Portugal and Paris in September - need help with travel

Three of us (in our 50s) are traveling for a week in PAris (hotel or rental TBD) and Porto, Portugal (stay at friends home).

I am trying to work out the best travel arrangements. I found direct - NYC (we are in CT) to Paris via Air India for about $600/each. Sound sgood to me - multi city trips are around $1200 each. I see flights form PAris to Porto RT for around $200. Is this my best bet?

We are looking for realtively hassle free as we are not as young as we used to be - but still relatively reasonable.

Train seems like a long and indriect run. The car trip is 15 hours and we already decided that was WAY too diffiuclt to manage

Any ideas?

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Plane is your best bet, but check baggage allowances - if you use the low cost airlines these tend to be frugal!!

Check out www.skyscanners.net for cheap flights - it searches the airlines for you.

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I would check the trains, because from Porto to Hendaya, where you can catch the TGV to Paris, is not that far, and I think it would be less than 200 dollars.

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I think you are wise to rule out driving. If you had a lot of time I might think differently but unless you can spend at least 5 or 6 days on the trip so that you get something out of it other than a lot of driving...

The train will take ~19-20 hours and involves multiple connections. Again not much fun IMO.

That leaves you either doing as you suggest, flying RT to Paris and RT from Paris to Porto OR flying to Paris, flying one way to Porto and flying home from Porto (or possibly Lisbon). An %26quot;open jaw%26quot; ticket, i.e. NYC to CDG and OPO (or LIS) to NYC, should not cost any more than a RT ticket to CDG with just about any airline other than Air India or Icelandair.

The *cheapest* (but not necessarily best) way to fly between Paris and Porto would probably be Ryanair, but be aware that Ryanair has very tight baggage limits and that they fly from Beauvais rather thn CDG or Orly. OTOH a one way fare of ~41€ including taxes is not to be sniffed at...

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