%26#39;m also loking for information about rail passes that might save money compared to single trip tickets. Our tentative plan is for one week in Paris, with several day trips out from there. For the second week, we want to spend at least a couple of days in Normandy (maybe Bayeux because of good reviews of the D-Day tours from there). Husband definitely wants to go Mt. St. Michel too but I don%26#39;t think that%26#39;s easily reachable from Bayeux without a car, so we have to figure out how to get there. After Paris, we would definitely like to experience something a little more rural/smaller. We like history, food, walking, scenery, gardens, agriculture, wine. When have traveled in Italy and the British Isles, we got by OK without a car, in part by using base location and finding day or overnight trips with local tour companies. Two other areas we might like to visit for a few days are the Dordogne or Alsace (or possibly Britanny). Finally, are the regions I%26#39;ve mentioned nice at this time of year? (We%26#39;re from Maine, and at that time of year the weather here can oscillate between nice and warm and nippy/damp, but we don%26#39;t mind that--just want to be prepared!)
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Hi,
from Bayeux to Mont Saint Michel :
you get a train from the Bayeux station going to Pontorson station. That does last about 1 hour. Then you can get a cab or a bus to get to Mont Saint Michel. It%26#39;s just something like 10miles more.
I see many people doing the same every year, so if they can do it, i%26#39;m sure you%26#39;ll manage too !
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France rail map, schedules:
…raileurope.com/map_of_europe/france.html
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en
How about Epernay, Nancy, Strasbourg, Colmar and Dijon [and Beaune] for part of your trip. Also note that if you end up Dijon, there is an early train direct to CDG.
Some of these towns have little tourist trains that provide a nice overview before striking off on your own.
Email the Tourist offices and ask for literature. Most if not all will have walking tours.
Our favorite Paris day trips have been the Chateaux Vaux-le-Vicomte, the town of Auvers-sur-Oise and the impressionist show at the Auvers Chateau, and the Chantilly Chateau and medieval town of Senlis.
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To decide whether or not a rail pass would be appropriate for your trip - go to www.ricksteves.com and download his pdf file about rail passes. I%26#39;m sure that you%26#39;ll find that if any pass is worth it%26#39;s price it will be a French pass rather than a Eurail pass. There are various passes only available to be purchased before you arrive in France, and there is little information about them on the French Rail web site.
Do not go to the Eurail site to price/purchase point to point tickets unless you are burning to pay a premium for them. Additionally, if you search here on the forum, you%26#39;ll find MorganB%26#39;s exhaustive and remarkably complete instructions for purchasing French rail tickets in advance of your trip.
Bon voyage.
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Thanks all for your very helpful suggestions about places, routes and passes. The tip about the early morning train from Dijon to CDG was useful, as it opens up an option other than returning to Paris the night before we leave.
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In Dijon, the La Roya Hotel is 50 meters from the station.
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First of all there is NO direct train link from Bayeux to Pontorson. Probably the best you can do is take a train from Bayeux to Coutances and then a bus to Pontorson. This will take about 2hrs15 and you will have one train leaving Bayeux at 07:47 and then only two more reasonable connections, about 5 or 6 hours apart.
The Paris-Epernay-Nancy-Strasbourg-Colmar suggestion is a good one. None of these trips would take longer than two hours, some of them considerably less. I would add Reims between Paris and Épernay or perhaps instead of Épernay. The cathedral is magnificent and you could visit the champagne houses there.. Then after Colmar you could go to Mulhouse which has two magnificent museums one for cars the other for trains for those who care about such things. Between Mulhouse and Dijon you could also visit Besançon.
Just FYI if you wanted to follow a circuit such as this you do not necessarily need to buy separate tickets for each part of the trip. Suppose you travelled from Paris to Reims, and then to Épernay spending the night there. Now if you wanted to travel on to Strasbourg stopping in Nancy en route for a few hours — or even overnight — you could do this on one ticket. The deal is this. If you buy a ticket between two places you can stop anywhere along the direct route providing (1) you complete the journey by midnight of the day *after* you begin it, and (2) you do not stop anywhere for longer than 24 hours. The reason you might want to do this is that the longer the trip for which you buy a ticket, the lower the cost per km. So a ticket from Épern\ay to Strasbourg will cost less than two tickets covering the same route.
The problem with this route is that, with the exception of Épernay all these places are either large towns or even larger cities. None of them will give you the rural feeling you are looking for. And that is the problem. Trains will take you from city to city and will stop at the more significant place in between. Getting to the wine villages in Alsace is impossible by train and almost impossible by bus. The Dordogne region is even worse from the point of view of touring by train and you certainly can%26#39;t get to the smaller villages and the fabulous caves except by car or with an organized tour. You could email the tourist offices in e.g. Colmar and/or Sarlat-le-Canéda to ask them about options for organized tours in these regions but I don%26#39;t think there are good options here. Could be wrong about that though...
