November 4 - Not Recommended Sleeping in the Paris CDG Airport

I know Duncan already wrote the Europe wrap up, but our night in the CDG airport is worthy of a post so that someone someday can avoid the problem we had. Our flight to Amsterdam (then onto Johannesburg) from Paris was the first Air France flight of the day leaving at 6:40 AM. They told us to get there 2 hours ahead to check in. Because it was so early and CDG is outside of the city we knew that we needed to get a hotel near the airport and had started the search before we left the US. All the hotels were completely booked or 300 Euros. Once we were in Europe we checked again 2 weeks and then 1 week before we were to fly to Amsterdam and had the same results.

We now had the option of finding another hotel in Paris but the metro would not open early enough for us to get the (RER) train to the airport to get to the airport to check in on time, so we would be forced to get a taxi for 50-60 Euros on top of a hotel room which we would only sleep in for a couple of hours. We made the decision to sleep in the airport to avoid all this expense for not enough benefit.

Duncan did some internet research and found several sites that talked about the conditions in major airports for sleeping. The comments about CGD were not pleasant but most of them were about CDG 1 and not CGD 2 where we would be. While we were certainly not excited about sleeping in the airport we decided to go for it.

The night before this endeavor we were very fortunate to have found a very comfortable hotel, All Seasons Hotel, for 50% of there usual charge. Not only were they a short walk from Gare de Lyon where we arrived by train via Milan the night before but they were also a short 3 block walk to the post office so we were able to send a large box back to the US with all of our Europe guide books, hats, gloves, scarves, my wool coat and a sweater (the cost was E 39.50 and the post office supplied the ready make box complete with sealant). Not only were we quite pleased with ourselves for figuring out the sending of the box and subsequently ridding ourselves of 14 pounds of weight, but we had a great night sleep and a huge hot breakfast the next day at the hotel. I tell you all this because it was these happy memories were what helped us make it through the night at CDG.

The day before our flight we checked out of our hotel but they allowed us to put our bags in storage and hang out in their lobby using their free wi-fi. We decided to leave the hotel around 4 to beat the rush of workers returning to their homes and head for the airport assuming we would check in, go through security and then find a corner to set up for the night. We arrived at the airport and Duncan went to complete our online check in at the kiosk. It wouldn't let him check in. He tried again and it pulled up flights to Amsterdam later that night but not our flight the next morning. An Air France agent saw he was having some trouble and told him to just go check in with an agent at the desk. So we gathered our belonging and went to stand in line for an agent. We were stopped at the entrance to the line and asked which flight we were on, when we answered Amsterdam tomorrow, the gate keeper said, you can only check in 2 hours before your flight, you need to come back tomorrow, the desk opens at 5 am. What!? Duncan asked some more questions and the answer was basically you should find a hotel for tonight.

Having never experienced an airline that only lets you check in 2 hours ahead (most of our experience has been you can check in 24 hours ahead), we had not anticipated this. So we searched around and found the only metal wire bench that didn't have four armrests. It only had one, making it possible to lie down and stick your feet under the last armrest. We pushed our bags into a corner locked them all together and then locked them to the bench. We read for a while and then tried to go to sleep, but we were near the baggage claim and flights continued to come in for several hours. When it did finally get quiet we slept for a little while only to wake up totally freezing. We had made ourselves little beds out of our sown together sheet sacks and were using other clothes as pillows, but one of us (we kept trading locations) was on the cold tile floor while the other was on the cold wire metal bench. We had assumed we would get to check in and be in a carpeted area.

After throwing more clothes on ourselves we went back to sleep again only to wake up and realize that they had closed the bathroom near us which we both needed to use. Duncan went searching for the next nearest bathroom and found three closed before he found an open one 15 minutes walk away. The interesting part of this was that by no means were we alone. Just in our part of the airport 2F there were at least 30 other people sleeping.

By the time the noisy floor buffing machines were turned off it was 4:30 and we decided to get up. Fortunately the bathrooms opened shortly thereafter and we got cleaned up for our flight. We checked in guessing we maybe got at most 2 hours of sleep. Next time we decided that we will try at all costs to not have an early flight out of CDG. It would have been much better to fly into Amsterdam and spend the night there before our Joburg flight. This is just one of the many things we are learning on this trip :)

Andrea