Assuming you will be arriving early in the morning which is usually the case from the USA to CDG I would take the RER but sit close to the door. There is very little danger of pickpocketers especially early in the morning as their work ethic is poor. You will find the train empty when you get on at CDG but sit close to the door because by the time you get to Paris the train will be very crowded with people going to work and it can be difficult to get to the door with your bags etc due to the crowds. You probably know that the RER from CDG to Paris Gare Nord for example takes about 25-30 minutes but by highway it can take well over 1.5 hours at times due to rush hour traffic. Take the RER and you will be fine.

Hi eastave,

the other way to avoid as many problems as possible is to get the fast service which doesn't stop at many of the stations in northern Paris which could cause a potential problem, if only with more people getting on to go to work and wanting the space that your luggage is taking up.

anyway, i don't think that pickpockets are so much of a problem when you are sitting down as you will be on the RER having got on at CDG.

Why not just take a taxi from the queue? Easy. You don't say how old your daughter is but if less than a teen, you will want to be helping her. A car service certainly isn't necessary.
The taxi has never taken the 1.5 hour mentioned above. It will cost about 50E for both of you. Have the address printed out for the driver, and maybe a map.
Pickpockets are a problem for people who are distracted by their luggage or minding a child--and can be anywhere.

We recently had a man next to us on the RER stick his hand deep into DHs pocket. He was carrying
a down jacket to disguise his activity. He was very well dressed, middle age and blended in nicely with the am biz commuters.

While it is true that some of the RER B trains have shorter en route times than do others, the trains never actually pass one another. The train withe the earliest arrival time into Paris will always be the next train.

I agree with Gretchen, take a taxi from the official taxi queue, usually but steps from the customs exits. En route times are typically under an hour and cost around 50€.

Actually, on my recent arrival at CDG I took the RER into Paris and was surprised to look out the window and see another train passing us. Perhaps it was a suburban line but based on my experience with RER B trains it looked just like the stock used on the RER B line.

We have had encounters with various pickpockets in various places--on Metro, a group of "girls" rushing onto the train pushing up against you--in St. Petersburg "offering" a scarf to you while the other hand is trying to get in your belt pack-- just crowding up on you when it doesn't seem "necessary". When you have luggage and are jet lagged, just save some stress and start out relaxed in a taxi to your door, not having to look for signage, fare, etc.

Thank you for the advice. I am not normally an alarmist, but do recognize that having to prod my kid and most likely carry all of our stuff will make me less able to be on top of things. A taxi is a good suggestion.

The RER will be fine in the morning and your daughter will probably be all charged up with adrenaline for the first hour or so.

Take a taxi from the taxi stand, you do not need a car service ( some apartment agencies seem happy to recommend them, at twice the cost of a taxi!!) . I think with a 6 yr old just make things easier.

I always use the RER to and fro cdg, but I agree with a sleepy six year old In tow, and having to handle all the luggage, make it easy on yourself and get a taxi.

Of course in France, age six is considered to be the "age of reason" when children are capable of understanding certain responsibilities and making an extra effort.

As for pickpockets, I have never understood how anybody who knows of their existence can be worried about them. If you know that you are going somewhere that is likely to have pickpockets, you just take the necessary measures to make your valuables inaccessible. Pickpockets prefer to take advantage of people who are completely unaware -- they do not like difficulty.

Yea and in the US it might be about age 25...

Well, it is at least 21.

I fear that a lot of the questions hare are just requests to validate people's desire to take the "easy" way out (at least what they think is the easy way out). "They all told me to do this just to be safe" is a way to justify a 60€ expenditure when one could have spent so much less. Well, that is certainly one way to prevent the pickpockets from getting your money -- just give it voluntarily to other people who don't even need to slip their hands in your pocket.

I give up.

Well at least the people who get my money are providing me a service.

We also have flown to Europe many times so I have some sense for how charged up she will be upon landing.

I appreciate the suggestions.

Kerouac when you have been in charge of travelling transalantically with a six year old then comment, otherwise it comes across as someone who hasn't had kids lecturing others on what they should or should not do.. and you wouldn't mean that would you?? Its so easy to advise people when you haven't walked a mile in their shoes..

A six year old may be tired, kids physically require more sleep then adults, this is not an indulgence this is medical fact. A tired child can in a strange place can be cranky or need extra reassurance, this means mom may be more distracted watching stuff and comforting or putting up with child, and she herself may be tired,, as a mother flying with a younger child they have more responsibilty, they don't get to just knock back a gin and tonic and flake our after the flight meal...

at least the OP will have all the info she needs when she gets to CDG to make the choice - depending on how she and her DD feel at the time.

I have sympathy with both views but what might swing it for me is the amount of luggage that the OP may be travelling with - managing a case, a handbag and a small child, however co-operative, in a strange and foreign place might be a bridge too far.

that G & T does sound attractive though.

To be clear, if my husband were with us we would definitely take the RER. I was hoping to travel with just carry on, but that would mean we would need two small suitcases instead of 1 bigger one we normally use when we check things.

The nice thing about the taxi option is we can just play it by ear.

eastave - as you have identified, the one larger case will definitely be easier here, plus a handbag that you can loop across your body securely to give you your other hand for your DD.

if she will carry a back-pack, she can take responsibility for her own things for the journey and have both hands free which will help you.

good luck with your trip!

Justine, for the last 35 years, I have been advising the parents of Clara, Arnaud, Cécile, Claire, Dris, Sylvain, Valérie, Jacinthe, Aurélie and Antoine about how to deal with their children, from the time they could walk until... well, some of the children are more than 30 now. As you probably know, office colleagues often share all of their daily problems with each other and ask advice. Well, you may be surprised, but the general consensus was that I gave the best advice for most "difficult" decisions, and most of the children have also thanked me profusely for influencing their parents over the years. Whenever they would come to the office, I was the first person that they would come to see. In fact I still see some of the children even when their parents are not there, because now they ask me for advice about how to deal with their parents as they get older.

