Visiting Normandy: the D-Day Beaches and Mont-Saint-Michel

Normandy has no gate and no single ticket. The landing beaches, Pointe du Hoc and the American Cemetery are free, so what you pay for is the ride, the guide and at most one museum. If you are weighing up Normandy tickets, start with where you will sleep. That decides which days you can take.

What is free, and what you pay for

The places most visitors come for cost nothing to enter. The Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer is free and needs no booking, and so does Pointe du Hoc, the clifftop the US Rangers climbed on 6 June 1944. The beaches themselves are open shore. What charges is the museums, and the abbey on Mont-Saint-Michel.

A fare carries at most one museum ticket, and many carry none. Read the card: where a listing names the museum ticket in what the fare includes, the card says "ticket". Where only the itinerary mentions the museum, the card says "stop", and you may pay at the door. The Overlord Museum and the Juno Beach Centre close for part of the winter, so check them before you book a January day.

The American Cemetery: hours, guided visits, the 2026 notice

The cemetery opens every day from 9 am to 5 pm except 25 December and 1 January, and admission ends half an hour before closing. The flag comes down an hour before closing. Free guided visits run daily until the autumn: in English at 11 am and 2 pm, in French at 11 am and 3 pm, from the Overlook, with no booking.

You cannot walk down from the cemetery to Omaha Beach. That path has been closed since 2016 for security, and the beach is reached by the public access nearby. Most tours give the cemetery 45 minutes to 2 hours, so a day that allows only half an hour will feel short.

Pointe du Hoc during the 2026-27 works

The site stays open from 9 am to 5 pm every day, but it is a building site until mid-2027. The visitor center has been shut since 9 March 2026, with a welcome point by the temporary car park instead. Since mid-May, parts of the site, paths and bunkers among them, are closed, and you reach it by the west path only.

The granite Ranger monument was lifted into storage on 17 June 2026, to be set up again on a new memorial plaza, so do not expect to see it. The ground is rough and the site is not wheelchair accessible during the works. Some Bayeux days say they will swap in the German battery at Longues-sur-Mer if the point is closed on the day, and some Paris days already stop there.

Getting there from Paris

Paris is about 170 miles from the cemetery. By rail, you go from Paris Saint-Lazare to Bayeux: the cemetery's own visitor page puts the trip at about three hours, and the Bayeux tourist office calls the town two and a half hours from Paris. That is why a day tour from Paris runs 12 to 14 hours, with two and a half to four of them on the road each way.

The alternative is to sleep in Bayeux, where the beaches start about 45 minutes away. A night there turns the same beaches into a half day, or a full day with most of it on the ground. The case for each base is set out on where to stay.

Getting round without a car

This is the part a tour replaces. The cemetery's own advice is blunt: local public transport is intermittent, and it strongly encourages you to arrange a round trip before you leave Paris or Bayeux. Taxis from Bayeux work for one or two sites, and the sites are spread along about 80 km of coast.

So if you do not drive, book the day. A minivan of eight from Bayeux covers the American sector in four to nine hours, and a coach from Paris does it in one long day with lunch.

Mont-Saint-Michel: hours and the two ticket seasons

The village on the Mont is a commune, free to walk without a ticket. The abbey at the top charges, and its price changes with the season. It is €16 from 1 April to 30 September 2026 and €13 from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, and free for under-18s with their family.

The abbey opens from 9 am to 7 pm from May to August and 9:30 am to 6 pm from September to April, with last entry an hour before closing. It closes on 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. On Sunday 4 October 2026 the abbey is closed to visitors for a festival, so avoid that date. Every Mont-Saint-Michel day listed here has the abbey ticket in its fare.

Ages and access

Age rules differ between tours, and they come from each listing. The train day takes travellers of 14 and over, and some Paris minivans take no one under 7. Most shared tours say they are not wheelchair accessible.

Expect a lot of walking on uneven ground. Pointe du Hoc is a field of craters, the beaches are sand and shingle, and the Mont has hundreds of steps up to the abbey.

Respect at the cemeteries

The American Cemetery holds 9,389 graves, and the Walls of the Missing carry 1,557 names. Treat it as the burial ground it is: keep your voice down, keep to the paths, and leave the flowers and flags where families put them. The same goes for the other war cemeteries a tour may visit, the German one at La Cambe and the Canadian one at Bény-sur-Mer among them.

The tourist office in Bayeux

The Bayeux tourist office is at Pont Saint-Jean, 14400 Bayeux; call it on +33 2 31 51 28 28. It opens daily from 9 am to 7 pm in July and August. From April to June and in September and October it opens from 9:30 am to 1 pm and 2 to 6 pm, from 10 am on Sundays and holidays. From November to March the hours are 10 am to 1 pm and 2 to 5:30 pm. It closes on 25 December and 1 January, and it does not sell the tours listed here.

Cancellations and the weather

Refund windows differ, and every card states its own. Most tours refund in full if you cancel at least 24 hours ahead, and the Mémorial de Caen tour up to 48 hours. The Normandy Sightseeing Tours days need 6 days, and the train day from Paris is non-refundable.

At Caen it rains on about one day in three across the year, and the coast is windy, so bring a waterproof and layers. How the months compare is on the best time to visit.

Asked before you go