Hotel booking or not????

I have posted this on the general France forum, too, so apologies to anyone who reads this twice.

Hi, everyone. We find ourselves in a bit of a dilemna. We are doing our usual journey through France into Spain with one or two overnight stops in France.

We are booked on the Eurotunnel for 15.50 on the afternoon of 23rd August. We now think we might be able to get away earlier, possibly being able to board the Eurotunnel at 14.00 (ish), which will mean we can get further into France on our first day. We are hoping to get past Paris, possibly Fresnes, Palaiseau or maybe a little bit further.

Our questions are:

How likely is the traffic to hold us up around Paris? Bearing in mind that we will be skirting Paris around 18.00 if all goes well.

How likely are we to be able to just pull off the autoroute %26amp; get a hotel for the night? We know that that is a busy weekend in France %26amp; we will have our dog with us, which limits our hotel choice slightly.

Would we be better staying just north of Paris %26amp; making an early start the next morning?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

|||

Are you going to re book the time of the Tunnel or turn up and hope that you can get on the earlier shuttle? It is just that the last couple of times we have tried that without much luck.

Personally I would like the certainty of a hotel room (especially with the dog) during the peak holiday period so I would opt to pre book a hotel to the north of Paris and set out early on 24th.

One thought why not think of going via Reim, Troyes, Dijon, Lyon and onto Spain as a change.

Avoids Paris and different places to stop and see.

I appreciate this may be completely impractical depending upon where in Spain you are heading.

|||

Thanks, boucheboy. Yes, we were hoping to get on an earlier train, we%26#39;ve managed it before at that time of year, but early in the morning rather than in the afternoon. The Eurotunnel website is still showing availability for earlier trains.

Re: the Troyes route, we did that a few years ago when we were able to take our time getting down. However, we have a hotel in Cartagena booked for the Saturday night, so it is one stop in France on the Thursday night %26amp; hopefully make it down to Northern Spain the following night........hence our wish to get past Paris. Understandably, we don%26#39;t want to get stuck in bouchon%26#39;s on the autoroutes around Paris, it would be better to make an early start on the Friday morning %26amp; have a clear run through (or as much as you can round Paris!).

Unfortunately my husband is working on the Thursday morning, so we can%26#39;t go earlier %26amp; we%26#39;re not sure what time he will finish!

|||

We drive down again next week - really looking forward to the bouchon%26#39;s!

Have a nice holiday.

|||

Thanks, you too.

|||

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.

Removed on: 10:18 am, September 07, 2009