Normandy American D-Day Beaches Full Day Tour from Bayeux
Museum entry includedPickup in BayeuxMax 8
From $165 per person
How to Visit the D-Day Landing Beaches in Normandy: What It Costs and How Long You Need
Short answer. You do not need a ticket. Every landing beach, Pointe du Hoc, the Longues-sur-Mer battery and the Normandy American Cemetery are free, and the cemetery car park is free too. What you are paying for is the eighty kilometres between the sectors and somebody who can tell you what you are looking at. Base yourself in Bayeux if you can, and give it a full day.
The one thing nobody tells you first
Search for D-Day tickets and you will find plenty of pages happy to sell you something. There is nothing to buy. The five sectors are public beaches. Pointe du Hoc is open clifftop. The American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer charges nothing to enter and nothing to park, and it is open 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, last admission 4:30 pm every day except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
So what is a guided day for? Distance. Utah in the west and Sword in the east are about eighty kilometres apart, there is no useful public transport along the coast road, and the sites do not explain themselves. That is the whole product, and knowing it makes you a better judge of which day to book. Normandy guided tours set out what each one covers.
What actually costs money
Four gates, and that is the list. Everything else on the coast is open ground.
| What | Adult admission | Worth it? |
|---|---|---|
| Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey | €16 summer, €13 winter | Yes, and it is a separate day — 130 km from Bayeux |
| Monet’s house and gardens, Giverny | €13 | Yes, but it is in the Seine valley, not on the coast |
| Utah Beach Landing Museum | €10 | Yes, if your day reaches Utah — it sits on the dunes |
| Musée du Débarquement, Arromanches | €12.90 | Yes for the Mulberry harbour story, audio guide included |
| Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy, Bayeux | €8.50 | Yes, especially now the tapestry museum is shut |
| Mémorial de Caen | from €20.80 | Only with a second day — it is a half-day museum |
The full opening hours for all of these sit on visiting Normandy, with the source beside each figure.
Useful tip Check what is open before you drive to it. Arromanches closes for three weeks in January, Bayeux’s museums for a fortnight, and Giverny for the whole winter. The month-by-month page lists every closure against the month it falls in.
Where the sectors are, and why that decides your day
Think of the coast as a line. Utah is at the western end, then Omaha, then Gold at Arromanches, then Juno, then Sword closest to Caen. Most visitors want the American sector, which is Utah and Omaha with Pointe du Hoc and the cemetery between them. That alone is a full day from Bayeux.
| From → to | Distance | Journey time |
|---|---|---|
| Bayeux to Omaha Beach | 20 km | about 25 minutes |
| Bayeux to Pointe du Hoc | 35 km | about 40 minutes |
| Bayeux to Sainte-Mère-Église | 45 km | about 50 minutes |
| Utah Beach to Sword Beach | about 80 km | about 1 hour 30 minutes |
| Bayeux to Caen | 30 km | about 30 minutes |
| Bayeux to Mont-Saint-Michel | 130 km | about 1 hour 45 minutes |
Two rows do the damage. Bayeux to Mont-Saint-Michel at 130 kilometres is why the abbey is its own day, and Paris to Bayeux at 260 kilometres is why the day trips from the capital run twelve hours and more. The map page lays the whole thing out.
Getting there
- By train: Paris Saint-Lazare to Bayeux takes a little over two hours, and Bayeux station is a short walk from the centre.
- By road: the A13 from Paris, about two hours forty-five each way in good traffic.
- By ferry: Portsmouth to Ouistreham puts you on Sword sector with your own car; Cherbourg is the other crossing.
- By ship: Le Havre takes cruise calls and is an hour and three quarters from Omaha. Getting there has the detail.
How long you need
One full day covers the American sector properly: Omaha, Pointe du Hoc, the cemetery, and either Utah or Sainte-Mère-Église. A half day covers three of those at a slower pace, which suits anyone arriving in the afternoon. Two days lets you add the British and Canadian sectors around Arromanches. Three days brings the abbey in.
Where to stay
Bayeux, if the beaches are why you came. It is twenty minutes from Omaha, it survived the war intact, and most guided days gather in one square there. Caen is a city with a bigger museum and is fifty minutes out. Paris is possible and costs you five and a half hours of the day.
Did you know? Bayeux was among the first towns liberated after the landings and was barely damaged, which is why its medieval centre is still standing while Caen and Le Havre had to be rebuilt. The history page covers the campaign that followed the beaches.
A shape for the day that works
Almost every good day on this coast runs west, and there is a reason. The American cemetery opens at nine and fills from about ten, so a guide who takes you there first gives you the one hour when it is quiet. From there the road runs down to Omaha, on to Pointe du Hoc, and then either further west to Utah or inland to Sainte-Mère-Église, with the drive between each stop long enough to hear the next piece of the story.
Run it the other way and you arrive at the cemetery in the middle of the afternoon with four coaches already parked. It costs nothing and changes everything, which is why it is worth asking about the running order when you book rather than after.
What to bring
A windproof layer in any month. The beaches face open water and travellers write about being colder than they expected far more often in April and May than in December, when they came prepared. Shoes you can walk wet grass and shingle in. And time — the American cemetery is the stop people wish they had given another half hour.
Which day to book
If you have one full day and no car, take a nine-hour departure from Bayeux. If you have an afternoon, take the half day. If you are in Paris and cannot move, take the long day and accept the hours. If you are arriving by ship, take the excursion that leaves from the terminal, because it is the only one built around your all-aboard time. Each card prints the hours, the cap and the refund window.
Two last things worth settling before you pay. Check the group cap: they run from six to fifteen across these departures, and on an exposed clifftop in the wind the difference between eight people and fifteen is whether you can hear the guide at all. And check the refund window, because most of these refund in full at twenty-four hours’ notice and two of them do not — one wants six days and one cannot be changed at all.
Normandy Excursions prints both figures on every card, alongside what each fare covers. If you are coming from the capital rather than staying on the coast, the from-Paris page narrows it to the four departures that come and collect you.
The beaches are free. Pick the day that handles the eighty kilometres between them.Most departures refund in full; each card states its own window.
See the departuresDays that fit a first visit to the coast
Normandy Beaches Half-Day Afternoon Trip from Bayeux (A2)
Hotel pickupMax 8Air-conditioned minibus
From $109 per person