My husband and I have never been to France. We will be there in september and originally thought that we would spend 3 full days in Paris and then head out to another region. We LOVE to eat, people watch, stroll quaint towns and villages. The problem is it sounds like all of France is like this! Some options we thought of were Normandy, Loire or Burgandy. I was leaning towards Loire and/or Burgandy. Loire because I have to see some of the chateaus and Burgundy because of the food and quaint villages. We only have 3 full days to tour outside of Paris so what would everyone suggest?Is is realistic to do Loire and Burgundy? Maybe one night in Loire and two in Burgundy. We don%26#39;t need to see endless chateaus maybe one or two of the better ones. Any suggestions on a good itinerary would be very appreciated. We will be renting a car.
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%26quot;Is is realistic to do Loire and Burgundy? Maybe one night in Loire and two in Burgundy. We don%26#39;t need to see endless chateaus maybe one or two of the better ones. Any suggestions on a good itinerary would be very appreciated. We will be renting a car.%26quot;
Well. It depends. With a car, you could hang out somewhere like Nevers right on the Loire River. Burgundy would be on the east side and the Loire would be on the west side of the river. You could then theoretically use the same base camp to explore both provinces. There is a lot to see so I suspect that it would be wise to resign oneself to being unable to get %26quot;full coverage%26quot; of one or the other in just three days.
I recommend spying the Michelin Green Guides for the area and see if any of the driving tours make sense to you; and pick your locations that way. They have good collections of itineraries. If you happen to have about 500€ handy, how about a balloon flight for the two of you?
Otherwise, I prefer staying in each hotel at least two nights--more relaxing not to have to pack up every day! It also precludes the risk of having anything in the rental car when you have it parked somewhere. I would therefore say spend all three days in the same base camp.
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It is certainly not possible to visit both the Loire valley and Burgundy in three days. And with respect to DarthAnon it doesn%26#39;t make much sense to suggest using Nevers as a base to visit either area let alone both. Beaune in the heart of the Burgundy wine country is about a three hour drive east of Nevers. Tours in the heart of the Loire château country is about three hours west. (And Nevers itself is not a particularlyy interesting town.)
You could make a *very* brief and superficiall visit to *one* of the regions you suggest in three days. However I would strongly suggest, since this is your first trip to France, that you base yourselves in Paris for your entire stay. There is *way* more than enough to see and do in Paris for a week and even much longer. Perhaps you could make a day trip from Paris to the Loire valley with one of the tour operators, but honestly there are at least a dozen day trips to splendid and fascinating places an hour away from Paris or less that would make much more sense IMO than the lengthy coach ride to the Loire valley and back.
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%26quot;it doesn%26#39;t make much sense to suggest using Nevers as a base to visit either area let alone both. Beaune in the heart of the Burgundy wine country is about a three hour drive east of Nevers.%26quot;
There%26#39;s more to Burgundy than Beaune, perhaps the heart of Burgundy. And there%26#39;s more to the Loire than Tours, perhaps the heart of the Loire. Yes. Nevers is not logistically convenient to either heart, but still typically Burgundy and right on the border of the two provinces to make a three-day dual-province visit theoretically doable. Make no mistake, for three days, one or the other is more sensible than doing the borderline thing.
%26quot;However I would strongly suggest, since this is your first trip to France, that you base yourselves in Paris for your entire stay.%26quot;
Perhaps. However, if you envision yourself frequenting France, you can plan on going through Paris every time, making a shorter first stop in Paris plenty sensible.
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%26gt;%26gt;%26gt; Yes. Nevers is not logistically convenient to either heart, but still typically Burgundy and right on the border of the two provinces to make a three-day dual-province visit theoretically doable. %26lt;%26lt;%26lt;
i would certainly not regard Nevers as being %26quot;typically Burgundy.%26quot; The logical basis of using it as a base to explore either region let alone both in three days completely escapes me. Blois is 2.5 hours plus from Nevers, Chinon 3.5 hours plus. The principal Loire châteaux lie in between these two towns. In the same way, the principal towns and historic sights of Burgundy, and in particular the vineyards, lie anywhere from ~2 hours to ~3.5 hours drive from Nevers. At a minimum therefore, each day will involve a *minimum* of 4-5 hours driving just to get to any of the places one is presumably planning to visit. Can you explain to me how this makes sense?
