Florence to “France” - a few questions | Travel on a shoestring - Lonely Planet Forum

ONLINE

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 14:12:03 +0000

I’ve already organized a months worth of travel in Greece & Italy and I am now completely stuck on the France part. There are many things I want to see and do but time and budget will be a constraint.

I know I want to spend at least 3/4 full days in Paris, including a day at versailles.

From things i’ve read I’d like to see, in no particular order...
Carcassonne
Loire area
Basque
Nice (day trip to Monaco)

I have about 11-13 days that we can spend in France but I am at a total loss of where to start organizing this part of the trip.

Our last stop before heading into France will be Florence, we will be using rail to get to the next destination. Travel dates are mid September this year.

If anyone has any recommendations of where to begin in France, how to get there from Florence etc that would be greatly appreciated.

The only ideas I’ve come up with so far is to get to Nice, spend about 3 days there then hire a car and drive up the western side of France through the countryside up to Paris. That would only give me about 4 days to drive up to Paris, would this be enough time to see Carcassonne, Loire, Basque etc?
The only problem with this is that the car hire will be quite costly as I’m 23 and would have to pay an underage fee and a one-way drop off fee also.

Would the above trip be achievable on pubic transport?

Nice isn't really a high priority so if anyone has any suggestions of where else to start that would be great :)

Thank you in advance! :)

blog

ONLINE

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:50:58 +0000

I think you're trying to do too much in too little time unfortunately.

In France the train system is pretty good (though depending on from where to where you may end up having to travel via Paris) and on the main TGV lines very fast (a little over 3hrs to get from Paris to Marseille). So I'd suggest you have a look at the SNCF website and plan a route from Nice to Paris with 2 stops in between.

Good luck.

Copy and paste the url below to share the link.

ONLINE

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:10:54 +0000

Thank you for your advice & suggestions :)

I think I just needed to hear it from someone else that it would be to many things to squeeze in such little amount of time!

Copy and paste the url below to share the link.

ONLINE

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 02:52:32 +0000

if you can get on an over night TGV train the sleeping cars are the best in europe. they even give you a sleeping bag !!!!!! taking an over night train lets you get miles in while you sleep and you dont have to pay for a place to stay that night. nice is not so close to paris, there is a lot to do in paris and you want to have at least 3 full days there . Nice is nice it is mostly a beach town and is great if you want to sit back and relax it is beautiful but its also no where near paris. Dejon france where they make the mustard is very fun to go to you can take a tour of the grey pou pon factory and it it the france that looks like the cartoon beauty and the beast, not to far from paris either

Copy and paste the url below to share the link.

Pro tip