If you are interested in the possibility of cycling, the Loire valley would be a great area to explore, Alsace and the Dordogne less so because they are hillier. The Loire has really been developing a lot of bike paths in the last few years and promoting this as a %26quot;green%26quot; way to see the area. It is also a good area for hiking from place to place.
Otherwise, in western Provence if you base yourselves in Avignon you can get to quite a few places — Arles, Nîmes, Orange, Tarascon, Aix-en-Provence, Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, by train and I know there are half and one day tours to for example the Lubéron villages , Les Baux, the Pont du Gard and some of the other places you cannot easily reach by public transport.
Along the Côte d%26#39;Azur you can get to all the coastal towns and vilages — Menton, Monte Carlo, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Nice, Antibes, Cannes, etc. quite easily by train. Some of the inland towns and villages can also be reached fairly easily by train and/or bus, but others are pretty inaccessible without a car.
Incidentally Provence and the Côte d%26#39;Azur are both usually magnificent in May, warm and sunny but not so hot as to make sightseeing uncomfortable in the hottest part of the day.
Just a few other possible areas for you to consider...
I don%26#39;t think a railpass would probably work for you as, for the most part, it seems your daily trips will actually be quite short. Railpasses really only work if you are making several long trips. It doesn%26#39;t make sense to use a railpass costing say $60 a day to make a trip that would only cost you 25€ if you bought a point-to-point ticket, but you can%26#39;t really make this determination for sure without working out an itinerary i some detail and then pricing P2P tickets on voyages-sncf.com. MorganB%26#39;s excellent SNCF page will help with some cost-saving pointers especially for longer trips, e.g. Paris to Avignon or Nice should you decide to visit either of these areas: http://tinyurl.com/qpdef
I do hope this is helpful and that you will have a splendid visit wherever you decide to go. Incidentally there are a dozen or more splendid day trips I can think of from Paris. you might wan to consider renting an apartment incidentally if you are staying a week. If you stay for the whole time in paris and just make day trips it%26#39;s kind of fun to have a %26quot;real%26quot; home to come back to in the evening...
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Sorry about the sloppy typing/editing in the last paragraph especially but I think you can figure it out...
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IrishRovr--
Thanks ever so much for the very thorough information. I%26#39;ve seen your helpful %26quot;presence%26quot; all over the France forum! I%26#39;m a bit confused as to why one of the other posters thinks there is direct train connection from Bayeux to the station near Mt. St. Michel. I%26#39;ll need to look at the rail map and schedules myself, but right now we are in the early planning stages. I was familiar with the stop-over options on single point to point tickets. However, we prefer to stay in one spot for at least several days and do day trips from there. I know there are a lot of nice places that aren%26#39;t reachable by train or other public transport. We don%26#39;t mind organized tours by bus/car/minivan, and if by picking our %26quot;base%26quot; carefully, we%26#39;ve been able to take advantage of those in other countries. If I could persuade my husband to rent a car even for a couple of days (outside urban areas) I know it would broaden our options. But, as I said, we really enjoy train travel just in and of itself.
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You%26#39;re welcome!
%26gt;%26gt;%26gt; However, we prefer to stay in one spot for at least several days and do day trips from there. %26lt;%26lt;%26lt;
If that is what you want to do then my preference would be to stay in or near Nice, in Avignon or *possibly* in Tours. I can%26#39;t really think of another central place that gives you good DIY travel opportunities along with a decent selection of half-day or full-day organized tours, aside from Paris. I%26#39;m not 100% sure of Tours either, but I think it could be made to work.
You could combine a few days in Avignon with a few days in Nice or nearby. Train to Avignon is ~3 hours with PREMs fares as low as 25€, from there to Nice about the same. You could look for an %26quot;open jaw%26quot; ticket, flying to CDG and home from Nice or return to Paris by TGV or with EasyJet.
Have a good time planning!
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Just a quick clarification for anyone else trying to get around in Normandy without a car. With conflicting posts here in response to my questions, I did check the train schedule and there IS a train from Bayeux to Pontorson-Mont St. Michel; it appears to be a direct train (no station changes neessary), takes under 2 hours, and there is bus and taxi available from the Pontorson train station to Mont St. Michel. There%26#39;s a fairly early morning train, and then another to return around dinner time. (I think there is another from Bayex to MSM around 5 as well.) So, Mt. St. Michel from Bayeux is a definite day trip-without-car possibility. After having spent 2 days in Bayeux, we%26#39;re thinking of staytng overnight at Mt. St. Michel and then catching a train the next day to somewhere in Brittany--Dinan perhaps--or perhaps to another region altogether.
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