Parking in France

If you’re looking for an ordinary MSA North of Paris I’d suggest the one near Ressons-sur-Matz. It’s open 24h, free like all MSA’s, is reasonably large and is in my opinion a lot more pleasant than Vémars southbound, which is however much nearer Paris.

The northbound side at Vémars has been rebuilt recently and is, again in my opinion, very very much better than the southbound but it fills up early.

If you end up parking north of Paris I’d recommend timing your start the following morning so that you are transiting the city no later than about 7am; even so it will be busy. Watch out for scooters and motorbikes weaving at high speed through slow moving traffic, if anything it’s worse than London. When I drive around the boulevard périphérique I personally try to stay in the second lane, in order to keep clear of merging traffic from the right, and only change lanes when and if absolutely necessary.