Charles de Gaulle Questions
 

I have a 36 hour layover in Paris en-route to South Africa. It will be my first trip to Paris, arriving on Bastille Day and leaving the next day so I'm concerned about traffic at the airport. Does anyone have any experience with Charles de Gaulle on July 14th? And on my return through Paris I only have two hours to make my connecting flight to JFK--is this enough time? Both flights are on Air France but in different locations so I have to get from 2F to 2C and I've read horror stories about getting around the aiport. Is that distance walkable (realistically) or will I need to take a shuttle? Any advice/suggestions would be much appreciated!!

ttt

Traffic at CDG is no problem on the 14th of July. It is mostly domestic traffic that is concerned by this, and the great majority of domestic flights are at Orly.

Hi

My wife and I went to Paris in April this year. If you need some info you might want to check out the trip report with pictures and links that I have posted on my homepage http://gardkarlsen.com/Paris_France.htm :-) Where in South Africa are you going by the way :-)

Charles de Gaulle is not a great airport in my opinion but there are lots of people there to help you out if you get "lost". Ask for the way and I'm sure you will be fine. Have a great trip.

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

We have just returned from a holiday in Europe which got off to a disasterous start. We flew from Johannesburg on Air France to CDG but was only given 50mins to make our connecting flight to Lisbon. I queried this with Air France but was assured as we would not need to go through immigration, the time was sufficient. Well we did have to go through immigration which was chaotic and guess what, we missed our connecting flight! We were booked onto the next flight which was 2 hours late. Never again will I trust anything under 1+1/2 hours connecting time. I informed Air France about this problem...oh well!

Air France is well known for their too short connection times. Some people try and make it, some don't make it. I always arrange to have two hours. But with two hours, which is what you say you have, it should be no problem. It is very walkable to go from 2F to 2C, but the shuttle is pretty painless also.

Hi S,

Two hours is sufficient for you to make your connection, usually.

((I))

Thanks for the info everyone!

My final destination is Grahamstown, South Africa via Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth. And then the same in reverse order for the trip home. So I'm going to be spending lots of time in airports!

Johannesburg airport is a typical international airport, large, busy and often frantic. Port Elizabeth on the other hand is small, uncluttered and stressless. I like it.