Help, When does Daylight Savings end in Paris???
 

I have my activities scheduled around the fact that daylight savings time changes over the last weekend in October in Paris. Something I just read said it is the weekend before. Can anyone tell me the correct date. Thanks, Deborah

DST ends on Sunday, October 31, 2004 at 3:00 AM local time

Hi DA,

Do try entering (daylight savings time paris 2004) at www.google.com.

HI DeborahAnn--as far as I know they do not have DST in Paris. It already stays light there until way past 10:00pm at the time of the solstice--June 21--and so I don't think they have any daylight they need to "save". I may be wrong, but I think that DST was an American invention and does not exist any where else in the world.

the last posting is not correct

In Europe I think it is called
'summer time' (?)--as opposed to 'summertime' the season.

a website reference and chart

http://www.worldtimezone.com/daylight.htm

Thanks, St.Cirq, I really panicked because I had planned my trip to spend most of my days in Paris before the time change and I was reading a Paris Walks website which had a note about changing the clocks on the 24th. Getting the right information on Fodors was my first thought in my panic, thanks for coming through. And yes Ira, once I had calmed down I went to my files and found www.timeanddate.com and was able to get a confirmation. But the info came quicker on Fodors!!!Thanks again, Deborah

Genrally all over Western Europe (there may be exceptions I forget, like UK?), the summer time (l'heure d'été) returns to the normal time as :

3 am of Sunday 30 October suddenly becomes 2 am.

So I will change my watches and alarms before going to bed.

> 3 am of Sunday 30 October

is of course 31 October.

>...once I had calmed down I went to my files and found www.timeanddate.com and was able to get a confirmation. <

Good for you.

>But the info came quicker on Fodors!!!

That's because we never can bring ourselves to say, "Look it up yourself". :)

I for one am glad that the question was asked and that some folks engaged in discussion about it without simply saying, "Look it up yourself". By reading this thread I learned about a useful web site and I learned a fact about Paris which I would not have thought to ask about myself.

Deborah, not sure where you are travelling from, but we found that even with the "winter time" the days were longer in Paris than in Connecticut in November. In CT at the end of November it is totally dark by 5pm. In Paris it was twilight until 6:30 pm or so. It was the opposite in the morning (waking up 7-8am it was almost totally dark in Paris).

Great,thanks to your responses I just realized I will have one extra hour in France, what a bonus. It would be a delight if it does stay lighter longer outside in the evening. I was expecting it to be similar to our evenings in Maryland. Light in the evening is very welcome since I will be on my own.

Ira, I thought my question was one which someone would already know the answer without having to look it up. If a person has a very general question maybe then they should be told to look something up and given suggestions. Aren't we posting to help those with travel questions? And remember, I panicked, I saw myself wandering the streets of Paris all alone and in the dark and so turned to those I knew could help me. Google isn't nearly as compassionate. ;;) Deborah

Hi Deborah,

>I was expecting it to be similar to our evenings in Maryland.<

DC is at the same latitude as Lisbon.

Paris is at the latitude of Montreal.
Sunset will be about 6:40 PM, in Baltimore it will be about 6:15.

Be assured tho, it doesn't matter.
Everyone struggles out to work even in the morning's darkness...and I believe I found the city really well lit when kids and their parents are walking home from school or the metro or whatever at dark (I swear it was dark by 6 p.m....I must be wrong huh?)

1. All of Europe - Eadt and West - changes at the same time, whichever time zone they're in. For this purpose, kappa, Britain's in Europe

2. The reason it gets dark late in Paris is that it's really in the wrong time zone. Paris is more or less on the same latitude as Greenwich. For political reasons, though,France prefers to be in the Central European time zone, along with the rest of Continental Western Europe. This means its official time is an hour later than the time God intended, or two hours later during Summer Time. French official time is essentially the natural time in Berlin.

As in so many things for the past 150 years, France prefers to go against its interest and kow-tow to Germany rather than follow common sense and do as the Brits do.

Without commenting on European politics, I'll point out that Spain and Portugal are also on Central European time and are even further west than France (except for a small slice of Spain).

Mr Flanneruk, I do think UK is a part of Europe. I was pretty sure (95%) UK changes time (summer-winter) at the same time as the continent. But do you remember (was it 15 or 10 years ago?), the continent used to return to the winter time at the end of September while UK was doing it already at the end of October as today? My memory is a bit unclear about this but still I'm rather poitive of this.

Summer time ends on the same date as daylight savings times in the fall. But in the spring, summer time starts a week earlier.

Keith

Kappa:

You're absolutely right. The UK (and therefore Ireland) did wait an extra month before putting our clocks back.

From memory, they started doing it our way 10 or so years ago. There used to be an infuriating four weeks when faxes and emails (we got tecchy early) had to be reprogrammed to remind everyone that the British Isles and the Western Continent shared the same time for four weeks only.