Normandy

Immigration at CDG under the EES(45 minutes)

Since 10 April 2026 the EU Entry/Exit System is live at every Schengen external border: expect a facial scan and fingerprints at a kiosk instead of a passport stamp on first entry. US, UK, Canadian and Australian passports still get 90 days in any 180 with no advance paperwork. ETIAS is NOT required yet — it launches Q4 2026 and only bites around April 2027, so any website selling you one today is a scam.

Collect the rental car, CDG Terminal 2 rental centre(45 minutes)

Take the free CDGVAL shuttle to the rental village. This is the single non-negotiable decision of the trip: the landing beaches span 80 km with almost no bus between them and none at all to Pointe du Hoc. Budget EUR 45-70/day. Ask for the smallest chassis they have — Norman villages were laid out for ox carts — and add the second driver at the desk, not later.

Drive CDG to Giverny(1 hour 30 minutes)

105 km on the A13, exit at Bonnieres-sur-Seine. Tolls run about EUR 9; French toll gates take contactless, but keep coins for the older barriers. Parking at Giverny is free and signposted off the D5.

Fondation Claude Monet, 84 rue Claude Monet(2 hours)

EUR 13, daily 9:30AM-6PM, open 1 April to 1 November and shut solid all winter. The Paris coaches own it from 10AM to 2PM; arriving at 3PM is the second-best trick after arriving at 9:30. Go through the tunnel under the road to the water garden FIRST, while you still have the patience to wait for a clear frame on the Japanese bridge, then double back to the Clos Normand and the pink house.

Monet's grave, Eglise Sainte-Radegonde(20 minutes)

Five minutes uphill from the gate, free, and almost always empty even when the garden is heaving. The family plot is against the church's north wall — a plain limestone slab for the man who spent thirty years proving the subject doesn't matter and the light does.

Drive to Rouen and check in(1 hour)

75 km on the A13. Sleep inside the medieval centre between Place du Vieux-Marche and rue Saint-Romain, and garage the car for two nights (Parking Vieux-Marche, about EUR 18/24h) — the old town is pedestrianised and you will not touch the car again until Day 3.

Dinner at La Couronne, Place du Vieux-Marche(2 hours)

Serving since 1345 and plausibly the oldest inn in France. In November 1948 Julia Child ate sole meuniere here on her first day on French soil and it rearranged the rest of her life. Order exactly that (around EUR 38). Yes it is touristy. It does not matter.

Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Rouen(1 hour)

Free, 9AM-7PM (from 2PM on Mondays). Monet rented a room in a linen shop on the south side of this square and painted the west front around thirty times in 1892-93, in every light he could wait for. Inside, a small casket holds Richard the Lionheart's heart, willed here separately from the rest of him. The cast-iron spire is the tallest in France at 151 m.

Rue du Gros-Horloge and the belfry climb(1 hour)

The 14th-century astronomical clock straddles the street on a Renaissance arch. Read it properly: one hand for the hours, the globe above tracking the moon's phases, and a panel at the base naming the day of the week with its Roman deity. The belfry is about EUR 7.50 with an audio guide and closed Mondays — worth it for the bell chamber and the roofline.

Place du Vieux-Marche and Eglise Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc(45 minutes)

Joan was burned here on 30 May 1431 at nineteen; the spot is marked by a tall cross. Louis Arretche's 1979 church beside it is shaped like an upturned hull and a flame at the same time, and the 16th-century stained glass inside was pulled out of Saint-Vincent and hidden before the 1944 bombing — which is the only reason any of it exists.

Lunch at Dame Cakes, rue Saint-Romain(1 hour)

A neo-Gothic tea room built into the flank of the cathedral precinct. A savoury tart plus a slice of tarte normande runs about EUR 20. Ask for the back garden — it butts up against the archbishop's wall and nobody knows it's there.

Aitre Saint-Maclou(30 minutes)

Free, 9AM-6PM. A plague cemetery from 1348 that got rebuilt as an ossuary courtyard — look up at the timber galleries and the carvings are skulls, crossbones, gravediggers' shovels and a full danse macabre. Art students now have their studios in it, which is either grotesque or exactly right.

