At 08:29 AM 10/3/2003 -0400, Nick Laflamme wrote: >I don't know if CDG is uniformly bad; I've heard several times that >terminal 2, where AF and its alliance partners fly out of, is nice. But >I've only been in Terminal 1 on another intra-Europe weekend. Terminal 1 is >visually stunning but a logistical nightmare! Terminal 2 isn't exactly stunning. It's a heck of a lot nicer than the morass at Terminal 1, but it would be hard not to be better than that mess. Terminal 2 is sprawling in the worst sort of way for a terminal that people use to make transfers. Two sides, with bad connections between them, and long, long walks along areas of gates and concourses. A simple connection, from an internal Europe flight to New York bound flight required reading french, being *good* at navigating airports, and was aided by being able to cut the huge check-in/security queues when I got to the AMR area. (Not that AF, or any of the other areas looked a single bit better. Long french ski lift style scrums at all of them. My french may not be fluent, but it's not bad, and I needed all of it to make my way out of the gate area my flight arrived in, and over to the departure area. I was inbound from another Schengen country, so I missed out on any passport formalities, but it still took 40 minutes of steady walking and sign reading to make my way across the concourses. The other joy I've run into at CDG is the horrible shuttle bus system between the terminals. Hard to find, stops across roads from destinations. (With 30 second green light windows and no luggage carts) I tell people to allow a full hour for the bus hop from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2. It may take only 20 minutes, but it can easily take a full hour. And that's not counting time to get lost, or have the bus driver decide to dump everyone out at the charter terminal because his shift is over. On the plus side, if you use T2, or T1, the RER connections into Paris are great, and at T2, the TGV connection is very good. And if you do miss your flight, or take a delay, there's some mighty fine food and decent wine on offer to ease a little bit of your pain. - David