I would like to take a roadtrip around Northern France plus some Belgium next spring, and the only flights using miles I can find so far appear to be in May. Doing some research, it looks like there are a ton of holidays in May:
- WWII Victory Day (Fête de la Victoire) - May 8th (goes through the weekend)
- Ascension Day - May 14th
- Pentecost (Pentecôte) - May 24th
- Whit Monday (Lundi de Pentecôte) - May 25th
- Plus, the May 68 strikes? Something about protests and strikes being popular in France in May?
Some rudimentary research tells me that hotels/restaurants/stores will close or close early around these times in the smaller towns. I'll be there for about four weeks, and the plan is to spend a few days in Paris, then rent a car and head out of town, stopping at soon to be decided small towns each evening to book a hotel, sleep, spend some time exploring the next day, then head out again.
The issue: Being that I won't have pre-booked hotels and might be coming into town later in the evenings sometimes, I'm worried that these holidays might make a bigger difference when I'm in some random part of the French countryside. Those who live in or have traveled in France in May, am I being too cautious, or is May a bad time to travel France without many reservations?
To get an idea of the route, I created this Google map.