Should I rent a car at Charles de Gaulle Airport to drive to Montargis?

by Tom Uhl
(Lakewood, Ohio, United States)

I am from the United States. I am coming to France in July and I have to travel from the Charles de Gaulle International Airport to Montargis, which is about 100 miles south.

My contact person has suggested that I rent a car, or take a train part of the way and rent a car for part of the trip. I don't speak or read French well and I certainly don't have a French drivers license.

Is renting and driving a car really practical for me?

Answer: How to get from Charles de Gaulle Roissy Airport to Montargis

Hi there Tom!

I'm not familiar with that town, so let me do some research - but I would say that if you've never driven a car in France you might prefer to travel by train. If you do decide to drive, you may need to get an International Drivers' Licence, but check with rental places online.

Here's what I found:

Via Charles de Gaulle-Roissy Airport by TRAIN

You can buy your ticket at the train station at the airport all the way to your destination, you will need to change trains. Or you can break your journey and buy the ticket for your second leg of the journey at Gare de Lyon train station.

* Take RER line B to “Châtelet - Les Halles”,
* Change to RER line A, destination Marne-la-Vallée/Boissy-St-Léger.
* Get out at “Gare de Lyon” and follow instructions below.

From the Train Station “Gare de Lyon” to Montargis (same direction as Fontainebleau)

If you need to buy a ticket at the “Gare de Lyon” go to the "Guichet Banlieu" to buy your ticket for Montargis. You can also buy your ticket from the airport to Montargis at the airport underground station.

Do not forget to ask what final destination will be displayed on the departure board (the train will be headed for either Montereau, Montargis, Sens or Laroche-Migennes).

Train timetables

To work out the timetable, I went to the French railways website:

http://ratp.fr - a new window will open

and clicked the English flag to read the site in English. If you scroll down, you can see where to type in your location and your destination.

I typed Charles de Gaulle and clicked the 'station' button, then I typed Montargis and clicked 'station'

I wasn't sure of your travel date, so I selected 1st July, and clicked the Search button. It now looks like this:



There was a new message in red on the screen, asking me to select from the choices of departure - I chose Roissy aeroport. Click Search button.

A new window will open up, with the details for the train journey. Print this out and take it with you.

The total train journey is just under 2 hours.

Booking your ticket online

You can book and pay for train tickets online, but the website is in French only:

Voyage-SNCF.com


I do hope this helps - let me know if you have any other questions!

PS - you may wish to read about the Paris train stations for a bit more insight.

Bon voyage,
Teena