I just found out that the ISO C committee will be meeting in Strasbourg, France in January. I haven’t used good old C in ages, but I’m a member of the committee (actually INCITS PL22, an ANSI committee), and so I could attend; and it would give me an excuse to travel.
I could take Amtrak to Boston, fly Icelandair to Heathrow, then the Piccadilly Line to King’s Cross St. Pancras, Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord, and a TGV from Gare de l’Est to Strasbourg. I could mostly handle the 800m walk between the two Paris stations; but I see that there’s a stairway on the route that might be a bit of a challenge with two bags and a walker. Does anybody know of a good way around that?
In this situation, I think it would be good value for money for you to simply take a taxi between the two Paris stations.
Younger people with only one bag and nothing else can probably run up and down the stairs to take the Metro, but that doesn’t make sense for what you’re carrying. I don’t take taxis often, but there are cases where they make sense, and I think this is one such case. Good luck. Enjoy Icelandair.
I wouldn’t be taking the Metro: that would be even more of a hassle; and I can imagine taxi drivers complaining about taking me only about half a mile. I could handle the walk, even with the stairs; but it would probably take longer than the ten minutes that Google Maps allows.
I don’t know that I’ll actually be making this trip; I’m just fantasizing at this point.
I believe it’s also possible to skip everything in central Paris if you’re not going to enjoy taking time to see it. From Reykjavik, Icelandair can fly you to the CDG airport directly. And instead of going through Paris itself, you can catch a train to Strasbourg straight from the station under the CDG airport. Fewer legs of the journey. Of course, it depends if you’re going to do anything you enjoy in Paris or London. If not, why go through them?
I’m sure taxi drivers in Paris often take people with luggage between stations. The drivers who choose to line up at those stations expect to be doing this fairly often I bet.
As long as you’re fantasizing, you could also fly from Reykjavik to Bergen or Oslo or Edinburgh or Frankfurt or Zurich or Luxembourg and take the train to Strasbourg from there. Each of those could have pleasures also.
Once, returning from Madrid, I took a train from the Austerlitz station to CDG (not Metro, one of the heavy-rail commuter trains…I forget what they’re called) where I caught an Icelandair flight to KEF. I was worn out when I finally got to the gate that Icelandair uses; and that was back when I was young and able. I don’t think I want to go anywhere near CDG ever again.
Take a taxi and give a generous tip?
Decades ago I had an urgent need to get from CDG Aerogare 2 to Aerogare 1. At the taxi rank, the driver wasn’t inclined to make the drive, but a promise of FF 100 (about $US 20) got a reply of “tout suite!”.
@ Bill and Bruce regarding CDG
That airport is in dire need of a serious renovation in the form of a B-52 wing dumping their load all over that place. And then call in the dump trucks with salt, just for good measure.
Sheeesh, what a nightmare. Got rerouted once back from Dallas due to severe weather and barely made it to the connecting flight due to bad signage. On toppof it barely anyone spoke English, German or Italian (the only languages I’m somewhat proficient in). At the security checkpoint they mixed up my (then) paper boarding pass and then handed me a passport that wasn’t mine. Of course my luggage ended up in Berlin instead of Franfurt.
On our last trip, last April, we had to go through CDG, and once again we swore we would never do so again.
This time the delay was in the passport check between terminals 2E and 2F. There were about 8 kiosks set up, but only one person working, so our entire 1.5 hour layover time was spent standing in line waiting to go through a simple passport check. Once we got to the front of the line it took no more than 2 minutes.
My wife was getting more and more panicked until I reminded her that this CDG and our outbound flight would probably also be delayed.
It was.
(not Metro, one of the heavy-rail commuter trains…I forget what they’re called)
RER
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