How to Get Around France

Everything radiates from Paris

France's rail network was built as spokes into one hub and still works that way. The TGV makes that hub arrangement brilliant if your trip passes through Paris -- Paris to Lyon in under two hours, Marseille or Bordeaux in around three, usually faster door-to-door than flying -- and awkward if it does not, because two provincial cities can be quicker to reach via the capital than directly. Establishing early whether your route is radial or lateral decides whether this is a train trip or a car trip.

Trains

TGV fares behave like airline fares: cheapest booked well ahead, expensive on the day, and reservation is compulsory rather than optional. The slower TER network reaches almost everywhere else, needs no reservation and costs much less. For rural France -- the Dordogne, the Luberon, inland Brittany, the Massif Central -- the train gets you to a market town and no further.

Driving, and the sticker

Roads are excellent and the autoroutes are tolled, which adds up over a long drive. The rule that catches visitors is environmental rather than financial: all vehicles driving in central Paris, Lyon and Grenoble must display a pollution sticker from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday. A car hired in France normally carries one; a car driven in from another country very often does not, and the penalty arrives by post. Order or confirm it before the trip, not at the zone boundary.

Identity

France expects you to be able to prove who you are. The requirement is that you can provide documents when asked, or produce them within four hours at a police station -- so a passport left in a hotel safe is workable, and no identification at all is not.

Cities

Paris has one of the densest metro networks anywhere and a carnet or day pass is worth buying on arrival. Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille and Toulouse all have trams or metros; Bordeaux and Nice in particular have rebuilt their centres around trams, which makes them unusually easy to visit without a car.

Get the Crit'Air sticker before you need it

All vehicles driving in central Paris, Lyon and Grenoble must display a pollution sticker from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday. Cars hired within France generally have one already; a vehicle brought in from another country generally does not, and because enforcement is by camera the consequence is a fine posted weeks later rather than a conversation at the boundary. It is ordered in advance, so this belongs on the pre-trip list, not the packing list.

The four-hour identity rule

You must be able to prove your identity by providing documents when asked, or within four hours at a police station. That is more forgiving than a carry-at-all-times rule and stricter than nothing: leaving a passport in the hotel is fine, provided you can get to it.

Reservations are compulsory on the fast trains

A TGV ticket is for one named departure and the reservation is not optional -- there is no turning up for the next one. The TER network is the opposite: no reservation, cheap, frequent enough, and slow. A trip that mixes the two should be booked in that order, fast legs first while the cheap fares exist.

Lateral journeys are the trap

Bordeaux to Lyon, Nantes to Strasbourg, Toulouse to Nice: these look short on a map and are not, because the network was not built for them. Check the actual routing before assuming a cross-country leg is a train journey. Often the answer is a domestic flight, or accepting Paris as a waypoint.