We are going to France - Paris, Arras and Normandy - recommendations please.

[ShowOfHands]

I've started quite a few threads of late and we are booked to go to France for our first family holiday abroad. DC are 16 and 11 respectively and we've never had a proper summer holiday due to DH's work. We normally just camp for a few days here and there or do self catering in Scotland outside of summer. We've never taken the children abroad and I haven't had a passport for twenty years.

I'm open to as much help as possible. Driving, paying for things (we've ordered a credit card as we don't have one), how to navigate toll roads, where to go and what to do.

We've a couple of days in Arras and I've already planned to walk the route my grandad's brother followed on the Somme, ending at the cemetery where he is buried and DH has some other war sites he wants to see. Then on to a town NE of Paris and we have several days, planning on getting public transport into Paris. I'd like to visit Versailles and the Louvre and am trying to book now but am open to all and any recommendations. We then have a few days in Normandy, obviously wanting to see some military sites. We're staying near Bayeux.

We have saved and saved for this and want to cram in as much as possible but are on a tight budget. We love history, literature, art, whimsy, walking (but DD has EDS so can't be too challenging). DS is a typical 11yo boy and would have loved a trip to Disneyland for a day for example but we don't have that kind of cash.

Last time I went abroad, you changed your pounds into francs at the post office and wore a beige money belt round your waist. It's been, literally, decades. I'm nervous about it all. Driving, shopping, public transport.

Any info gratefully received or recommendations or things that definitely aren't worth it. Like the Eiffel Tower. Yay or nay?

https://www.sanef.com/en

We live in France.

The above website can help you to plan your drives, some of the costs of the tolls are larger than the fuel cost so if you are aon a budget you might want to avoid the motorways, yours isn't too long a journey to do this.

In terms of money, we use a WISE account, and even used them to transfer the moeny when we bought our house 20 months ago. We put money in there from our Nationwide account and then use it in Euro for all our purchases. It will be alot cheaper than the credit card transfers.

In terms of driving, you will be driving with the driver on the pavement side, and the thing I told myself is that if it feels wrong it is probably right. You get off the train/ferry/whatever and then follow everyone else, and remember to go right around roundabouts, and keep an eye on what people in front did at junctions etc to help you navigate. Get your routes planned out in advance so that you know where you are going and which direction you need to be driving in.

Toll Roads, the passenger will get the card from the start of the toll and you can do contactless with a card when you get to the other end. For info, there are very few queues for the tolls, so be ready. The only queues we have ever encountered was on Black Saturday which is the first Saturday in August and when people from Paris region all travel South for the month so you should be good.

There are several credit cards recommended for abroad as they have low. No fees. I have a Halifax clarity card and it's great for overseas spending. I have also been using it for pre booking tickets before I go
In local currency.

The card you refer to the passenger having at the start of tolls, is that a credit card?

And the wise account you mention, is that this https://wise.com/ ? Is it worth having an account just for a holiday?

DH has been sorting out a credit card with our bank/mortgage company for the same reasons I think.

We did a very short overnight stay near Utah Beach. The D Day Experience museum is a must see. Pointe du Hoc and Utah Beach Museume in that order for us. We only stayed 1 night and it wasn't enough. A tour guide would be well worth the money as there is so many museums and areas of interest. If you are looking for somewhere to stay in the area we stayed in a lovely b&b guesthouse called la ferme delaunay.

The museum at Arromanches about the D-Day landings is really good. My teen really enjoyed it. Also the one at Pegasus Bridge. Bayeux is a lovely town, tapestry aside. Lunch in the port at Honfleur. Giverny is well worth a visit if you are passing that way. Lovely beach at Cabourg.

The Bayeux Tapestry is excellent, and well worth a visit.

We went to the Juno beach centre. Which was also brilliant. The guides are all young Canadians, some with family connections to the Canadian military who landed there. They are super knowledgeable, all speak English (and do English tours), and last year were just absolutely lovely young people 😂

Commuting into Paris is a good idea, but if you haven't yet settled on a base, I would try and choose somewhere in the Ile de France region. Medium distance train fares in France are surprisingly expensive, but fares within the Transilien (ie Ile de France) region are MUCH cheaper.

