Hi~
We will be in London for a few days before heading to Caen and continuing our trip in France. Does anyone have recommendations on the best way to get to Caen? Someone recommended flying from Southend to Caen. Has anyone does this? There is a direct flight from SEN to CFR operated by Aer Arann Express but I have to be honest that prop planes make me nervous. That said, it looks like the easiest way to get from one place to the other. Any advice?
Thank you!
Fly to Paris take the train to Caen
I flew out of Southend one time on the way to Amsterdam.
It seemed like a long ride from central London to Southend but it says about 55 minutes.
And someone on this forum said it was crazy to go all the way to Southend to fly anywhere when I recommended it to someone else since airfare flying from there is affordable.
You would only be adding more or less 3 hours to your travel time that way and won't have to lose sleep worrying about the prop plane and on the way to Southend.
Easiest, and inexpensive if you book this several months out is Eurostar, and then Metro or walk (depending on your bag situation, either will, take about 20 minutes to Gare St. Lazare for the just under 2 hour train to Caen (actually to Bayeaux, but it stops in Caen), which runs every 2 hours.
You can plan your transfer from Gare du Nord to St-Lazare here:
Also helpful is www.parisbytrain.com
If you have time and any interest in Portsmouth, it's marvelous waterfront and it's naval and World War II history, you can overnight there from London and take the ferry the next morning to Ouistreham, the ferry port. There's a convenient bus to the Caen railroad station, about 10miles, and several car rental agencies right across the street from the railroad station. If time is an issue then Eurostar to Paris then train to Caen. Eurostar tickets go on sale 6 months prior to your travel date and get much more expensive as the travel date draws nigh so flying may be cheaper if you don't have months prior to traveling.
Thanks! It looks like the Eurostar would be a good option (we aren't going until June so we have plenty of time to book things). We will be renting a car for the remainder of our trip so we'll have to figure out if it's better to rent it in Paris or Caen. We'll be staying in Bayeux for a few days before heading further south. Thank you!
We like to fetch our rented car at Caen whether we arrive by ferry from Portsmouth or train from Paris. We use Auto Europe but there are several options. The convenience of Caen rental agencies adjacent to the railroad station and longer hours open makes it easy to return a rental car and catch one of the frequent trains back to Paris.
The flight days don't work for us so we're going to take the train (yay!). We are able to book a train from London to Paris on trainline.com but can't book the Paris to Caen train yet. Does anyone know how early we can book those tickets or a better site to book them on?
Thanks!
Heather
I like to use loco2.com for train tickets. If it's too early to buy tickets, you can have loco2 email you when the tickets are available.
