This year we took the long way home. In the spring we bought round-trip tickets from Paris to Newark on Air India, because the tickets seemed like a bargain and we wanted a stop in Paris anyway. We also bought one way tickets for the whole family, from Pisa to Paris for just over 100 euros one-way. We had a great time in Paris and everything was working out well, we thought.
But over the summer we went to buy our one-way return tickets from Paris back to Pisa/Florence, and prices were coming up at about 800-900 euros each (and we needed four). That wasn't going to work for us. So we started looking at every option of getting from Paris back to Florence: flying to other locations in Italy, driving from France to Italy,... In the end we decided on an overnight train from Paris directly to Florence.
Our travels started with a 9pm flight out of Newark last Wednesday, arriving in Paris the next morning. Then a cab from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Gare de Bercy where we parked our bags in the waiting room (no baggage check there, so we took turns watching the bags and roaming the streets). We loaded our stuff onto the train at 7pm on Thursday and were all in our bunks by 9:30 (the car had 6 bunk beds, we had the top two on each side and a French/Italian couple had the bottom two - a little strange). We arrived in Florence at Campo di Marte at around 7am on Friday morning.
In the end almost three days of travel. We're still exhaused from the trip, but we're glad to be back in Florence!
Ellen