IMO arguing that one can see Paris, Burgundy and the Loire châteaux in six days and do justice to one of them, let alone all three, is not far from the %26quot;If it%26#39;s Tuesday this must be Belgium%26quot; school of touring Europe. YMMV...
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PS: It is also worth remembering that most people, especially first time visiors, do not get a lot out of their first day in Europe, sometimes their first two days, as they are dealing with the effects of jet-lag and cultural and geographical disorientation. It needs a couple of days on a first visit to a strange country just to begin to get acclimated.
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Well, another opinion here.
You seem to have a total of 6 days.
I would stay based in Paris and just do a day trip or two outside of city. Your trip is incredibly short and I think you are being too amibitous.
If you still have your heart set on Loire or Burgandy, I would suggest taking the train to Amboise, rent a car there, spend two nights touring around seeing some chateau and then returning to Paris( where I assume you are flying out) .
Is there anyway you could stretch the trip out a few more days, it would make a big difference if you could add three days.
Normandy is very nice also, I would stay somewhere like St Malo, and daytrip from there , there again, I still think 6 days is too tight to squeeze in Paris and another stay,, but I know some people like to really rush around and see lots of stuff.
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Thank you everyone for responding. We suspected that doing both Burgundy and Loire was probably too much. We are just torn between the two. We have thought about stayining an extra day in Paris and two nights in Loire or Burgundy. Still not sure which. Basically we fly into Paris on a Saturday and were thinking of staying until Tuesday morning (maybe wednesday) and then heading out to another destination. Our fear with the Loire is it is too %26quot;touristy%26quot;. I don%26#39;t want to be following hordes of bus tours through the chateau. The best example of what we are looking for is similar to a trip to Ireland we had taken. (Irish, maybe you can relate to this?) We flew into Dublin (stayed for two full days and nights) and then headed to Galway and the connemara region. Each night we stayed at a different town, but it was along a very scenic drive where we could stop and chase the sheep and go to a good pub etc. If it were a larger town, with more things to do, we spent the day and night there(galway). Packing and unpacking does not bother us if we are able to go at a leisurly pace. Again, we aren%26#39;t museum people. We like history, but after a couple of hours we%26#39;ve usually had our fill. One tour of an interior chateau is probably plenty. We might even scratch Versailles off our list of things to do in Paris for that reason. We plan on touring all the neighborhoods and breathing in as much of the Parisian way of life as possible. I think we can get the genral jist of the grandness of the chateaus by driving by, maybe stopping to view the gardens and then heading to the next quaint town. So to sum it up, I am looking for smaller, quaint, midevil(?)villages that have the cafes and people watching but maybe not %26quot;huge%26quot;towns%26quot; where getting in and around can suck up a whole day. However, I am afraid I am going to miss some grand scenery if I don%26#39;t do the Loire. Ahhhhh, the decisions!
One other worry we have is where to spend our last night. We fly out of CDG. Should we spend our last night in Paris or is there another town that fits my description that is an easy distance to CDG. We leave at 10:30am on friday.
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Can anyone help?
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For a 10:30 departure from CDG you need to be at your check-in area by 07:30 *at the latest.* IMO your options are to stay in Paris on your last night, probably leaving your hotel by 06:30 for the airport or stay at an airport hotel.
I still think that trying to combine a first visit to Paris with a visit to either the Loire valley or Burgundy in six days is too ambitios, the more so now that I know you need to be at CDG by 07:30 on the day you leave .
There are at least a dozen EASY DIY day trips from Paris that would make more sense — not that there isn%26#39;t MORE than enough to keep you very busy in Paris itself. Here is a *partial* list off the top of my head:
Versailles
Giverny
Chartres
Fontainebleau
Vaux-le-Vicomte
Écouen
Chantilly
Senlis
Provins
Reims
St-Germain-en-Laye
Rueil-Malmaison
and even
Bruges
Brussels
London
If you really want to you can visit the D-day beaches, a couple of the Loire châteaux or Mont St Michel on an organized coach tour in one day but IMO they simply involve too much travelling to be worthwhile, especially in September when the days are shorter. I feel much the same way about a day trip to London incidentally.
If you had several more days it would be a different matter, and others may give you different feedback. That is just my two cents%26#39; worth...
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Thanks Irish. I guess we%26#39;ll stay in Paris!
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