My wife and I are arriving in Paris on Sunday. We are renting a car and driving to Normandy. Can someone tell me how long we should expect for it to take to get through customs at Charles de Gaulle?
Posted by
Tacoma, WA, USA
113 posts
Last year at this time, it only took us about 60-90 minutes between de-planing & getting to the taxi stand. If you are trying to plan timings, estimate 2 hours just in case, but it will probably be less.
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
Customs: Zero time. Actually about 30 seconds to walk through the "nothing to declare" door after picking up your luggage. Customs is a random check only, 99.9% of travellers are not stopped.
Immigration (passport checks): This depends what your last airport was. If your flight is from another airport in the Schengen Area, immigration would have been done there, so no immigration in Paris. If you are flying direct from outside the Schengen Area, immigration could be ½ hour to 1½ hours.
Then there is everything else, de-planing, walking through corridors, finding the car rental desk. This could be 30+ minutes. And transatlantic flights can be late.
The answer is the total time until you get to the car hire desk could be anything from 30 minutes to over 2 hours, depending on the above circumstances.
Posted by
Washington DC
28096 posts
If you're arriving after an overnight flight, are you sure you'll be safe to drive? I'm so sleep-deprived and jetlagged on arrival day, I can barely remain vertical. How about hopping a train to Rouen or Caen and picking up the car the next morning? Bayeux might even work if the pick-up day wouldn't be a Sunday and you don't need an automatic.
Posted by
Seattle, WA, USA ☔️
6792 posts
Good advice above - especially about arriving exhausted then jumping in a car and immediately driving off in a foreign country, where things are just a bit different from what you're used to.