Trains, Planes and well… a bus
We will be leaving home and flying Delta through Atlanta and then Paris. Once in Paris we will take the train from Gare Montparnasse to Bayonne and then another train to St Jean Pied de Port. Our original plan was to try and do this all in one stretch – that is, fly to Paris (leave Sunday arrive Monday 8AM), quickly get to the Paris train station, get to St. Jean Pied de Port around 4PM (Monday evening), rest for a day to get rid of jet lag and then start walking on Wednesday. This all seemed great and then I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that’s just crazy. Bloggers all seemed to agree a 4 hour landing to train departure is really cutting it close in normal times and maybe not possible in Covid times. So we changed our plane tickets which we think is going to be a lot better.
We are now planning to leave on Saturday afternoon and arrive in Paris Sunday afternoon (1PM). Our train to St. Jean Pied de Port is still the same on Monday. For those of you that travel you might know there are a couple of philosophies here – arrive in the morning and burn the day fighting the jet lag while feeling miserable or arrive in the afternoon, have a nice dinner, adult beverages, sleep well and erase the jet lag. We like the afternoon arrival time (adult beverages plan). So Sunday afternoon after arrival will be like this – Paris hotel check-in, clean up, walk through the Latin Quarter, across the Seine River, then dinner, wake up and get a croissant somewhere and then get on that train!
(Post-Camino update) – Staying in Paris for the first night was a really good choice. We would have never made it all in one day to go from the Paris airport to the downtown train station – No-WAY. As it was the transportation train from the airport to downtown was shutdown and they put everyone on buses from the airport to downtown. All those Paris evening plans – none of that happened, too tired.
We picked Delta, after lot’s of choices, because they had the best plane type – huh? (and price was good, and arrival times were good, and their web site costs were somewhat easy to understand – paying for a seat selection-really?). Janice and I are not going to fly business class or better to get privacy. But, on certain airplanes, 767’s some A330’s there is seating where it is a 2-4-2 configuration. We don’t care about the seat spacing if it just the two of us with no middle stranger or someone trying to crawl across to go to the bathroom. Well.. Delta had the best plane selection and arrival times for that weird thinking.
Train from Paris to Bayonne and then St. Jean Pied de Port? Some people fly to Bayonne but we aren’t really in a hurry so the train offered us some time to relax, get over any remaining jet lag and actually see part of France we haven’t seen before. In the movie, “The Way”, Martin Sheen arrives by train. Unfortunately now the train stops about 10 miles from St Jean Pied de Port and you get the rest of the way via bus!
(Post-Camino update) – It was a nice day getting from Paris to St Jean Pied de Port – but it took all day. Do your homework on trains, tracks etc. because it there is a lot of activity and jet lag is still hanging on – we could have easily missed the connecting train in Bayonne if a nice stranger hadn’t helped us. Also, get a to-go lunch for the train from Paris. Staying a rest day in St Jean worked out well as it gave us time to visit the Camino office and become accilimated some more.
Coming home through Barcelona was also thought out. There are numerous choices to depart for home but the two main ways that got us to California at a decent hour were from Madrid or Barcelona. We picked Barcelona because we are going to use a travel day anyway from Santiago de Compostela and getting to Barcelona on the “AVE” high speed train sounds cool. We will get to see more of Spain and once in Barcelona we will see La Segrada Familia which is kind of a must see if you have traveled that far.
(Post-Camino update) – Leaving Santiago de Compostela to go by train to Barcelona sounded great but it was a long day. If you choose to do this get an upgraded seat and make sure it is not a shared opposing seat view. Barcelona is a fantastic city – get the subway multi day pass. Coming into Barcelona and when leaving for the airport in Barcelona – take a taxi! The metro to the airport is a longggg ride. Also, do your research on where to stay. 3+ stars or 9+ rating on booking.com is required and our “boutique” hotel was kind of poor choice. Be near the metro, be near multiple attractions, study the reviews and street view the place before booking – don’t stay near the airport it’s a long way from everything.
Travel forms, vaccine passes, oh my! (This information is probably obsolete now in 2024 – do your own research)
So… getting comfortable being uncomfortable might be the best guiding principle. A couple of months ago getting a negative covid test 48 hours before departure was a requirement to get into France – which had us all concerned how we would get results back in time to board the plane. Now there is no covid test requirement – just a vaccine requirement which of course we have! We scheduled the covid test anyway so I guess we will just get the test and have it for our record.
A long time ago, actually two months ago, we thought our CDC vaccine card was the E-Ticket, to showing everyone we are covid safe – as of this writing this is not correct. We have to stop at a pharmacy in Paris (at the airport we hope) and get our “vaccine pass” – and pay the pharmacy 72 euros. Then we discovered/stumbled upon this form a couple of weeks ago and filled it out. Then Delta airlines just sent us this form so we filled it out. We also still need to complete the French and Spain travel app!
Coming home… we still have to figure out what tests, forms or hoops we need to go through to get back to our country but at this point we don’t care. We have 500 miles to walk and maybe that’s enough to keep us busy! But we do have global entry so let’s see if that works in May.