GETTING FROM PARIS CDG TO TOURS

If you are trying to figure out rail options for France only, I suggest you use Rail France. See the link. http://railfrance.com/ I am looking at doing the same thing possibly next year. Paris Austerlitz and Montparnasse have trains to Tours. Some are direct and some aren't. There are trains from CDG to Tours via St Pierre Des Cor which is right next to Tours. I'm not sure about rental cars. When I looked, they were only available at the airport. I'll have to research it more but I've got plenty of time.

You're probably going about it the wrong way. A train from Paris (Montparnase) should only take an hour and a lttle bit. As far as I've ever known, that's the only station in Paris that serves Tours. The first kicker is getting to Gare Montparnasse which is in the southwest quadrant of the city. You'll have to leave the airport on the RER B line and make a change to Metro 4 westbound at the Denfert-Rochereau station. That should take right at an hour. That's the mechanics of getting to the metro side of Montparnasse - - then you have to hump your stuff over to the SNCF side through the tunnel. I don't think you can drive it in two and a half hours. My guess is it's more like three, but there's another kicker: assuming an early arrival at Roissy, you're going to hit the darn southeast quadrant of the Paris peripherique in the morning rush and anything can happen. If I had a hard schedule to keep, I'd allow four hours and pray like a bandit. The train people will have to help you with the site for the Paris-Tours run - - I don't know how.

Normand - I like to use TGV-EUROPE.COM for train travel in France. You can get to Tours from Paris for as little as 32.00 € from either Paris Austerlitz or Paris Montparnasse if you book your ticket far enough in advance. The trick to not getting bounced to RailEurope is to specify Great Britian in the Ticket collection country tab. As a side note I think the train from Paris Austerlitz is a region train and the travel time is a little over 2 hours. The train from Paris Montparnasse is a TGV and the travel time is alittle over an hour like Ed mentioned.

I am making essentially the same trip in March 2012 but starting in Brussels. The instructions about getting from CDG to the Montparnasse station is what you should follow. It will help if you have your train tickets in advance since same day cost is like anything else in the transport business - very expensive. In order to purchase your tickets for the train I would recommend using the SNCF website and do as the French do - print your tickets at home. The site is in French so you will need some basic understanding of the language. Basically you enter your departure and destination, the date you want to purchase and the number of passengers. Leave all other fields at default. There will be an option to print tickets at the end of the transaction and you get an e-mail receipt. I do this all the time and I live in Oklahoma. Tickets for the TGV, which is probably the best way at 90 minutes travel time, are available up to 90 days in advance. The sooner you purchase, the better the price. Earlier this year I went from Brussels to Avignon for about $100.00 in First Class by buying the day tickets became available. Otherwise you might use the RailEurope service which is in English but you will pay a bit more for the tickets which are shipped to you due to service fees. As for renting a car, I've arranged to get a car through a rental broker, AutoEurope, and the billing is to Europcar. Pick up is at the Saint Pierre Des Corps rail station. I've used another broker Nova Car Hire (in Ireland) and have not had any problems with either company. Good Luck and Bon Voyage!

Normand, It will require a bit of effort to get out of Paris, but this is the route I'd use. First of all, which Terminal is your flight arriving at? I'd suggest having a close look at This Website which provides a very good look at the transportation options from CDG. Note that there are two ticket offices at CDG and the TGV station is probably the appropriate one in this case. You should be able to buy your ticket to Tours there, although you may have to contend with a queue. The above website provides further details on that. Also note that the automated ticket Kiosks at CDG only accept "Chip & PIN" credit cards, as well as Euro coins. This route assumes your train to Tours departs from Gare Montparnasse. Check the This Website to see all the options. > Take the RER "B" to St.-Michel Notre Dame; walk from there to St. Michel Metro station. The RER ticket should be good until you reach Gare Montparnasse (but you can confirm that at the time you buy your tickets). > Board Metro line 4 (direction Porte d'Orleans) and travel 5 stops to Montparnasse Bienvenue; walk from there to Gare Montparnasse. Travel time from Gare Montparnasse to Tours via TGV is 1H:10M. Renting a car in Tours is also the method I'd use. A GPS along with a good Map (Michelin?) would be a good idea. Happy travels!