Travel Plans for Paris in September 2023 (continued)

Last Updated on June 1, 2024 by Daniel

In a previous post I gave a broad overview of our plans for a trip to France and England in September 2023. As it stands all systems are go. The issue of staying at a friend’s apartment in Paris has been resolved. The place had been previously rented by an agent and our friend was unaware of this fact. But as one door closes another one opens. Alison has another friend who will let us use her space. Since she will be out of town the week of our visit.

The other issue centered around whether or not to fly to Paris, but return to JFK via London. It sounded like a good idea at first, but we axed that idea in favor of roundtrip from JFK to London. It makes better sense cost wise.

Our trip will center on southern England with a 5 day jaunt via fast train to Paris. We will take the high speed train on Eurostar from either London Bridge or Victoria Station direct to Gare du Nord in Paris. The ride is only 2 hr 37 min. Costs can vary depending on low to high fare and if you want to go economy or get some perks.

I’m seeing fares from $130 to $250 for 2 seniors one way.

Food can be carried on board so we will take advantage of that arrangement and be satisfied with a cocktail as we whisk our way under the channel. We took our first high speed train ride from Barelona to Seville in 2012, but I’ll tell that story at a later time.

Of course all of this may change as we broaden our scope, but it helps to begin to sketch out the plan to see what it could look like. By engaging in this kind of role play we get to visualize what we may encounter and add those contingencies to our lists. such ideas as travel clothing, what to carry, does it have wi-fi… yes it does, etc.

We like thinking about ground transportation at this early stage. One reason is because it is easy seeing your feet on the ground and puts us right in the middle of our journey. From here we will build out the rest of our itinerary and begin to think about places we’ll visit between our arrival in London and the train ride to Paris. We only have 3 weeks so our storyboard will have several moving parts.

Joni is already making inquiries about airfares with a local agent who we have used several times in the past. It will be inteersting to see what she comes up with.

The year we went to Morocco we had intended to fly from JFK to Marrakesh, but our agent was able to get us a cheaper fare if we agreed to stay one night in Madrid on our return. This was a perfect solution. It allowed us to revisit a local restaurant in Madrid where we had spent my birthday in 2012. I love it when little details fill themselves in as you start to plan.

After we settle on flight arrangements, we will begin to explore where to stay in London and the other towns and villages that will make up the rest of our visit.

As it appears now, we’ll return to London and spend the last few days there wondering around before the return flight home.

Planning ahead like this let’s us have a mini vacation before we ever leave the comforts of our home. By the time we leave we’ll had covered all the essential details and be ready to move around with no stress thinking we have missed something important.

Until next time.

Be well.

If you have any travel suggestions or other comments please share them below.