Musee des Beaux-Arts de Rouen(1 hour 30 minutes)

The permanent collection is free, which is a genuine anomaly in France. There is a canvas from Monet's Rouen Cathedral series hanging here alongside Sisley, Renoir and a strong Norman school — you can walk out of the Impressionist room and be standing in front of the real facade six minutes later, which is the whole argument of the series in one walk.

Dinner at L'Odas, Passage Maurice Lenfant(2 hours)

One Michelin star down a passage off the market square. Lunch menus start around EUR 55 and dinner climbs toward EUR 95. Book a week ahead — it is small and Rouen knows about it.

Drive Rouen to Etretat(1 hour 15 minutes)

90 km via the A150 and D925 across the Pays de Caux — flint farmhouses, beech windbreaks, no traffic. The village car parks fill by 10:30 in summer; the lot on the Aval side is about EUR 5 for the day.

Falaise d'Aval clifftop loop(1 hour 30 minutes)

Take the steps at the south end of the shingle beach. From the top you get the Porte d'Aval arch and the 70 m Aiguille needle from above, then a grass path along the edge of the golf course toward the bigger Manneporte arch. Check a tide table before you go anywhere near the beach underneath: the sea reaches the cliff base and the arches cut off your way back, which is precisely the trap it looks like.

Falaise d'Amont and the Nungesser-Coli monument(1 hour)

The north cliff, and the quiet one — most visitors never cross the beach to it. The chapel at the top is Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde; the white arrow monument marks the spot where L'Oiseau Blanc was last seen on 8 May 1927 heading for New York, and was never seen again. Les Jardins d'Etretat next door is EUR 14-17 of clipped topiary and contemporary sculpture — skip it unless gardens are your thing.

Lunch at Les Halles d'Etretat, Place Foch(1 hour)

The timber market hall on the square (a 1926 rebuild, and none the worse). Stalls do galettes, moules and cider by the bowl for EUR 12-18. If it is blowing sideways, Le Galion across the way sits inside a 14th-century half-timbered house that was dismantled in Lisieux and trucked here — about EUR 30 and worth it in bad weather.

Drive Etretat to Honfleur over the Pont de Normandie(1 hour)

55 km. The bridge is a 2,141 m cable-stayed span high above the Seine and the EUR 6.60 toll buys you one of the best ninety seconds of driving in France. Park at Parking Bassin in Honfleur (about EUR 10/24h) — the centre is closed to cars.

Dinner and the Vieux Bassin after dark(2 hours)

The Quai Sainte-Catherine terraces face the wrong way for sunset and charge for the privilege. Eat at Le Breard on rue du Puits instead (menus around EUR 45), then walk the harbour afterwards, when the tall slate-fronted houses have their lights on and the day boats have gone home.

Free morning: Eglise Sainte-Catherine(1 hour 30 minutes)

Free, and the largest timber church in France. Honfleur's shipwrights threw it up after the Hundred Years' War because there was no money for stone and no masons left alive — so stand in the double nave and look up: they built two upturned hulls. The bell tower is a separate building across the square because they did not trust the roof to carry the weight. If it is Saturday, the market fills Place Sainte-Catherine around it until about 1PM.

Musee Eugene Boudin(1 hour)

EUR 8-12, closed Tuesdays. Boudin was a Honfleur framer's son who dragged a teenage Monet outdoors to paint from life and effectively started the whole thing. His beach scenes hang here with Jongkind, Dufy and early Monet, in rooms where you can look up from the canvas and see the same estuary out the window.

Walk up to the Cote de Grace(45 minutes)

15 min uphill from the harbour on foot, 5 by car. The Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Grace is a sailors' chapel hung with model ships left as thanks for not drowning; the plateau behind it looks straight down the estuary to the Pont de Normandie. On the way up you pass Ferme Saint-Simeon, the cheap inn where Boudin, Jongkind, Courbet and Monet argued each other into Impressionism. It is a luxury hotel now, but the terrace will still sell you a coffee.

Drive Honfleur to Caen(1 hour)

65 km on the A13. Eat before you leave — the Memorial's cafeteria is exactly what you are picturing.

