🌍From Paris to Mont Saint Michel: tours, cars and trains

How to go from Paris to Mont Saint Michel

If you are in the beautiful French capital and want to have a unique experience, moving from Paris and reaching Mont Saint Michel is the perfect choice to spend a day in full contact with nature. There are several ways to enjoy this paradise, first of all choosing a tour that I recommend in the first paragraph.

With a day tour from Paris (even several days)

Mont Saint Michel can be reached in many ways, but in this case more than ever it is essential to point out the role of organized tours. From a naturalistic point of view, this is a problematic geographical area due to the sum of the effects of the sea and the Couesnon river. For this reason, it is highly recommended be accompanied by experienced people and, above all, that they know the place.

CLICK HERE to find out the prices and, if you want, buy the guided tour to Mont Saint Michel from Paris.

Going with a guide is the best choice. Many venture to discover the beautiful Mont Saint Michel without knowing how the tides work and how frequent the problem of quicksand is. Going from Paris to Mont Saint Michel with trained guides is highly recommended.

Il better way to visit this fascinating place it is therefore necessary to participate in group travel which last a few days. You can decide to take mini tours from Paris to Mont Saint Michel with a day round trip, starting from the French capital. The choice can fall on packages that include the overall route and the visit to the abbey, or on solutions with a guide in the mother tongue or, again, with an overnight stay in a restaurant.

You may also be interested in the SKIP-THE-LINE TICKET to access the abbey.

If you have more time, you might want to opt for a guided tour that includes other parts of Normandy and reaches Saint Malo or to the beautiful castles of the Loire .

Go to Mont Saint Michel by train from Paris

For obvious reasons, there is no train station on Mont Saint Michel. Those who prefer to use the train from Paris can arrive in some nearby Normandy towns, such as Pontorson. Alternatively, you can reach Brittany, Rennes or Dol De Bretagne (for which, often, the change is foreseen in Rennes). Both are also served by high-speed lines departing from Paris.

The reference station for the TGV network in the French capital is Gare Montparnasse, reachable by Metro 4 from Gare de L'Est and by Metro 12 from Paris Saint Lazare. Once you arrive in Normandy or Brittany, just take a bus towards Mont Saint Michel or, alternatively, a taxi. In this case, however, the journey becomes much more expensive.

While not the best in comfort, the French railway network offers many daily trips. However, you have to be careful about the return times. If you don't want to risk missing the last trains of the day and find yourself without knowing where to stay for the night.

That's why I prefer the organized tours option I mentioned in the first point. Or, another great alternative is to go from Paris to Mont Saint Michel by car, even better if you put this stage in a ontheroad itinerary in Normandy.

By car from Paris along an ontheroad route

Although it is no longer possible to leave the cars at the foot of the island, the car is still an excellent solution, but you have to park much earlier, in the spaces in front of the shuttle bus stop and extra-urban coaches. For how and where to park, I refer you to this excerpt of one of my articles ->

In the event that you arrive in France by plane and want to favor this solution (which, however, is not among the best), it is good BOOK your car rental HERE .
Why is it not possible to park near Mont Saint Michel?

We must think that, due to the sudden increase in water flow, leaving cars in low-altitude areas has always been a big risk, especially if, due to some unforeseen event, it happens to stay on the island for too long. The difference between the levels of high and low tide it can reach up to almost 15m. Since the footbridge has been active, the parking lots downstream of the island have been abandoned, in order to eliminate the problem at its root.

So, from a certain point on, it's preferable reach Mont Saint Michel on foot, with a shuttle bus or by booking a carriage ride, for a romantic trip.
From Paris airport to the center and then Saint Michel

Regardless of the means chosen by which to move, from Paris to Mont Saint Michel they want us four to five hours of travel. But how to get to the center of the capital from the airports, for join an organized tour?
Those who do not intend to stay in the city should consider the stop in Rue de Pyramides, in the Louvre area, as a reference for departures to Saint Michel. To get there, there is both the metro and the RER, a railway network of regional express trains that completes the underground service on the railway.
From Charles De Gaulle Airport, it is preferable to follow the standard high frequency path. Just take the RER B in the direction of Saint Remy les Chevreuse station and stop, about forty minutes later, at Chatelet-Les Halles. From here you have to take the Metro 14 coming from the Saint Lazare station, to arrive at the Pyramides destination after about two minutes from the climb.

From Orly Airportinstead, you have to go to stop number 4 heading south and get on the Orlyval bus, stopping at the Antony terminus. From here you must wait for the RER B towards Charles De Gaulle train station and continue in the same way as indicated for the main airport.