CDG -> London via Eurostar

The risks are that your flight arrives late, and/or there are long lines at Passport Control, an/or there is a wait for luggage at the carousel before you can even get to the train or RER station. So it is prudent to add extra time. Especially if that train ticket is expensive and there's a risk of having to buy a new ticket at "day of" prices

If it was me, I wouldn't try for anything earlier than the 13:02 train. Especially since you need to be at the GdN Eurostar check in about 90 min before departure. If you arrive early, then get yourself food for a picnic once on board.

Thank you very much for the information.

In fact, you have to complete three immigration / emigration processes if arriving CDG from the States (or Canada) and departing Paris via Eurostar.

1) arrival at CDG : immigration into France
2) departure from Gare du Nord:
First, emigration from France, with French authorities
Second, immigration to UK, immediately after clearing the French authorities ' booth

Eurostar has emigration and immigration bothhandled at the departure end so when you arrive at your destination you don't have to worry about it, and can simply walk off the train and into the city (or onto the Tube or Metro or into a cab or whatever).

Oops, almost forgot to remind you that you will also need to have an ETA for each member of your party to enter the UK.

Does flying to Paris really cost enough less, versus flying directly to London, to cover the costs of all your ground transportation between CDG and London?

And the hassle

Actually the point is not to fly in to CDG solely to go to London. We will be traveling through Paris/London/Scotland on a short trip and the first stop is London. We are flying into and back from Paris.

To the point raised, if you have not bought tickets, You could fly into London and out of Paris, or even Into Scotland (Edinburgh?) and out of Paris, usually for not much more than round tri[p.

I might be wrong, but I bet the poster knows that you can fly directly to the airports responders are suggesting

As for the usually not much more part? I recently flew in and out of London instead of other destinations because it saved me over $1500 a ticket but I guess for some of you that’s “not much more”. But for me It was it was enough to backtrack on my vacation.

Maybe before we start telling people they are doing it wrong we should assume that they have done some research

Had you considered multi-city ( aka open jaw) tickets so you were not having to take the train twice between London and Paris? Or is the plan to fly from Scotland back to Paris?

London-Scotland & Paris begs for a multi city flight itinerary, vs a round trip from Paris.

If the air tickets are already 'carved in stone', then hope for an on time arrival and as already noted, choose a train that leaves after 1PM (1300). Is where you are coming from susceptible to summer storm delays?

We did a similar trip in September thru October in 2023. Flew out of Newark to Edinburgh then eventually train to London a week later Eurostar to Paris and home from CDG to Newark. Multi city airfare was not expensive.. It was a super easy trip and we don't feel we wasted any vacation time traveling between places. If you already bought tickets it might be too expensive to change it maybe worth a call to airline. Good luck.