Thursday, April 12, 2012

Travel from Gray to Athens?via Geneva or other

We are leaving a canal boat in Gray, France, at 9am and hoping to get to Athens the same day. We would welcome local advice on our best/cheapest optio please.




|||



What date? What day of the week? (It matters both for train and plane timetables.) Will you be returning to France? (Also important in terms of cost-effective options.)



I%26#39;m thinking at this point that you might have to take a taxi from Gray to Dijon which will probably be expensive. (It%26#39;s about 50 km.) You might contact the canal boat company and ask them what they would suggest for this part of your trip. I%26#39;m not sure there are any good public transport options for this part of your trip.



It will *probably* be quicker and easier to travel via Paris than Geneva, but the info I have asked you for might change that.




|||



It will be a Friday, not until September, the 21st. Thanks for your help.




|||



Forgot to say we will not be returning to France.




|||



I%26#39;m afraid I don%26#39;t have any good news for you. I%26#39;ve wrangled this every way I can and I%26#39;m not coming up with a good way to get you to Athens on the same day. Either the cost is through the roof or the routing is problematic.



First off I can%26#39;t find a good way to get you from Gray to Dijon, but let%26#39;s assume you can finesse that part with the help of the boat rental people. Perhaps someone else has some ideas. So...



Let%26#39;s assume you can get to Dijon by 10:00. The problem that immediately arises is that I can find no train leaving Dijon for Paris between 09:32 and 11:38. It will take you about 2.5 hours *minimum* to get from Dijon to Orly (or CDG) and you will need at least 90 minutes to find your check-in desk and check in for your flight. That means you are looking for a flight leaving Paris for Athens some time after 16:00.



EasyJet is showing ONE flight on 9/21 departing Orly (ORY) at 06:10 arriving ATH at 10:35. (The following day their one flight departs ORY at 07:30 and arrives ATH at 11:55.) I can find NO other direct flights with budget airlines from Paris or ANY other airport you could reasonably try to reach from Dijon and I think I have searched them all. I%26#39;ve even looked for routings through Frankfurt, Munich and other major airports with no success.



Even flying EasyJet from CDG to London Luton (LTN) and from there to Athens won%26#39;t work and the connection in Luton is uncomfortably tight. Just FYI even if you booked this routing I *suspect* EasyJet would regard these as two separate flights so that, if your CDG-LTN flight were to be late you would forfeit your LTN-ATH booking. Not too sure about this though...



Finally one way fares on any of the major airilnes (Air France or Olympic non-stop, others with a connection) will be *horrendously* expensive. Try checking on airfrance.fr but be prepared for some serious sticker shock.



The best I can think of is that you make your way to Paris at your leisure and take the next morning%26#39;s EasyJet flight from ORY. If you stay in central Paris you would need to leave your hotel about 05:30.



You can use www.voyages-sncf.com to check for train connections from Dijon to Paris and other places.



whichbudget.com is a useful resource for tracking down flights on low cost carriers as is www.low-cost-airline-guide.com



Otherwise:



www.easyjet.com



www.airfrance.fr



Sorry I can%26#39;t come up with a better solution. Perhaps somebody else has some ideas?



Good luck!




|||



Thanks Irish Rover. i think we are convinced to take an extra day.




|||



-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.

Removed on: 7:17 pm, August 26, 2009

No comments:

Post a Comment