Time for a bit of information about my planning for France. As I mentioned before I am attempting something more ambitious this time. The trip to Sweden was planned with only the hotel in Stockholm and it worked out well enough but I was pretty certain most of my day trips were single shot items and that did turn out to be the case. In France I am expecting to need to be in certain regions outside of Paris for more than just an individual day. Plus I also think it will be an interesting excercise in testing my organizational skills on a higher level. Up until this point I have managed to pull off all of my side trips and have been happy with the results so I feel confident that this experiment will succeed, nonetheless I am looking forward to the challenge.
I booked all the hotels through hotels.com again. I have an odd reason for doing this I suppose but I should mention it. When I booked for Stockholm the site charged the room up front. While I was surprised by the occurrence at the time, it did turn out to make planning the funding for the trip easier as I was already paid in advance so the money in my accounts was actually accurate to what I had available to spend. Sure I could have just accounted that money out anyway, but it just felt that little bit easier.
I am not very scientific on choosing my hotels but I do put a few considerations in place. One is the location of the hotel, of course. I look for something relatively central to the city in question. Second would obviously be price. I do not go for high end hotels because I do not really expect to do more than sleep, clean up and store things there. I could find better hotels for more money but I want clean and serviceable more than anything. Lastly, is its general appeal based on the profiles at the website (obviously I want something that doesn't appear to be too run down and I want a private bath).
Paris is a large city so central is somewhat abstract. In this case I chose close to a major train station, Gare du Nord. The hotels.com link is here for the Hotel Nord et Champagne. I will be staying there for the first 3 nights and the last 2 nights of my trip. While I am in Paris I will hit all the major attractions but I am also planning a day trip by tour hopefully to Provins. If I cannot find an easy tour I will get there by train and see it on my own. Provins is a medieval city and well within my basic interest. This time around the various medieval reproduction stuff should be in full force in May and not over like in Sweden in October. It looks interesting to me so I am willing to risk the loss of a day in Paris. Obviously I will be visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees (I'm not going to link any of the obvious places as it isn't hard to find them on the web yourself, and I am not sure if I want to hit the Louvre, but maybe).
From Paris I will be turning my attention to Amiens for a couple nights. I will be staying at Ibis Amiens Centre Cathedrale which is the one hotel on the trip that isn't prepaid. Amiens has a famous cathedral of course and I will visit that but the main reason for the stay here is to visit the Somme Battlefields. Again I am hoping to find an easy tour out of the hotel but if things get tougher I will plan the logistics myself by train and what else I need. I am a World War I buff and have read a lot about it so this is a major point of interest for my visit to France. I suspect the battlefields will take an entire day. I understand I'm not going to see trenches and all that but I figure even getting an idea of the area will be something interesting to me. I am sure there are museums and the like to visit as well. The Somme is part of the Picardy Region.
I am going to stay in Picardy after Amien and move further south towards Compiegne where I will stay at Campanile Compiegne. The main attraction near this city is Pierrefonds Castle which is a castle that was actually ordered taken apart by Louis XIV but then rebuilt at a later date. It looks too impressive to skip on and even though it is really a quasi-modern rebuild, I am pretty sure I will enjoy it. I suppose it looks sort of Disneyesque. It will be an easy hop from the hotel to the castle by bus I think. Aside from that I will look for anything else rather WWI in nature to visit in the region.
From Picardy I will be taking a long haul on the train to Normandy where I of course will be trying to see the WWII Normandy invasion museums as well as Mont Saint Michel which looks far too incredible not to visit. While in Normandy I will stay in the city of Caen at Hotel Kyriad Caen Memorial for a couple of days. Those are the major two items to visit and I will see what else I can fit in. The train ride from Compiegne to Caen will be the longest of this trip but there was no easy way to fit this in short of stopping in Paris again then heading back to Paris at the end. I am sure I can deal with it. It was 4 hours to Kungalv for Bohus Fortress and then I had to go back on the same day and I handled that fine.
Lastly back to my starter hotel where I will finish out the trip in Paris and of course on to Charles De Gaulle Airport where I will be taking Aer Lingus back home again.
As with my other trips I will be doing a fair amount of train travel. The site for information on the trains in France is located here. I am doing a lot of train travel this time so I bought a couple extra days more than I did for Stockholm. It made it more expensive but still within reasonable budget. It should save a lot of hassle too.
For the sake of mention, most of my research started from the France Guide site.
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