CDG TGV to Frankfurt help please?

It will take you up to an hour to clear immigration/passport control at CDG and nearly another hour to get from CDG to Gare de l'Est. The 13:09 train will be long gone before you get into Paris.

If your flight is on time, you could take the 12:54 TGV from CDG to Strasbourg, change there, change in Offenburg, and arrive in Frankfurt at 19:08. However, it would be very risky to count on doing this.

It would be a lot safer to go into Paris and take the 15:24 TGV from Gare de l'Est to Karlsruhe, change there, and arrive in Frankfurt at 19:53, only 45 minutes later than the route above.

Rail Europe's timetables are incomplete. Do what I did. Go to www.bahn.de. Click on the drop-down flag menu for English. Enter a Friday date within the next few weeks. After you get summary timetables for Aeroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle TGV to Frankfurt, click on the arrow to the left of each departure time to see the connecting points.

That 13:09 direct train is departing at Paris Est station. If you miss that one, the other direct train is at 19:05.

If you pack light and don't check-in any baggages, you will have an hour and a half to get from CDG to Est station. I think that can be done.

Here's what you need to do, this one has less walking:
1) Once you land at CDG, find the metro and take line 2 towards Nation.
2) Get off at Barbes Rochechouart station
3) Head for the line 4 train going to Porte de'Orleans
4) Get off at Gare de l'Est station
5) Exit the metro and find the train station

That's it. You only need 1 metro ticket.

Tim is right. I forgot about immigration. The answer is No, you won't make the 13:09 train. Forget my other post. :-)

Mark - First off avoid Rail Europe at cost, they are a US based company and tend to mark up their prices quite a bit. Going to TGV-Europe.com it appears there is no train from CDG to Frankfurt, looks like you will have to make a connection from Paris. I am not an expert on train travel in Europe, the best people to ask about train travel are Tim, Tom, or Lee.

Mark,

Jon's directions from CDG to Gare de l'Est are inaccurate. First, you need to take the RER B from CDG to Gare du Nord. From there you can transfer to either Metro line 4 or 5 and go one stop to Gare de l'Est. Or just walk from Gare du Nord to Gare de l'Est. You can do that in less than 10 minutes, probably faster than walking through the tunnels and waiting for the next Metro train.

Are you flying into CDG on your way to Frankfurt only because you intend to work your way back to Paris and fly home from there? If so, have you considered flying open-jaw (home-Frankfurt, Paris-home)? Open-jaw tickets can cost nearly the same as standard roundtrip tickets. Do a multi-city fare check for the airlines you wish to consider flying.

In reality it doesn't have to be Frankfurt, since our final destination will be the Rhine/Mosel area and I plan to rent a car. Therefore if anyone can think of a reasonable alternative, and hopefully the driving distance won't be too great once there. In the perfect world departing from the CDG terminal but that may be asking too much. Thanks for all the advise.

How about Koblenz? From the timetables at bahn.de: Go into Paris and take the 14:09 TGV from Gare de l'Est to Luxembourg. Change to an IC train and take it to Koblenz, arriving at 18:35.

Well, the obvious alternative is to fly to Frankfurt, not Paris.

If you have already bought your tickets and can't change them you could see if there are any cheap flights from deGaulle to Frankfurt, since you'll already be at the airpot.

Hello Mark. If you fly to the CDG airport of Paris, the best way for you to go to the Rhine river/Mossel river area in Germany is to ride in a train from Paris to Koblenz, as described by Tim. And a train ride (30 minutes, or less) from Koblenz to St. Goar would be my choice. (I was there). Your airplane flying to Paris CDG might arrive at CDG airport 20 minutes later than the scheduled arrival time, or later than that. If you are not able to get in the TGV train departing Gare de lEst at 14:09, there will be a later train departure for you. Seven trains go from Paris to Koblenz every day.
If you will travel from Koblenz to Paris, search for information about the Express train (high speed) that goes from Koblenz to Paris.