CDG Layover
 

Hello all,

I'm traveling tonight from IAH-CDG-LUA. First leg is Continental and second leg Air France.

I will have 12 hour layover in CDG and my company has booked me a room at the Radisson for the day.

My questions are:

1. Will my baggage be checked through?

2. I'm assuming I will have to clear customs to go to the Radisson. Is this correct?

3. This is an e-ticket. Does Continental issue the boarding pass for the Air France leg or will I have to do that at CDG?

Thanks for any other tips or information to make this as painless as possible. I haven't traveled internationally for years and I'm a bit uncertain.

Regards!!!

1. Baggage should be checked through but that is up to CO. Make sure they do it when you check in. Remind them the whole Skyteam seamless travel.... yada yada yada

2. you will have to clear immigration/customs and then come back through immigration. The whole process is very quick and painless in CDG.

3. I doubt CO will give you the boarding pass for the AF flight. You have 12 hours and enough time to check in.

Depending on what time you arrive (most likely in the morning), why don't you go into Paris for a few hours and then come back. It is easy. You can read some of the threads about CDG and Paris. I would highly recommend it.

Regarding the Radisson at the airport, it is not actually on airport property and you will have to take a shuttle bus to it. I have also had problems with them actually providing rooms promptly. They seem to have a very poor system of clearing cleaned rooms (after checkout) back to the front desk. They clean a large block of rooms and then clear them all at once to reception. This may be more efficient for the staff, but it means that you may have to wait longer for your room. Otherwise the hotel is comfortable, and they do serve a good breakfast.

If you have a choice of hotels, stay at the Sheraton at CDG. Very nice hotel and built on top of the railway station (so no shuttle bus, as it is part of the terminal building complex). But Sheraton tends to charge double the room price compared to the other, worse, hotels -- so you pay a premium for their convenience.

The Hilton is just as pleasant and more affordable than the Sheraton. It is about 10mn away from the Sheraton using the VAL automated shuttle.

Agree totally - the Radisson uses a contract shuttle bus which can be erratic, and once I even saw it full at terminal 2E, so it will take you at least 45 minutes travel/wait each way which kind of defeats the purpose...

Take the Sheraton or the Hilton (or worst case the Novotel Roissypole - same location as the Hilton, but a Novotel....)