Travel from Paris, France to Leon, Spain
 

What is the best way to travel from Paris, France to Leon, Spain? My daughter is going to Univ of Leon in Feb. for a semester - so we will have a lot of luggage.

Probably by flying to a nearby airport - check out www.whichbudget.com for discount airlines serving any two airports or www.skyscanner.net - and www.easyjet.com or www.ryanair.com - even flying to Madrid would put you then in a 4-5 hour train ride, perhaps less, to Leon

otherwise by train it is a long haul - i'd say 20 hours or so - you could take the overnight train from Paris to Venta da Banos (sp?) or Valladolid and change there for Leon. For train schedules all over Europe i always go to www.bahn.de and just put in Paris to Leon and a date and you will get all the information for day or night connections - it may be hard to get there in one day perhaps - anyway a good way to access the Wunderbar IMO bahn.de site is to go to the home page of www.budgeteuropetravel.com and click on the link there "Best European Railway Timetable" or some such wording and it brings you to the English schedule page of the bahn.de site - i mention this home page link because they give you several valuable tips on how to fully use the bahn.de that are not apparent at first glance - like finding out where you change trains, how much time between trains, etc. www.seat61.com can give you lots of info on the overnight Talgo trains that go direct from Paris to Valladolid and perhaps Venta da Banos - where you change can only be certain from going to the bahn.de site's English schedule page. You could try www.renfe.es - the Spanish Railway site but it generally sucks if the many frustrations of Fodorites are to be believed.

But i would look into flying if you can get a good fare - and actually the train could cost a ton as well though you may be able to score good discounts from the French Railways site for the overnight train - www.voyages-sncf.com - a limited number of discount fares are available but should be booked when the come on the system - 90 days in advance i believe - and they are non-changeable, non-refundable so be sure of your travel plans. If traveling more than this by rail in France and Spain then check out the France-Spain Eurialpass.

Thanks - I'll check out the sites you suggested.

"A lot of luggage" is often a strong argument against low-cost airlines. If you find a suitable connection, pls check their costs for excess baggage carefully.

Leon has an airport and flights between PMI (Palma) Barcelona , Madrid and Gran Canaria plus Ibiza.