Hi everyone,
This forum was a HUGE help when preparing for our two week trip to France and Italy and I hope sharing a little of my experience will be useful to those of you who are traveling soon. I traveled with my mother, both of us vaxed and she had her booster shot three weeks prior to our departure. We live in different states and met at EWR to fly to Paris CDG on October 6. We flew from Paris Orly to Rome on October 10 and then traveled by train to Florence and Venice before flying to Chicago on October 20th. We transited through LHR on our return.
We had applied for and received the French health pass and downloaded the AntiCovid app before we left. We also completed the French honor form prior to departure. The best part about the French health pass was it is considered the EU Green/Health pass and we were able to use it in Italy, which meant we did not need to carry around our passports and CDC cards.
We did a COVID antigen test at a French pharmacy for 25 Euros pp before traveling to Italy because a negative test result is required for U.S. citizens. However, we were never asked to show our results. I'm guessing that's because we were flying from one EU country to another and never went through passport control in Rome. We did have to show the EU locator form that we didn't need for France, but needed for Italy, when we checked in for our flight at Orly. I handed our passports and CDC cards to the person checking us in, but I'm not sure they even cared about our vax status. At any rate, I'm still glad we had the negative result in case we needed it and to once again confirm we weren't inadvertently spreading COVID.
While in France and Italy, we needed to show our health pass to enter museums, restaurants, and on the Italo trains between Rome and Florence and Florence and Venice. We also had to show it to enter St. Mark's in Venice. Having it on our phone made it super easy to keep with us, but I noticed plenty of U.S. tourists showing their CDC cards without any problems. We did not need anything to ride the metro in Paris or any local transportation like the vaporettos in Venice. Some hotels asked to see it and others did not.
We used the supervised Abbott/Navica self-administered tests before returning to the U.S. and it went very smoothly. It wouldn't have been a problem to go to a pharmacy in Venice, but it sure was convenient to do them in the comfort of our hotel room. We were flying British Airways and I uploaded the results to the Verifly app, but I still had to show our test results and UK locator form when checking in for our flight in Venice. I did not have anything printed and just handed over my iphone, which worked fine. It helped to have everything on my phone rather than trying to pull things up on my mom's phone and mine at the same time.
Please let me know if you have any questions about our experience. It was a wonderful trip and there are NO crowds! There were fewer than 10 people in the Sistine Chapel when we were there!