Camino #1 How to get to Saint Jean Pied de Port from Paris

Camino #1 How to get to Saint Jean Pied de Port from Paris

welcome back to 10 degrees warmer I’m Rob and this is our series on hiking the Camino de Santiago specifically the Cino Fran say or the French way so I just wanted to do a quick video on how we got from Paris down to St John petport it can seem a little bit daunting at first but you’ve actually got some options and it’s not too bad uh the easiest option is probably to fly we were seeing some uh internal flights in France for about $100 to fly down to Bon city of Bon and then you can take a little commuter train over to St John petport there are also buses you can take you look up like flicks bus or some of those um and they can take you down we decided to take the train we thought we’re in Europe trains are just a little bit romantic we thought it would be fun and once we started looking at them we realized there was a night train and Not only was the Night Train convenient for our schedule but it was also pretty inexpensive which we really appreciated because it kind of takes the place of having to get a hotel room so that really worked out well for us so I flew into Paris about 4:00 uh in the afternoon we took an Uber over to the train station and from there we got on an overnight train down to Bon the train left I didn’t look up the times I think it was about 10:30 at night and we arrived in the morning about 700 a.m. so it was kind of a perfect little train ride we really enjoyed it now you You’ got a couple of options when you buy your ticket and the thing that I would recommend most of all is buying your ticket early these tickets drop about 90 days ahead of when you want to go and that is when they are at the cheapest the closer it gets the more uh tickets get sold the tickets get more and more expensive so from 90 days out we were able to get tickets for about $25 a person if you wait those tickets get much more expensive we saw some of them for like1 $50 per person so you don’t want to wait you want to plan this early and get your tickets ahead of time now you have a couple of options with that uh now one I should just say talking about booking the tickets you can there are several different train companies that make the trip down there you can go during the day you can go there’s a fast train um and so depending on which one you want to do you might want to check out the different train lines we just use a website called train line now train line think they’re English uh and it’s an aggregator site with all of the different trains that run so we really liked using it you do pay a little bit of a convenience fee but that gets you a couple of things so one it’s an aggregator site so you see all the trains at once but also you the site then is in English you’re not trying to decipher a French website Google Translate is amazing and then sometimes it just gets a little bit weird or it messes up the format sometimes so we liked it for that reason the other thing that’s great about train line is they do accept foreign credit cards not all of the local train websites will accept a non-european credit card so it’s a little it’s a small convenience fee that we thought was very worth it we liked using train line it also lets you download the tickets right to your phone so when we got on we just showed them the QR code everything was very easy however so when you’re booking the tickets you’re also going to have a couple of options for what kind of seat you want there is I think just regular second class seats where it’s a sit-up seat that doesn’t lay back that sounds terrible to me overnight but you can do that if you want to save a little bit of money but for the um lie down beds in that car there are six different beds so if you are going on the inexpensive side and you just want to get one bed in that room and you’ll be in there with potentially with um other strangers if all the beds get sold that might be fine for you and that’s great but if you book your tickets early like I’m telling you to do so you get the cheap prices it also gives you an option to book out the entire car [Music] so that is what we did we needed the space anyway because I was coming from the states where I I was bringing a bunch of new gear we were going to use on the Camino and David stayed in France so we had to completely unpack all of our bags and then repack them for these are our Camino bags and then we had a couple bags that we sent ahead to the end of the Camino that’s there waiting for us of all the stuff that we normally have that we don’t need on the Chino so that took us about an hour and a half we needed that space so for us it was a really good option and then we just had the Privacy so that cost us $180 to book out the entire cabin it’s definitely a little bit more expensive but for us it was worth it we’re really glad that we did it you do have a couple of other options when you book your seats you can request either to have the lower bunk the middle bunk or the upper bunk um and then if you’re a female you can also requests to be put in a female only cabin now it does say that these requests are just that they are only request they’re not guaranteed it just depends I’m sure on who else books and you know how it all works out in their system but you can put those requests in there we did enjoy sleeping on the bottom bunk that worked out well for us now in the train just know that these cars are set up to sleep like you know 11:30 at night cuz we’d been packing and we had the door open and the conductor walked by and she looked at me she’s like why are you still awake like it is set up that you get there you lay down and you sleep sleep the duration of the train you can’t really sit up the bunks are all down and you know sitting is just it’s not comfortable it’s not a good solution so uh just know that you’re going to sleep but there is room underneath the bottom bunks where you could put some bags there’s also some room over the door where you could put some bags so you can get your luggage out of the way if there’s you know six people in the car also on the train there there’s a toilet on on each of the trains and then there’s another space with a sink so there’s you know place for someone to be brushing their teeth and then a toilet around the corner those were clean you know they were pretty basic but they worked well for us and then what else do I need to tell you so they do give you a little amenity kit it came with some uh ey uh eye mask which is really good and then a couple there’s like some antiseptic ppes and some other little things in there plus a bottle of water which is really nice it did come with a uh sleep sack and a pillow so we were pretty comfortable I didn’t like their sleep mask I thought it was a little uncomfortable so I was happy to wear my own but you will want to wear something if you’re susceptible to light cuz there isn’t a covering for the window so as you’re you know booking through the country sometimes you’re going to pass through cities or stations or whatever and some pretty bright lights came in through the window so if you want to sleep better you’re going to want to wear some kind of eye covering we found the whole process to be very simple and straightforward there were a lot of announcements in French that we didn’t understand and still we didn’t have any issues and then in beon uh you get off there we had about an hour and a half to wait for our commuter train that took us into St John petore and that was very simple we just made it into the station they had big signs up you know telling you know which trains were coming and then we just had to wait till we saw the train to St John petport it told us which track to go probably about 10 15 minutes before the train left we went to that track and then we got on that train it was a very small train it was only one car and frankly I think most of the people on that car were pilgrims getting ready to hip the Camino everyone had their bags there were some places to put luggage and we just kept some in our laps cuz we had some extra definitely something I would recommend if you’re looking for something a little bit different like I said you can take a plane you can take a bus we did talk to someone who took a night bus across um she was doing things on the cheap it sounded pretty uncomfortable to me but I’ve done night buses in the past too and if that works better for you you do have options so I hope you found this helpful we really enjoyed taking the train we thought it was a really fun experience so I hope this will help you figure that out if that’s something you would like to try for yourself again this is going to be a series on the commo we have a lot more videos planned so hit that subscribe button and we will see you around next time and not tomorrow there’s no time byrow today is a good day to live on

How do you get from Paris to the start of the Camino Frances in Saint Jean Pied de Port in southern France? Many pilgrims fly into Paris (we found cheap tickets on French Bee into Paris Orly), and then had to figure out hotels and transportation to get us down to Saint Jean Pied de Port.

So if you are traveling from Paris, we’ve got you covered! While there are options, we opted for a unique (and luxurious!) way to kick off the journey – a private sleeper car on the night train.

Sure, sharing a car might have saved some euros, but with the money saved by skipping a Paris hotel, we decided to splurge! The train journey was comfortable, easy, and the perfect way to start our pre-Camino adventure feeling rested and ready to hit the trail.

Join us as we embark on this epic pilgrimage! We’ll walk you through buying your ticket (actually two, one from Paris to Bayonne, and a second from Bayonne to Saint Jean Pied de Port, but they are both with the same train company and was super easy to figure out.)

Is a sleeper car right for you? Let’s find out!

Buen Camino!

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