Memorial de Caen(3 hours)

Around EUR 20, opens 9AM, last entry about 5:15PM, closed most of January. It is built on top of General Wilhelm Richter's command bunker and you walk down into it. The narrative runs from the collapse of the 1918 peace through the occupation and the landings to the Cold War. Do this BEFORE the beaches — every site out there assumes you already know all of it, and not one of them explains it.

Drive to Bayeux, check in, dinner at Le Pommier(2 hours 30 minutes)

30 km on the N13. Bayeux is your base for three nights: it was the first French town liberated, on 7 June 1944, the Germans pulled out without a fight and not a bomb fell on it, so the medieval centre is entirely real. Le Pommier on rue des Cuisiniers does Norman classics for around EUR 30 and will actually seat you at 9PM, which in a town this size is not guaranteed.

Pointe du Hoc(1 hour 15 minutes)

Free, daily 9AM-6PM, 35 min from Bayeux — be here at 9AM. Rudder's 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled 30 m of cliff under fire on 6 June to take this battery; two days later about 90 of 225 were still fit to fight, and the guns had already been shifted inland, where a patrol found them parked in an orchard and destroyed them with thermite. The ground is still cratered exactly as the naval shelling left it and you can walk down into the bunkers. It is the one battlefield in Normandy your body understands without a caption.

Omaha Beach at Saint-Laurent and Vierville(1 hour)

Drive 12 km east and park at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer beside Les Braves, Anilore Banon's steel sculpture standing out in the surf. Walk west along the sand toward the Vierville draw. At low tide it is 300 m from the waterline to the shingle, and that distance — with the bluffs you can see from here in enfilade above it — is the entire point of the day.

Lunch on the Omaha seafront(1 hour)

Options out here are thin by design. The bars along the Vierville and Saint-Laurent seafront do galettes, moules and cider for EUR 15-20. The better move is a picnic bought from the boulangeries on Bayeux's rue Saint-Jean before you leave and eaten at the Vierville draw, looking up at what the 29th Division had to climb.

Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer(2 hours 30 minutes)

Free, 9AM-5PM (to 6PM from 15 April to 15 September), closed 25 December and 1 January. Photo ID at the gate, airport-grade security — this is land granted to the United States in perpetuity. Do the visitor centre first (45 min), then the graves: 9,388 of them, 307 unknown, set out so the rows run true from ten different angles at once. Preston and Robert Niland lie side by side in Plot F, the brothers behind Saving Private Ryan. Stay for the flag lowering and Taps at closing. Then take the path down to the beach — it is the thing that puts the two halves of the day together.

La Cambe German War Cemetery(45 minutes)

Free, 15 min west of Colleville, and virtually nobody stops. 21,222 graves under flat dark stone with crosses standing in groups of five, and a grass tumulus in the middle with 296 unknown beneath it. Read the ages: most of them are 17, 18, 19. It is the necessary second half of Colleville and it is extremely quiet.

Dinner at La Rapiere, Bayeux(2 hours)

A 13th-century stone dining room off rue Saint-Jean, menus around EUR 32, and the sort of place where a carafe of cidre brut and a slow plate of Norman pork is precisely the right register. You will not want to talk much and nobody here will mind.

Bayeux Cathedral and the crypt(1 hour)

Free, opens 8:30AM. Consecrated in 1077 with William the Conqueror standing in the nave, and this is where the Tapestry hung for its first seven centuries, paraded round the church once a year. Go down into the 11th-century crypt: the vault is painted with angels playing medieval instruments — bagpipes, a psaltery, a shawm — and there is never anyone down there.

The Bayeux Tapestry — check the status, do not plan around it(30 minutes)

Read this before you book anything. The Bayeux Museum closed on 1 September 2025 for a EUR 38m rebuild and is due back around October 2027, and the Tapestry itself is on loan to the British Museum in London from September 2026 to July 2027. It is not on view in Normandy in between. Check bayeuxmuseum.com before you travel. In the meantime: the MAHB in the old bishop's palace (about EUR 8) has Bayeux lace and porcelain, and the Conservatoire de la Dentelle in the Hotel du Doyen has lacemakers working bobbins by hand, free, Monday to Saturday.

