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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11 Comments
Great information and always helpful. We're glad to hear you are having a good time. Hope to see you on the way. Buen Camino!
I forgot to mention that we booked our second ticket from Bayonne to St Jean Pied de Port at the same time we booked our night train tickets on Trainline. They were $20 USD for both of our tickets, so an easy little add on. So all in all we spent about $200 USD which covered our transportation as well as accommodations for the night, plus gave us a fun little experience. We thought it was a win! What about you, would you consider a night train?
I love the train system in Europe and prefer to travel by train, wish we had something like this in the US. I was going to ask if you were traveling with all your bags, glad to hear you are not!! Enjoy Camino!
great information. David has the best grin!
Great video! We always opt for trains over flying. Were you guys able to store extra bags somewhere to minimize what you carried on the Camino?
Thanks for sharing your experiences! Love this kind of information.
would u please share the link to book the overnight (sleep) train
One car train. Amazing. thank you for all the useful information it has been an amazing resource. The train up to SJPP do they run pretty often? I am coming from Bilbao. I guess it's a commuter train the whole way.
This is cool and I am going to take time and watch the journey you guys took. I wish you had gone the coastal way 🙂
I went in May 2023. I stayed in Paris playing tourist for a few days so left out of Montparnasse station. Thing was train tickets I was looking for weren’t available at the 90 day mark. I was told check 60 days out . I got antsy and looked 66 days out and they were available but the straight through from Montparnsse to Bayonne was already sold out! Turns out it was the 1st day of a 4 day holiday (Ascension) so something to be aware of. I ended up booking a train to Bordeaux then from Bordeaux to Bayonne. Funny thing is we caught the train that I wanted originally for the straight through. Guess someone must have gotten off. It was important that I got to Bayonne in time to catch the SJPdP train in time to get me into town before the dinner at my Alburgue. It all worked out.
Thanks for the info on the trains!