Paris to Monaco day trip

You won't have time for much else , why on earth don't you spend one night in Nice at least !?!
You have a minimum of three hours you will spend in airport , 1.5 hours ahead of each flight . Then there's getting to airport in Paris .5 hour , then from Nice to Monaco , one hour .

Stay in Nice after race and enjoy an evening there , you won't have to rush back to Nice after race you can poke around Monaco for a few hours , then enjoy the next day in Nice taking a flight home later in day .

Peggy,

While that trip may be feasible, that's an absurd Itinerary. Even with an early flight from Paris, travel each way will take 4-5 hours or more when all is considered - travel from central Paris to Orly, check-in, security, waiting, boarding and de-planing and travel from the airport in Nice to Monaco (and that doesn't include any delays or unexpected events). And then you have to do the same thing in the reverse direction.

A better solution (IMHO) would be to travel via high speed TGV from Paris to Nice the day prior to the Grand Prix, attend the race and then take the train back the following day. That would mean two nights in Nice, but is a far easier and more practical solution.

Your choice of course......

Peggy, I don't know if you have tickets for just the race or the race weekend which begins on Thursday. Saturday is qualifying and the race is held on Sunday. Realize that the area will be flooded with 100,000 or more race fans and local transportation will be overwhelmed. Unless you are spending an evening in the area, it's doubtful that you'll be able to enjoy any sightseeing. If you do spend a night, stay on Sunday as much of the crowd will start to dissipate right after the race is concluded.

My congratulations on cadging tickets to the best Grand Prix in the world (except of course any that others prefer), but your plan doesn't convince me. Only the TGVs between Monaco and Nice have seat reservations, there are now virtually none of those and people will still ram on any for the short trip, Monaco will be very very crowded and walking back to the station will take a very long time. The usual double decker PACA trains will probably be supplemented by old single decker commuter trains from Marseille.

I am very jealous because Monaco and the Côte d'Azur, one of my favourite parts of that part of the world, and the F1 Monaco because I haven't been able to be there live yet, but I'm afraid that trying to do that as a day trip from Paris is likely to be either unsuccessful or very frustrating.

One plan might be to book a helicopter from Nice airport to the Monaco - Fontvieille heliport. Check out http://www.heliairmonaco.com/en/index.html and then walk.

For more specific advice, it would be extremely helpful to know what grandstand or hotel you have tickets for. Although Monaco is fairly compact it is also extremely three dimensional and knowledge of the appropriate lifts (elevators), people movers, escalators and station entrances and exits will help you no end.

By the way, the odds of a safety car at Monaco are high, so you should be prepared for a lete finish.

Perhaps by May the teams will have worked out how to deal with the fat tyres.

Great feedback! We have grandstand K for Saturday. We would like to do this in one day. We are flying not taking the train (TGV?) But will take the express train from Nice airport to Monaco. We may consider staying Saturday night, but are leaving to fly back Sunday am from Paris....We are trying to sneak this once in a lifetime opportunity in!

If you have a transatlantic flight out of Paris on Sunday, I think you need to spend Saturday night in or near Paris. Too much can go wrong if you're trying to travel from southern France to Paris on the day of your flight. If you're unlucky, you'll find yourself buying costly new tickets back home.

Can you check your dates?

Friday is free practice, Saturday is Qualifying and Sunday May 28 is the race.

Are you going for qualifying and then back without seeing the race?

Grandstand K is between the Swimming Pool and Tabac Corner, closest exit from the station will be down the hill to St Devote or the underground passage which comes out at St Devote and then cross the track twice.

We have tickets for qualifying on Saturday - sorry if I misspoke! I read that the domestic flights in France out of Orly and Nice, you need to check in 30 minutes before the flight.

Cheap airlines close their check ins about 40 minutes before a flight.

Nigel, free practice is on Thursday. Only in Monaco!

It will still be crowded on Saturday, but much much less than on Sunday. Flying in and flying out should work, although you still will have very limited time for anything wlse.

What time are your flights?

There is no direct train from the Nice airport. The two ways to get to the train. You can take a number 99 special bus to Nice Ville main railway station and then there are frequent trains (watch out for missing ones at lunch time and late morning) to Monaco and onwards to Italy.

Or you can walk to the Gare Nice St Augustin station outside the airport, past the group of hotels and crossing a very major road (my faint memory is that you go under the road and then along it to the station). The airport and SNCF say it is a 10 minute walk but I would at least double that. St Augustin station is unmanned and only local commuter trains stop there, also calling at Nice Ville and all local stations to Italy. There are new schedules out and it worth checking them. The westernmost third of the train line, west and north of Cannes has been taken out of service for the year so I don't know what that will do to schedules.

Nice airport is one quite long arc of departure gates and my most recent Easyjet experience there was checking in at the "A" gates but at the last minute having to run on very short notice to the changed gate in section "C" - that wasn't much fun.

If you use Easyjet they have an excellent app for buying tickets and checking in, and doing everything to do with the flight, including a QR boarding pass which you can put in your iPhone wallet.

Thanks everyone for all this great information! We are comparing our day to Monaco like flying from NYC to Boston for the day - long, but worth it! Flights are 640a from Orly and then 730 pm from Nice. I will look into the logistics from Nice airport to the train station. The fun is seeing and hearing the cars since I am going with super car buffs!

That should work.

Don't forget to validate your train tickets, unless you are using day passes.

@Philip, is the usual Third Free Practice on Saturday morning as extra fun for Peggy? I haven't got my head around all the 2017 rule changes yet.

In front of the Nice Ville station, between the airport bus stop and the main entrance doors is a fairly large Paul bakery with a large seating area, perfect for a snack on the way to or from the station.

I wouldn't to be arriving at either airport with less than 90 minutes, YMMV.

@Nigel - so far no notice of any change in schedule for FP3 so Peggy and company should be able to view it. I'm jealous. But I will be in Montreal for the next race in June - disappointing without Jensen but Lewis should win!

Not Jacques V?

Wrong hair color this year. Perhaps Lance Stroll?

We going to fly to Nice/Monaco on Saturday and stay overnight in NIce, fly back on Sunday to Paris to catch our flight back to NYC. Thanks for your great advice!

What time is your flight back to the US on Sunday?

I think that flying from Nice that morning is a very risky plan. What is your back up if your flight is delayed and you miss your flight home?

Hi Peggy, it might be worth the money to change your return flight to leave from Nice rather than Paris. The end of your trip itinerary looks just too hectic to me. Whatever you decide, hope it all works out!

Saturday quali will be quieter than race day, but the town is still taken over by the race and it is very difficult to get around. Leave yourself lots of fudge time.