Transportation

NEAR OCEAN CITY, MARYLAND USA!_____)

We are making our first trip to France to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. Through timeshare we were able to find a hotel in Mallemort. We prefer not to rent a car. We need to get to Mallemort from Marseille. We also cannot visit France without taking a few days to see Paris. We were told that train travel was excellent in France. Can we use trains to travel to these places or must we rent a car?

We are flying into London in late March for a couple of days and then going onto Paris for 10 days. I wanted to find out if there are any special packages or plans that I should consider for Rail travel. I have never taking the train from London to Paris and want to share the experience with my wife and children but also want to take advantage of any packages that would be useful when in France to see some of the other cities via rail for adventures. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Hello,

Is Paris generally the least expensive city in France to fly into coming from the U.S.? I imagine it recieves the greatest volume of international flights. What are some other French cities with major international airports?
The reason I ask is that I will be traveling to France in June but I don't have a preference as to which city I arrive in. So far I've only looked at flights into Paris, just wondering if any other city offers competitive rates.

Thanks!

Hi! My husband and I are planning on visiting Caen and the Normandy beaches before our trip continues to Belgium. We are planning to travel by train from Caen to Brussels. We will be arriving from Caen at the Paris St. Lazare station and leaving for Brussels from Paris Nord. I'm wondering how long we should allow for the transfer between these two stations. Would 50 minutes be enough, or would 1 or 2 hours be better? The Die Bahn rail site lists 50 minutes for the transfer but I'm wondering if that would be enough, for two people who may be a little slow at figuring out where we should be as we have never traveled in France. Please let me know what you think. Thank you all for your help!

Tish

For our upcoming trip to Europe, we're planning a "drive-by" visit to Paris. We'll take the crack-of-dawn train from London to Paris (which arrives about 9am), and plan to take the night train to Munich (which leaves at about 10pm).

Obviously, we don't want to drag our luggage around with us. And while I'd like to assume that there are places to check it (two people's worth surely wouldn't fit in a locker?), it would be very inconvenient to be wrong.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a map of Gare du Nord or Gare du Est... and, as I don't speak French, I'm not sure that I'd recognize "left luggage booth" or "baggage check" if I had one.

Can anybody help?