Looking for BTDT on 8 hour layover in Paris in early July; exploring the city before your connecting flight?
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Anonymous
No need to Uber, the RER C is much faster and goes directly between the two. It's 10 minutes on the train and a 5 minute walk on each side. |
Anonymous
| No way I'd plan to leave the airport. Too stressful. Shop at the airport, nap in one of those Yotel Air pods |
Anonymous
|
OP, I think you made the right call to not risk it.
Many years ago, I took the train to CDG from central Paris and it took roughly 2 hours, and even though I was well ahead of the 3 hour suggested time for check in, I was still bumped from my flight despite getting to the counter with 2.5 hours until departure time. Granted, this was prior to online check in and I did have a bag to check, but it was still half a day lost. It did turn into a fun story, though. It was a Sunday late afternoon/early evening flight and a bunch of people (20?25?) were bumped. We all lined up in the Air France rebooking line and an American living in Paris was first in line (married to a Frenchman and spoke perfect French) and announced to all of us what our rights were: Travel Voucher to be used within a year OR $500 Euros in cash. She STRONGLY encouraged all of us to take the latter, and they still had to book us all home, feed us and put us up overnight. Wow, the daggers those Air France employees were staring at her with.... The hotel was somewhat of a party. We all drank, ate and had a fun night. I woke up early and enjoyed an extra day in Paris, returning to CDG and eventually returning home just one day later than scheduled. I did have to email my boss, letting her know I'd be late back to work, but "C'est la vie," she said. What really could be done? |
Anonymous
| Go to Versailles and rent golf carts and tear about the grounds. It’s a beautiful place and if you slip Henri or Jean Claude a fiver, you might get one of the carts that has had the speed governor removed. You can drift on the pebble covered pathways in those buggers. So much fun. |
Anonymous
Do not do this. Versailles is even farther from CDG than Paris. If you have kids with you, Disneyland Paris is less than a 15 minute train ride from CDG. |
Anonymous
| It took us 90 minutes to get through customs at CDG on March 12. |
Anonymous
That is good to know. What that going in or out of the airport? |
Anonymous
| I do not understand trying to squeeze a mini vacation into a tight layover. Customs at international airports can be monstrously long - it could easily eat up 6 hours of your time just leaving the airport and getting to Notre Dame and standing in line for your timed entry (which will still have a long line) and then getting back and standing in line for hours. Then you’re cutting it close for no reason. |
Anonymous
Enjoy Poland, it is great! 
It sounds like you already booked your flights but I wonder if a way to do it with an overnight in Paris would have been to book the roundtrip ticket as US-Poland (Warsaw?) and then from CDG-US. And a one way ticket on Wizzair from Poland (again, assuming Warsaw here) to Paris Orly. |
Anonymous
| No way you can make anything work. |