This morning we checked United Airlines and found a great deal on flights from EWR to CDG using air miles (30,000 per person each way instead of the crazy 70,000 they’ve been offering) so we jumped on it and booked a 2 ½ week trip from May 29 to June 15. The problem we’re finding is that NONE of our favorite hotels in Paris have any vacancies for this time frame. We’ve always wanted to go to Provence so now we’re thinking of taking the TGV from CDG straight to Avignon and spending most of our time there. We don’t know much about the area just yet but we do know that we’d like to see St. Remy, Aix, Arles and Pont du Gard. Any ideas on how to figure out where to stay? Should we just stay in Avignon the whole time and take train/bus trips? Is it too late to rent a car? We’ve never driven in France. Does anyone have any experience with airbnbs in Avignon and are they reliable? Should we just stay in a hotel to be safe? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Posted by
San Diego, California
5604 posts
Almost daily folks are reporting here how hard finding reasonable lodging in Europe is this season. There's significant pent-up demand from travelers who haven't crossed the pond since 2019.
I think you need to book cancelable lodging asap, and let that guide your itinerary. Once you have a few places definitely booked, then you modify the itinerary.
Do a Search here , then review the threads under the France section.
Good luck!
Posted by
Idaho, USA
7803 posts
We stayed in Avignon at the Hotel de L’Horloge at Place de L'Horloge, 1 Rue Félicien David, 84000 Avignon. It was a wonderful location and walking distance from the local train & bus station.
I can’t find my trip report of that one, but I remember we took a half day minivan tour of the Luberon villages that included the lavender field and processing facility. We also took a train over to Nimes and a bus over to Pont du Gard.
Posted by
OP
San Francisco, CA, USA
278 posts
Yes, the room rates in Paris have definitely gone up considerably and it's a relief to find more reasonable rates in the Avignon area. Based on great info on this forum, I went ahead and used Booking.com to make refundable reservations at Hotel de L'Horloge in Avignon for the first 3 nights then 6 nights at Hotel du Soleil in St Remy. That leaves us with 5 nights to stay somewhere else before we head to Paris for 3 nights before our flight back to NYC. I'll continue to do more research. Thanks for your help.