50 birthday

Planning to take my husband to normandy in spring for his birthday . Flying into Paris staying for 7 days? To do all the WW2. Renting a car. Should we keep the car to go on to Belgium and Germany or would it be wiser to travel by train. I am getting very confused.

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It isn%26#39;t really clear exactly how long you are planning to be in Europe to celebrate your husband%26#39;s birthday. Your inquiry doesn%26#39;t make it clear as to whether you are planning to stay in Paris for 7 days, then renting a car to visit the WW II sites in France followed by a visit to Belgium and Germany - or if you think you can do it all in 7 days.

Please provide a bit more information regarding the duration of your trip, as well as any specific sites that you really want to visit, so we can help you refine your trip plans

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Thank you for your timein replying to me. My plan is to possible fly to Paris . Spend 2 days there. Rent a car drive to Normandy. Spend 7 days there doing day trips. Leaving there going to Belgium. The Bastogne area. Then finishing in Frankfurt area I believe . He wishes to see Buchenwald and Munster. I hope this wil be about 3 days? May be we will need more? Thanks for any help or info . I am over my head on planning.

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The first thing you need to do is buy (or borrow from your local library) guidebooks for all the areas you are planning to visit. At a minimum it appears that you need guidebooks for Paris, Normandy, Belgium and Germany. Then you need maps, real paper maps, at a scale of at least 1:200,000 covering all the areas you plan to drive through and explore. You can go to viamichelin.com and use it to figure out how long it will take you to get from one place to another.

If your primary purpose in visiting Normandy is to see the D-day beaches you can have a very good visit there WITH a professional guide in one full day, an excellent one in two. I usually do not recommend taking guided tours. This is one area where I think a good guide is almost essential.

If you are planning to see anything of Paris you need to spend more than two days there. Your first day will be primarily taken up with the logistics of getting settled into your hotel and so on and with recovering from the flight and dealing with jetlag. Most people will tell you that it takes a week to have a first visit to Paris that is not rushed.

And there is absolutely no way you can get from Normandy to Bastogne and on to Munster and Buchenwald and then to Frankfurt in three days if you intend to spend any time visiting the sites you have chosen, however you came up with that particular list.

Finally if you rent a car in France and drop it off in Germany you will incur repatriation fees probably amounting to several hundred dollars.

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Thank you IrishRovr, Paris is just a stepping stone for the flight.I am really wanting to plan this trip so my husband can see the Normandy area. He is a huge history buff and would truely enjoy this trip. I thought being this close that Bastogne and Germany would be a good ending. I was just not sure if returning the car in France . Taking a train to Belgium would be more economical and faster way. Than going on to Germany and renting another car.

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Normandy is a wonderful area to visit. There is much to see and do there besides visiting the WW2 sites. So by all means get yourselves a good guidebook and have fun planning.

You would have to go through Paris if you were going to take the train to Belgium from anywhere in Normandy so you might want to return there by car and the take the train the rest of the way.

The German rail site, bahn.de is probably the easiest to use for researching train timetables and routings. You won%26#39;t be able to buy train tickets to Belgium there. You need to go to tgv-europe.com for that, using Great Britain as your %26quot;home%26quot; country. Likewise you would need the Belgian rail site for tickets from Belgium to Germany. Go to seat61.com for a lot of help with trains in Europe and for details on how to book your train travel.

You could look at flying %26quot;open jaw%26quot; flying one way to Paris and returning home from Frankfurt. Or you could take the high speed TGV from Frankfurt back to Paris to fly home from there. That trip takes about four hours.

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Thank you IrishRovr, I will check into the train and purchase the guide books .I had been warned not to buy rail tickets in the US they would be way over priced and easily bought in Europe .