Bayeux British War Cemetery(45 minutes)

Free, 4,648 graves, the largest Commonwealth cemetery in France, and — unlike Colleville — no ceremony, no crowds, and German graves in among the British ones. Cross the road and read the Latin on the memorial: NOS A GVLIELMO VICTI VICTORIS PATRIAM LIBERAVIMVS. We, once conquered by William, have now liberated the Conqueror's homeland. Nobody writes epitaphs like that anymore.

Longues-sur-Mer battery(45 minutes)

Free, 20 min from Bayeux, and the only German battery in Normandy with its original guns still sitting in their casemates. Walk out to the observation post on the cliff edge — it is the one from The Longest Day, and the view along Gold Beach explains the entire eastern sector in about ninety seconds.

Arromanches and the Mulberry harbour(1 hour 30 minutes)

Lunch on the seafront first, then the Musee du Debarquement (about EUR 12, rebuilt and reopened in 2023). Port Winston was towed across the Channel in pieces and assembled in twelve days; six concrete Phoenix caissons are still sitting out in the bay, and at low tide you can walk out to them across the sand. Then climb the path up the cliff east of town — that is where the scale finally lands.

Drive Arromanches to Mont-Saint-Michel(1 hour 40 minutes)

125 km. Park at the Beauvoir barrage car park, EUR 15.60/24h, 2.5 km back on the mainland — you cannot drive to the island, full stop. The Passeur shuttle is free and constant, or you walk the footbridge in 35 min. Sleep on the Mont itself (Auberge Saint-Pierre, Le Mouton Blanc, La Vieille Auberge) or in Beauvoir; rooms are small and overpriced and that is the price of the next two hours.

The Mont after the coaches leave(2 hours 30 minutes)

From about 6:30PM the Grande Rue empties out and the village becomes the medieval hill town it actually is. Walk the ramparts, find the little cemetery behind the parish church, look north to the Tombelaine islet. In summer the abbey's last entry is 6PM, so go straight up on arrival; outside summer, save it for tomorrow's 9:30 opening. For dinner: skip La Mere Poulard's EUR 40 omelette — it is whisked over an open fire for the theatre and it is still just an omelette — and order pre-sale lamb instead. The flock grazes the salt marsh below you and tastes of it.

Sunrise from the ramparts or the Barrage du Couesnon(1 hour)

Free. Check the tide coefficient at ot-montsaintmichel.com before bed: above 100 is a grande maree and the sea comes round the Mont for a couple of hours either side of high water, roughly twenty to thirty times a year — that is the morning it is an island again. The dam is where the postcard gets taken from. And whatever the sand looks like, do not walk out onto it: this bay has a 14 m range, some of the fastest tides in Europe and genuine quicksand, and it kills people who ignore that sentence. If you want to cross it, book a licensed guide.

The abbey at the 9:30AM opening(2 hours)

About EUR 13, 9:30AM-6PM with last entry an hour before (9AM-7PM in summer). Climb straight to the top and work DOWN — everyone else grinds upward, so you get ten minutes alone in the cloister. Find the great treadmill wheel, turned by prisoners hauling supplies up the cliff when this was a jail after the Revolution. It is a working monastery again; there is a midday Mass at 12:15 you are welcome to sit in on, and dress for that accordingly.

Last look at the Grande Rue(45 minutes)

Buy the caramels if you must, but the souvenir that earns its space is a bottle of poire (perry) or a Calvados Pays d'Auge from any of the caves on the Grande Rue — EUR 25-40, 40-42%, clears customs without a conversation. Remember the local rule: Normandy is too far north for wine, so it is cidre in a shallow bowl, poire, or Calvados, and the trou normand is the shot you take mid-meal to make room for the next course.

Checkout and transfer to the airport(4 hours)

Two ways out. Drive Mont-Saint-Michel to CDG: 360 km, 3h50, roughly EUR 30 of tolls — only workable for a flight after 4PM. Better: drive 65 km to Rennes (1h), drop the car at the Gare, and take the TGV to Paris Montparnasse in 1h27 (EUR 35-80 booked ahead), then RER B or a taxi across to CDG. Leave five hours of margin whichever you pick, and refuel before you return the car — airport fuel pricing is a form of theft.