As an example, we stayed in Chartres (not a bad base in many respects, it's a lovely town, although SE of Paris rather than NE) and train fares for me, a 12 year old and a 7 year old were coming up as 80- 90 euros for day returns!! (Although day returns don't exist in France, which was part of the problem). So, I drove for half an hour to a town called Dourdan, which is at the end of the RER line. Free parking in the town square, and tickets into Paris and back were 24 euros. I gather that the Transilien train network is similarly cheap.

(Should add there that Chartres is not in the Ile de France).

I think you'll be surprised @ShowOfHands how familiar things are once you get there. You may not have been abroad for 20 years, but France is still France, and technologically they've moved forward in the same direction and at the same pace as the UK. In the supermarket, for instance, you pay with a card, ditto in restaurants, at petrol stations, etc. So as long as you've either got a credit card that has a good exchange rate when making purchases in euros, or some kind of travel FX card (this section of moneysupermarket takes you through the best options: https://www.moneysupermarket.com/travel-money/), you'll be fine.

As for driving, the first hour you're constantly thinking about it, but it soon becomes second nature to drive on the other side of the road. Just follow the cars in front and when you get to a T-junction or a roundabout, think before you pull away!

As for everything else, Google Translate is useful to have on your phone, a baguette is around €1 so can always be the basis of a cheap meal, and beer or a glass of the house wine are around €4-6. In Paris, I think you can still buy tickets for the metro from a machine and you can set the machine to English, if needed.

Also, the only vehicle I have seen to drive on the wrong side of the road coming off the ferry -and do a massive comedy swerve back onto the right side of the road!- was a French car. So beware complacency when you arrive back in the UK!

You'd need to think about the charges your credit card will put on the transactions versus the cost of the transactions for a separate account such as Wise.

Each transaction on a credit card will have a charge against it unless your bank gives it free. So investigate this. This is why people often make one transaction for euros in cash to take, to save it happening each time you use a card.

You will be issued a thin card ticket at the start of each toll which you will put into the machine at the end and pay with a debit or credit card. It will be on the passenger side of the vehicle so they will do the work here or the driver will have to get out of the car and walk round to take the card or put it back in to pay. They aren't on both sides. Make sure you know what charges you will be paying on the tolls, often the cost of the tolls os much larger than the whole of the journey's fuel. So that you can avoid it if on a budget.

If you're just driving round Picardy/ Normandy/ Ile de France, I'd personally not bother with any toll motorways at all. Take the Routes Nationales- or some parts of the motorway network are toll free, plenty of apps to tell you which are which.

(But then again, I'm the type to drive all the way from Chartres to the Auvergne on the routes nationale, which put at least 3 hours on a long day's journey, but I like to think we saw a lot more interesting things as well as saving money 😆)

Our accommodation is all booked.

Bayeux Tapestry is a must as DD has just finished GCSE History and her favourite unit was the Anglo-Saxon/Norman one and she's desperate to see it.

DH is military history mad so the Normandy visit is for him. He will definitely want to see as much as possible.

I feel so nervous @cheezncrackers so your kind words have helped. I don't travel well and mostly because I don't like unfamiliarity. My BIL has travelled the globe and was nomadic for a decade and thrived on not knowing where he was going next or even where he was sleeping. I'm an introvert and like to know exactly what I'm doing. I worry about falling into tourist traps or being fleeced because I'm utterly parochial. At the same time, I'm so excited. I speak French, adored Paris when I went a lifetime ago and want it to go well. We've had a shocking time of late , surgery for DH and DD, last holiday ruined on day 1 when DH had a serious accident and our only other break away (just camping) was cancelled because DH was in hospital having his face/skull rebuilt. DD has had her GCSEs, surgery, new diagnoses and we've lost family members and friends. Definitely need a holiday!

Do you use a sat nav or a particular app to do this? Obviously, we don't want to be using our phones because of data so do you download routes in advance or what?

I've just checked with DH and he has got a new debit card, not a credit card.

