Best way to travel between Heathrow and Paris
 

We have a flight scheduled to Heathrow arriving at 8 AM. We have changed our plans since booking the trip and have now decided to go to Paris for a few days before heading out to tour England and Ireland. We're trying to decide if it would be easier to fly to Paris having to change terminals at Heathrow and re-check bags and then get into Paris from CDG or maneuver through London to St. Pancras and take Eurostar to Gare du Nord. We know that we will probably be exhausted as it will be around 3 AM on our bodies and we are in our 60's. Although we would like to see the countryside from the train, we figure we may just end up falling asleep and miss everything anyway. We plan on returning to London on the train when we are more rested. Price is pretty comparable so that's not an issue. Which would be easier and less stressful for us to accomplish?

Since you will be AT LHR it will be easier to fly on to Paris. The transfer in to St Pancras is either long on the tube . . . or expensive and long via the Heathrow Express to Paddington and then cab/bus/or tube to St Pancras.

Which airline(s)? Even though it will be on separate tickets, your originating airline <i>might</i> check your bags all the way through to CDG. (I've had AA and UA do it and BA refuse)

If your tickets are not award tickets or similar, I would also look at the third option of changing your flight ticket to bypass LHR altogether and fly directly into Paris instead. Yes, you get hit with the change fee plus the difference between your presumably round trip LHR ticket vs. open jaw into CDG out of LHR and start over with new seat assignments. While this can be a most expensive option, it is the least stressful.

If your new LHR-CDG flight does not connect with your LHR arrival flight, you need to build in many hours of safety margin between flights to account for luggage retrieval and delay with your arrival flight ... and be stressed if can make it to your flight to Paris.

>>If your new LHR-CDG flight does not connect with your LHR arrival flight, you need to build in many hours of safety margin between flights to account for luggage retrieval and delay with your arrival flight …<<

Same w/ the Eurostar - miss your train/lose out.

Changing the flights and eating the change fees would be the simplest . . . if possible.

Eurostar means having to haul your luggage over half of London, it increases the time needed to make the "connection", it increases the risk of something going wrong.

Done correctly you could be in a street cafe in Paris before you even left London

Among then millions of reasons why flying this is an absolute no-brainer is the fact that the views are better.

The nature of this railway (and the sheer awfulness of the landscapes of NW France) means there is no countryside visible from a high speed train to miss. The pretty patchwork of hedged English fields looks far nicer from the air than the concrete walls you see from a train forging through them along brutally engineered culverts at 200 mph.

When you get back to England, get a real English train through pretty countryside. Don't delude yourself it's as horrid as the view from a Eurostar.