Weighing the feasibility of planning a trip in June to France. June is the only option due to D2 graduating in May unless we do it very late May/early June. Have family in Marseille and nearby cities so no lodging is necessary (yeah!) - they will spoil us rotten!
Disclosure: not a travel guru. What may be common knowledge to you about traveling is NOT common knowledge to me!!!
Being honest, to make this happen I need to do it as cheaply as possible. Two sets of cousins from France visited us late summer/fall and both found fares in the $600-$700 range - don’t know how they did it! I was hoping to find something under $1000 - impossible??? We would likely depart from Detroit or Windsor (early searches show Windsor to be cheaper for some reason). Considered flying to Paris and then taking the train to Marseille but that doesn’t seem to be less $$$ so I think will make sense to just fly into Marseille.
What tips can you offer me??? A better website to search for international flights??? A better/cheaper route???
You all were SOO helpful a couple years ago planning a trip to Oregon - hoping to gather some advice from you all on this one!
If we commit to a flight at some point, I’ll be back with travel tips as well for the south of France.
My daughter is living in Denmark and has discovered that airfare costs less when traveling from Europe to the us. We will never be able to get those low fares.
However, start searching for airfares now. If your dates are flexible, compare prices. I’ve been told two months out is when you can get the best price. But my husband and I will be visiting our daughter the end of March. I started looking at prices in the early fall, and then forgot to keep checking. While she was home over the holidays, we confirmed the dates and I went online to check airfares. By some miracle the dates we wanted were now over $300 less than the cheapest I found in the fall. They were even slightly cheaper than the great price my daughter found to fly home for the holidays. We decided not to gamble and bought them. By the way, they were nonstop.
Sometimes Icelandic offers cheaper rates if you fly through Iceland. I’ve never found them to be cheap enough to put up with the hassle.
I use kayak to search for airfares, and then go to the airlines website and buy directly from them.
“I use kayak to search for airfares, and then go to the airlines website and buy directly from them.”
Good advice. I always use cheapfares.com to search them out, then go to the airline website. A new and interesting one is skiplagged.com, but I don’t know that I’d recommend someone who isn’t a frequent flyer use that. It’s a little tricky, they might show you the cheapest fare is to another destination, that goes through your destination, and you get off where you like (but better not check your bags)!
I’d always buy from the airline, that way if something gets messed up, they are fully responsible. Very important that they take ownership of it, not the intermediary.
For travel to France, I have always had the best luck checking directly with the Air France web portal. Of course a lot depends on your point of departure.
What a great time to travel, warmish, and school is still in session, so things are not too crowded. My guess would be to play with a variety of dates and destinations. My girls adore Marseille. Their favorite city in France.
I recommend kayak.com but then buy through the airline website.
I would recommend avoiding a connection through Heathrow if at all possible, it’s a horrible place to connect through, takes a good 2 hours at minimum.
Thought: could you fly to Bordeaux and train to Marseille? Just trying to see if there is another southern France city that might work. You might want to play around with that. You might also want to play around to see what discount airlines fly into Marseille and see if you can get a cheap flight to that city and then take a puddle jumper to Marseille.
I think you will have an easier time finding a cheap fare into a large airport like Paris CDG than a smaller one like Marseille. You will have to factor in cost of the train, but spending a few days in Paris might be a nice addition to your trip.
I like Skyscanner and Kayak for searching for flights. Air Canada has been offering some very low fares to Europe, which is likely why you are finding cheaper flights out of Windsor. For example, I plugged in dates for two weeks 5/26 - 6/9 into Skyscanner and found $775 Windsor to Paris on Air Canada and $1050 into Marseilles.
To get the best deal on flights, have flexible dates and hopefully the ability to fly midweek. Check your dates regularly and if you find something that you like, book and don’t look back.
A CC friend who travels a lot turned me onto the ITA Matrix software website: http://matrix.itasoftware.com.
This is the same software used by the major airlines. You can check a 30-day range of dates for the lowest fare. However, you cannot book flights through this website like you can through Kayak, Travelocity, or Expedia. Once you find a fare, write down the flight # & go to the airline’s website or call the airline directly. There is an advantage to dealing directly with the airline rather than a 2nd party consolidator such as Kayak, Travelocity, or Expedia.
I recommend traveling directly to Marseille. You’ll fly into Paris - probably CDG - & transfer to Marseille, but ultimately it will take less time & be less expensive than tacking on a 4-hr fast train to Marseille.
Another airfare tip: check for airfares on Tuesdays after 3:00pm. That is when the airlines change over their inventory & list their sales. Travel on Tue-Wed-Thu will always be less expensive than Fri-Mon.
Do not despair. Within a few weeks, you will see some hybrid charters/commercial airlines advertising summer fares. The trick will be to rely on cheaper hubs such as Dublin and Brussels or even Barcelona. Flying from Toronto to France might be a solid bet. Check RyanAir.