Goodness, no wonder you're feeling nervous! But seriously, it sounds like you've had a horrible run of bad luck and trauma in the past, but none of those things should happen this time. You speak French too, which is great and will make everything easier. This website can be useful to check traffic if you're going to be travelling on peak days: https://www.bison-fute.gouv.fr/

And if you have a rough day, I can recommend the medicinal properties of a kir (or even better, a kir royale), to calm the nerves. Some Rescue Remedy or https://www.thisworks.com/products/stress-check-mood-manager-75ml in your bag might also help to keep you feeling serene

ShowofHands

I plotted most of our route in a paper road atlas of France I got from Lidl- that's how old school I am! 😆 Additional information was got from Google maps as and when- having DS1 glued to Google maps on my phone when navigating large towns and cities was a godsend!

Why do you think using data is necessarily going to be expensive? Do you all have PAYG phones/ new contracts? If on a historical contract, you should still be entitled to EU style International roaming- check with your provider.

I paid for everything in France with my debit card linked to my Halifax account- there certainly were charges, but pennies each time. Nothing I considered extortionate.

The debit card recommended by MSE has no fees/charges and 1% cashback.

Our friends who travel and BIL who has been to near enough everywhere in the world all said, just turn off data and only use WiFi. I just assumed that was best! I'll check out what O2 say. I've been with them for years.

Thank you @cheezncrackers Don't suppose you want to come with us and act as emotional support/tour guide?

We went to Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy and France this Easter, I used mobile data as and when I needed it (Google maps, or the CityMapper app which is brilliant for public transport, or just updating Facebook!), and the only extra charge on my bill was calls to SNCF telesales from Italy and the UK. I've had a contract with Vodafone for donkey's years. Although there's no guarantee they won't end free EU roaming whenever they feel like it now 😪

To be fair, I was responding to you saying you had ordered a new credit card. Not a debit card with no fees.

If your new debit card doesn't have fees then that should be fine.

http://www.somme-trench-museum.co.uk/

We’ve been to many all over France and this is my all time favourite war museum, it’s in Albert, not far from Arras. It’s not as flashy as the big ones but we were in it four hours, there’s so much information, hugely detailed, and it has a brilliant gift shop, old helmets and trench art, reasonably priced, good for interested teens. Nice little park beside it for a picnic!

Thank you @cheezncrackers Don't suppose you want to come with us and act as emotional support/tour guide?

I've never been known to turn down a holiday, so sure

Invest in a proper atlas for the roads, they cost about 15 euros £13 and it is so much easier than using any form of tiny screen to navigate. Don’t get a fold out map which is unwieldy, get a book format . The Aa one is fine. It will show all the little roads in enough detail for you not to get lost, and they have sites of interest, churches and castles marked. They also show the exits to the motorways very clearly, which is useful as there are very few compared to English motorways, if you miss one you can drive an extra thirty miles! It will also show which are toll roads and which are free. Your children might enjoy planning your trips using it.

we met some Canadians in a B&B who were attempting to navigate round France with a small scale Michelin map and their phone. I gave them the same advice, their teenage daughter was so impressed she left the breakfast table and went to LeClerc to buy one. Her mother said ‘ I think you have just saved my marriage’

Have a lovely trip.

Stayed near Bayeux in 2020 - it's lovely. There are some nice beaches near Arromanches. We visited one to the East of Arromanches where you can still see the Mulberry Harbours built for the D Day landings. Visiting the big cemetery is quite moving. The biggear war museum is the Memorial near Caen but there are many smaller museums near Arromanches. If your DD is interested in medieval history you can also visit William the Conqueror's castle in Falaise.

It was probably because we went during COVID and there was social distancing in place but we didn't get to see the Bayeux tapestry at all. You couldn't buy tickets in advance and although we went three times all tickets were sold out for the day by the time we got there. Probably fine now but worth checking or turning up early if you can.

Practical wise, webave Smarty PAYG phones which have no roaming fees if you wanted to buy a cheap SIM only phone for travelling. Also, contactless paymemts were only up to 50 euros when we went last. You need a 1 Euro coin for trolleys. Some public toilets you also need to pay for.