Paris Forum: Traveling to Paris from Chicago in September

If possible, I'd look into an open-jaw ticket, flying back from Barcelona. Will save you a lot of travel time.

$1000 is not a bad fare these days (unfortunately). There's no guarantee it will go down by much, if at all. Prices, too, can go up.

we spent about 1250 each for tickets into Rome and out of Amsterdam starting in September and ending in December --- I tracked prices for months and this was not the lowest but close and far from the highest -- I don't fly anything but direct flights out of Chicago and will pay more for that (we could have saved a few hundred by flying through Poland with a 24 hour lapsed time for example)

1000$ is pretty good Chicago/Paris these days -- but odds are whenever you jump the fares will go down the next week -- Chicago doesn't have much air competition and has higher prices than some markets

Thanks for all of the hot tips, guys! We ended up getting our tickets on Wednesday, because the prices jumped abut $80 and we were worried they would jump again. They actually have gone up another $60 in the last 2 days, so I'm so glad we got them. Kayak.com is the best!

Anyway, we're flying into Paris on 9/5 an out of Barcelona 9/14. We're thinking 3 days in Paris in the beginning, a couple of days in Barcelona at the end, and traveling south in between.

Does anyone have any recommendations of good places to visit South of Paris north of Barcelona? We're looking for quaint smaller towns that are pretty and not as touched by crowds or tourism. We'll probably stick to the eastern side of both countries so we're not sitting on trains for too long!

Thanks!

-EC

I think you'll be far better served, and spend less time traveling on a short visit, if you stick to the *west* side of France and the *east* side of Spain.

With only eight days, and at least one other lost getting from Paris to Barcelona, if you really have no place in mind, you may want to just split your time between Paris and Barcelona, where there is much to see and do in each.

with the time you have and the distances you are traveling split your time between Paris and Barcelona and fly Easyjet or similar between the two

4 nights in Paris is only 3 days -- not even enough IMHO for side trips but if you want small towns or more variety you could do a day trip one of those days -- there are literally dozens of great ones to choose from

Same with Barcelona -- we went to Figeroua and the Dali museum when we were there and also to Montserrat and drove out to a fishing village on the coast -- but we had 4 full days and 5 nights in Barcelona

Both Paris and Barcelona need quite a bit of time to scratch the surface

Oops! I mistyped. We actually have a total of 14 days in France/Spain (we arrive in Paris in the morning 9/5 and leave from Barcelona in the evening 9/19) Since we live in a city we don't really want to spend *all* of our time in cities.

Also, since the trains in Europe are a little nicer than Chicago's El, we're looking forward to traveling around via train.