I also think that having a departure before June 1st will keep your fare lower. As far as direct flights, Nice is also convenient. Bordeaux is on the Atlantic coast and some distance away. Remember that trains do not cross Paris and that changing stations is a PITA and so is CDG going South. I also doubt that CDG is a better choice for cheaper fares.
Google it to death! And learn the codes such as Yyz and MRS.
Try this. I don’t know what airlines are big out of Detroit or Windsor (NW? Air Canada?) but play around with diff cities in Europe and see what Western European city you could fly to directly. Then investigate a puddle jumper or train.
Thanks so much for all the replies so far. I have an obsessively organized 17 year old D (this trip is also her request in lieu of a HS graduation party) and she is keeping a notebook with websites, suggestions, etc. - reading these aloud to “the chief” (her!) to investigate as well!
Also have a text into other D who may go with us to see if she could do a little earlier trip - late May to early June (taking advantage of Memorial weekend off of work for us) - thought that may help with fares as well. Either way, travel likely to be within period of late May to the weekend of July 4.
Fwiw, if you plan to travel outside Marseille and you have a party of more than one, you might look into a long term car rental. The rates are often competitive, and especially if you have the Amex primary coverage. Automakers even have programs that will “sell” you a brand new car and “buy” it back at a different location. That works better for parties of 3 to 4. Check with US companies first and apply the best discounts. Then Google same rentals from the UK shops. The rates can be as low as 10 dollars per day.
The extended area around Marseille is fabulous and probably better than the city itself. Being able to venture around is priceless. Of course, you might not need a car with local relatives.
We flew to France in June of 2013. For various reasons, we wanted to fly in and out of the south of France. We had to fly into CDG, then transfer to Orly for the flight south. This is normally not terribly difficult, as there is a bus, but the bus drivers went on strike when we were actually sitting on the bus in the airport, so we had to find another way. A combo of train and Metro worked. Luckily, we left plenty of time between flights. We were using skymiles to fly, so that determined our route, which involved a stop in the US also. (In the never a dull moment category, air traffic controllers went on strike the day we returned, and our return flight to Orly was cancelled. Some wonderful Air France personnel at Montpelier stayed an hour late at the airport and managed, after much finagling, to book us on a different flight that would enable us to get to CDG in time!)
It is also possible to rent a car quite cheaply, and cheaper to drive from Montpelier to Lyons to Zurich to Salzburg to Vienna to Trieste to Verona to Nice than to take the trains or fly. When H gets home I’ll ask him who we did it through. (NOT one of the big US names.)
It all depends how much you will need the car when you arrive at your destination, how many side trips you want to take, whether there is someone available to drive you and whether you want to be dependent on them, etc.
I suggest reading what Rick Steeves has to say about travelling without a lot of stuff. Be aware that for flights inside Europe the carry-on size is smaller that the US, for example. If you are realy unable to get everything you need in a carry-on, I suggest that each of you have a carry-on in which you carry your essential clothing and other items, and that you check one communal bag. Be prepared for that communal bag to not reach you until serveral days into your trip.
BTW, you can buy French sim cards from Orange. Just make sure that your phone is not picking up texts and calls after you leave the US: taking the sim card out on the plane is a good idea. People have been blind-sided by huge bills even though they didn’t answer their phones.
Our goal would be to do carry on only. I know I can get away with that and my girls will have to manage to do so also! My brother and his family took this same trip (but from NYC) summer 13 and as you said, didn’t see their luggage for days…
The other “complication” in our plan is that part of the reason for going is to take my 81 year old mother on the trip so she can see her family. She is in decent health but she is 81 and any trip is going to take a toll on her somewhat. I know she is going to be anxious by anything that is too difficult (too many flight stops for instance) - she has traveled there a few times but the last was probably at least 20 years ago. The advantage to having her is that she speaks fluent French and can save us that way!!! She will probably NOT go with us much on day trips - she just wants to see family, maybe the beach/sea and relax.
My brother also suggested the car rental - I’ll figure that out if we get to that point and the trip looks like a “go”. Nicely we have family in a few French spots - Marseille, Cassis, Grenoble.
You might try to time your trip to coincide with the annual music festivals that take place in the summer throughout Provence. They are wonderful – free or low-priced concerts or theater performances in churches, ancient ruins or other historical sites in the beautiful towns. They may be at the end of June/ early July.
The fewer connections, the better. Each one brings an opportunity to miss a flight or lose luggage.
If you fly BA, you can arrange a multiday stop over. The only problem being that the departure taxes from heathrow are horrific. It’s a nice train ride on the Eurostar. First Class, booked well in advance is reasonably priced.
Book a train from CDG(or any European location) 3 months in advance for the best fares. Capitaine train or seat 61.com for good info/schedules. Do not book through RailEurope under any circumstances.
If you’re there during the Tour de France, take the opportunity to view a stage or two. My daughter did and had a great time doing so.
