abbydog

I'm planning a visit to Marseille and then taking a train to Bordeaux. With short flights within France now discouraged or even about to be cancelled (see today's Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/europe-trains-planes-lower-emissions/), I'm wondering if instead of flying into Marseilles and out of Bordeaux I should instead fly into Paris, take a train to Marseille, and then take another train from Bordeaux back to Paris to fly home. It sounds a little logistically daunting. Do you know if this is a reasonable plan?

StuDudley

Totally reasonable. Unless you fly business class, trains are more comfortable. We hate multi-leg flights to France. Prior to about 2010, we often flew to Toulouse, Bordeaux, & Nice on 2 legs from SFO. We hated spending that much time in airports and the trip back home was a loooooong day.

Now we fly to Paris, overnight in Paris, and then take a train to our destination and a train back - with an overnight in Paris on the way back. Bonus is that Marseilles departs from the Gare de Lyon & we love dining at Train Bleu at the Gare. We've really enjoyed our 1 nighters in Paris. This year on the way over, we did a 3 nighter in Paris & stayed on the Rue des Martyrs.

Just before Covid we flew into CDG, overnighted near the Montparnasse station, took the TGV to Vannes and back to Paris on the TGV from Quimper. We also took the train back from St Malo on another Brittany trip. We just returned from a train to Strasbourg from Paris, and return to the Gare de Lyon from Dijon. Next year a train from Paris to Valence, and back to Paris from Montpellier. Also next year is a train to Marseilles and back from Avignon.

And you can see more pretty French countryside from the train than you can from an airplane.

All of these train trips were first class. Get your tickets early & it's not much more than 2nd class.

Stu Dudley

abbydog

Mr. Dudley, you are a treasure! (I've been following your posts on Provence for about 20 years!) Thanks for the great info! Spending a night in Paris is intriguing. ... Do you do that because of the risk of missing a connection? It looks like you can hop on and off trains at CDG, but my great fear is that the plane or train will be delayed and I'll get stuck.

bilboburgler

Easy peasy. You may want to buy a picnic for the train but the French train system is far superior to their flight system.

StuDudley

""Do you do that because of the risk of missing a connection? It looks like you can hop on and off trains at CDG, but my great fear is that the plane or train will be delayed and I'll get stuck.""

Yep - in my experience, trains depart and arrive on time more often than airplanes do.

For the Gare de Lyon, there is a Novotel in almost the same complex as the Gare. You can see it while leaving the train platforms. We've stayed there twice and at the Terminus across the street about 4 times. The Novotel is better. This year we stayed in Paris 3 nights before departing for Strasbourg, & 2 nights before flying home. Part of this was a "caution" based on our experience in Paris at Christmas when the Covid "rules" were changed twice while we were there.

Stu Dudley

abbydog

Hmm. Spending a night in Paris seems to tip the scales a bit in terms of cost. I wonder if there's a way to book a train within a few hours of landing with the ability to reschedule if the plane is late?

StuDudley

On our planned trip to Strasbourg in 2019 that was cancelled due to my FILs stroke, I double booked train reservations. I had one booked for 2 1/2 hrs after landing and another one booked 5 hr after landing. I booked early & the cost was around $50 that was "wasted". This same trip was subsequently cancelled twice by Covid. We went this year in Sept, and I ended up staying in Paris 3 nights before taking the train to Strasbourg.

Currently, there are three departures from CDG to Marseilles after 13:58. Price them out (departing 3 months from today - which is tomorrow in Paris now). I would not want to scurry around and stand in line (fractured French?) and try to reschedule at CDG for a major late landing situation. Too much stress.

Stu Dudley

kerouac

If you book a "flight" directly through CDG to the Marseille Saint Charles train station (code XRF), you will be fully protected from any flight delay.

StuDudley

What is "fully protected"? I guess it will cost you nothing, but if trains to Marseille are full for the next few days, will they "bump" others to let you on? The 2 trains we took this past Sept were "packed" in our car. There were no open seats.

Stu Dudley

KayF

We had four weeks in France, using mostly trains, and found this website to be full of excellent info - https://www.seat61.com/

If you book TGV trains ahead of time, it is much cheaper. I did write a trip report, it was just prior to covid I think. If you click on my name you should find it and I wrote a bit about the different trains and tickets as initially I found it quite confusing. (There is not much long distance train travel where we live - Australia).

kerouac

If necessary, the airline that booked you to XRF would transfer you to Gare de Lyon in Paris where there are trains to Marseille about every hour.

abbydog

Wow! So many options. I have read online about being rescheduled if you miss a train due to a train or bus delay, so I'll look into rescheduling due to a flight delay when the flight and train are booked together. Seems like if France is discouraging short flights they should be figuring out how to help people seamlessly connect flights with trains. (HA!! Judging by how much they care about people missing connecting flights, I'm a little skeptical!!)

aliced

Count us in for "train rather than plane" too -- so relaxing, your luggage goes in the car with you, and you see the countryside. Seats more comfortable. We were to return to States via plane from Nice-Zurich with only a 50-minute connection time in Zurich -- forget that! We TGV'd back directly to CDG thru Aix, spent the night at the fun Citizen M before departing from CDG the next morning. No regrets. CDG was nonstop to EWR, but a failed water pump on our 777 took additional three hours for repair -- yes, they allowed us to depart the plane beforehand, but it was still a very long day flying back west. And, we each got a Senior Carte Avantage, so return to Nice-CDG was $153 pp, forget what that flight would've been. And, lots of those small plane flights limit baggage size too -- no thanks.

bilboburgler

given what flights do to the planet, why is this even a discussion?

abbydog

I agree that the train is the way to go, but the question is how to do it. So far I've found that both Delta and Air France supposedly offer a plane + rail package, but I still haven't been able to figure out where on their websites you can book it.

stokebailey

Amen, brother.

abbydog

Eureka! I just found the little train icon on Air France's booking page. Hooray!

aggiegirl

Last time I was in France, I landed at CDG and took a train from there to Rennes. It was easy. I did pick a train with a four hour buffer so I just chilled out while waiting.

Southam

My preferred route is a multi-city ticket: Fly into Marseille (probably with a change in a European gateway after the trans-Atlantic flight, included in the ticket). To return, train to Paris for a visit, then west to North America on the same air ticket. The combination ticket will be around the same price as a simple round trip plus the cost of one train. It also saves substantial time. The home flight from Paris will leave at a more civilized time in the morning than from Marseille.

Questions of "green" travel get complicated. Yes, the French train is less polluting than jet fuel. But the train's electricity depends on atomic generation. Comfortable with that?

kerouac

Well, people who are not comfortable with nuclear energy in France should not set foot in the country at all, since nuclear energy is the principal power source. A train from Marseille to Paris has a carbon footprint of 1.7kg compared to 85kg for a flight (and 149.6kg for an automobile). Does not seem complicated to me at all..