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Rail strike, going to Paris with rental car, RER, TGV?

Posted by (Philadelphia, PA, USA) on

We are ending a trip to France with several days in Paris. The original plan was to drop off our rental car in Saint Malo and take the TGV into Gare Montparnasse. Unfortunately, the day we go to Paris is also a rail strike day. We could wait and see if the strike ends. One concern is that if the strike continues and our train is cancelled, at the last minute can we extend our Europcar rental? If we can keep the car, we could drive to a Europcar dropoff outside Paris and take the RER into the city, but we believe the RER trains are also impacted by the strike. Another option is to drive into Paris and drop the car at Europcar at Gare Montparnasse and then take a quick metro ride to our hotel near St Michel. We've briefly driven in Paris several times in the past, but we expect traffic during a rail strike will be daunting.

Realizing that none of us possess a crystal ball that can predict what will happen with the strike, we're just looking for suggestions, feedback, options, etc. Many thanks for your help.

Posted by
473 posts

We are down to ten weeks till our trip begins. I had to make the decision this week to modify our plans. We will arrive on a strike day. Instead of taking the train to Bordeaux from Paris we are now picking up our rental car at CDG and driving to the Dordogne. Spending the first night in Chartres then another night in the village of Mortemart. We are bummed about missing Bordeaux and the Bordeaux wine fest. But now we have a different adventure ahead of us.
With our luck the strike will be over by mid June.
I just didn’t want to take a chance of getting stuck with very few options.

Posted by
22 posts

We are due to travel by TGV from Gare Montparnasse to Quimper on May 5th a non-strike day. Are we safe to assume the TGV train will be running? What about getting from CDG on Mat 4th. It is a strike day. Will the trains from CDG to Paris not be running in that case.

Posted by
544 posts

Richard,
By coincidence, our trip was also supposed to start with arrival at CDG, then TGV to Bordeaux. We were originally concerned that we had a tight connection between the flight and the train, but then the strike was announced and, sure enough, we were arriving on a strike day. We changed our flights so we will arrive in Bordeaux. The flight changes cost a bit, but we received a refund on the TGV reservation.

We are driving for most of the trip. Our only remaining "train days" are the trip between St. Malo and Paris, and Paris to CDG and both are on strike days. It's an adventure, right?

Posted by
473 posts

We are returning to Paris by train and dropping our rental car there in Bordeaux. Thankfully that’s a non strike day. Now the theme is “road trip”!

Posted by
101 posts

Anita,

Well, maybe the dispute will be resolved soon, but I think you'll just have to plan on driving into Paris and dropping of the car at some suitable location. Gare Montparnasse looks like a good spot to get rid of it. I left one there a couple of years ago. Finding your way into the underground rental car return is a little confusing. I circled the block a couple of times before I saw a tiny sign (well off the street) for my rental car company.

Bruce

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