St. Etienne

created by stx23
(place) by mkb (17.2 hr) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Tue Sep 30 2003 at 15:24:25

Saint-Etienne is a city in southeastern France. It's the capital of département number 42 (Loire), and it's about an hour's train ride from Lyon. Étienne being the French form of the name Stephen, the region and its people are called THEstéphanois.

My only experience in Saint-Etienne was getting to the airport. Now technically, the city does not have an airport. There is a tiny international airport which is itself approximately 30 minutes away from the city center.

The airport's official name is l'Aéroport Andrezieu-Bouthéon. The code is EBU and it is served chiefly by RyanAir's twice daily flight to London Stansted airport. There are other, far less frequent flights to Prague and Algiers, along with the occasional charter. There is a single runway, surrounded by cows.

Getting to the airport is an interesting exercise. RyanAir operates a shuttle that leaves Lyon's Part-Dieu train station in time to make the departing flights, and also picks up any RyanAir passengers once their flight arrives. However, this shuttle is not well publicized; the only place to find the schedule and fare is in the airport.

Thus, on my arrival via train in St. Étienne's train station, I did the following.

  1. I went directly to the Hôtel de Tourisme, approximately 3 blocks from the station
  2. The tourism office gave me a bus schedule and directions to the bus "station".
  3. The bus station, which consisted of a bunch of concrete platforms without signs, gave me little information.
  4. I asked each bus driver, in turn, whether he went to the airport.
  5. The best I got was "I think so," so I boarded that bus, surrounded by boarding school kids going home for the weekend.
  6. After a ride through the banlieue, which to be honest was quite pleasant, I arrived at the airport and paid my fare of 2€80 or something else that seemed awfully low.

If you try this, remember that RyanAir's shuttle may not make it back to Lyon in time for you to catch the last train anywhere. Make backup plans and rent a car. (I almost did)

Should you ever need to take a budget flight out of southeast France, and thus need to fly out of Saint-Etienne, check out the "Accès" section on the airport's web site: http://www.saint-etienne.aeroport.fr

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