Now I will readily admit that deciding to take a taxi or the RER from the airport to the city is not a "difficult" decision -- in fact it is quite a trivial one and eastave has correctly concluded that playing it by ear upon arrival is the best thing to do.

Justine, I am completely aware of how cranky children can be -- I was once a child myself and a cranky one at that. I also know that children tend to have little difficulty sleeping on an airplane, so the main thing to worry about is how tired the parent is rather than the child. I will thank you in the future not to automatically assume that I do not know what I am talking about.

I would recommend the RER instead of a taxi. Just make sure to take an express train (look at the board for the train - the one with the next stop as Gare Du Nord is an express) so that once you board, you won't have to worry about the train filling up any more than when you leave the station - until GDN anyway.

I'm betting the chance of riding on the train will perk the kid up more than waiting for a taxi. Only the OP knows her kid. Like her, my husband, kid and I would always pick the RER. But on my own, it would depend on the nature of my daughter. At her ADD-like 4 or 5 years old self? Taxi, for sure. At 6 yo, I would start considering RER. Now that she's 9, I don't think she'd LET me take the taxi, and would want to try buying the RER tickets herself...

Over the years, I've always had good advice from kerouac on kids in France and other issues.

>>>I give up.<<<

I really hope you don't K2. But worrying so much about saving someone else 40 euros is a waste of your time and energy. Maybe 40 euros is a lot to you, but on vacation it might be money well spent to someone else.

Please keep on posing and making your almost always invaluable replies. But don't worry someone else's budget so zealously! ;^)

It's not even really about the money, or I would be in total despair at the number of people here who think that 200€ is the price of a budget hotel.

It is more a question of autonomy, taking charge on oneself when traveling, not assuming that one is incapable of functioning after a long flight. I see here over and over again statements which translate into "spending a night on a plane makes me a total invalid so I need to completely baby myself upon arrival." As far

Oops, an errant finger cut off the rest of what I had to say, but that is certainly just as well.

Oh sorry Kerouac ,, since you are a "parental consultant" then you must know better then the parents. geesh..NO ONE knows their own child better then the parents of said child and we are not solving a dicipline issue here so advice is not really needed.. but consideration for both parent and child .. which I took into account..

As for excitment , no one who has been in a taxi in Paris can say its not exciting, ha, it can be death defyingly exciting..

To Apersuader65-----There is only one RER B train that goes directly without stops from CDG to Gare du Nord and that is not until 10:55 a.m. Aside from that the best you can do is a train that does not stop until Aulnay-Sous-Bois and then all stations thereafter. More importantly why would anyone want to wait at CDG for a train that stops a fewer stations enroute to Paris instead of taking the first train available to get to town? RER B trains run very close together in both directions and trains to do not pass other trains of the same direction on this 2 track system.

Anyone who uses this train regularly as I do can tell you there will be an army of commuters getting on the train at Aulnay SB.

LarryJ - I think the confusion around that issue stems from the fact that on the parisbytrain.com website they mention that there is an Express RER B that goes directly to Gare du Nord from CDG non-stop without citing its frequency, although consulting the fiches horaires it is obvious that the 10:55 train is the only such one.

For anyone interested here are the fiches horaires (train schedules) for the RER B from CDG towards Paris. In the blue box click "cliquez-ici":

http://www.ratp.fr/informer/pdf/horaires/redirect.php?dest=/informer/pdf/orienter/f_horaire.php%3Fnompdf%3Db_jo_rob%26loc%3Dhoraires&retour=/horaires/fr/ratp/rer

Perhaps it is the exception but I was surprised a few weeks ago taking the RER B from CDG into Paris to see another RER B train pass us on the left (at a platform I believe) going in the same direction (into Paris as well). I'm assuming it was the B5 coming from Mitry-Claye and not another RER B originating from CDG.

I'm looking at the schedule that is in effect beginning September 2012, Monday-Friday, and (hope I'm reading it correctly) it seems that between 8:58 and 15:58 there are non-stop RER B trains from CDG to Gare du Nord at 13, 28, 43 and 58 minutes past the hour. After the 15:58 train, the next non-stop is at 19:43. Then the pattern continues up until 22:13, then 22:43 and 22:58.

http://www.ratp.fr/informer/pdf/orienter/f_horaire.php?nompdf=b_jo_rob&loc=horaires

Larry - I have certainly come across express RER B trains going TO CDG and they do seem to be more than one a day.

or was i hallucinating?

I agree with MaineGG, there are clearly express trains lots of times in the morning before 10:55 on the schedule, about 3 an hour, I checked both the weekday and weekend schedules. SO I don't understand why one would say there aren't any before 10:55. They begin at 8:55 from the first CDG station.

That URL given by FMT is a little confusing, I think, if you want RER schedules, I think this webpage is more obvious as it is the webpage of the RER schedules directly http://www.ratp.fr/horaires/fr/ratp/rer

Or the one by MaineGG seems to work directly.

Why don't you take the Air France coach? It's cheaper than a taxi and nicer than the RER (in my opinion).

My apologies MaineGG. You are indeed correct. Must not have had my second cup before looking at the schedule. Don't know what I was thinking.

Should have said "second cup of coffee". Still not thinking.

No apology necessary, FMT. I had recently spent quite a bit of time looking at the RER B schedule for my own upcoming trip and had saved the PDF. I'll also say that I, too, do better after my second cup of something, not always coffee.