priceline.com???

Summermouse, I think I’d look around a little before I resorted to Priceline. You need to know what the prices are BEFORE you make a bid or you’ll pay too much . . . which is what they are counting on.

I just ran a search on the Air France web site from SFO to CDG from June 30 to July 14 and got a price of $592 which is a lot less than the $930 you mentioned. http://www.airvisitfrance.travel/ is the web site. Click on USA and then do your search. You have to click on "book now" to do the search. Don’t panic; you’re not booking, you’re searching. It’s okay.

Have you tried a search right here on France.com? Click on the blue and red France.com at the top of this page and then look on the right side of your screen for Airfares. Click on that and do a search. They usually have very good deals. It also helps to know the airline schedules before you do the France.com search because they don’t always tell you the name of the airline, although you can only check the airlines they do tell you. Your choice.

https://www.secure.onetravel.com/ is another good web site for cheap airfares.

There are some terrific sales going on right now. You should be able to do better than $900+

Good luck.

Thanks for your advice. I went to the airfrance place and found the ticket price that you were talking about, but that is only for one-way. Added together the ticket price was about $1200. I looked more and still the cheapest I could find was 6/30 to 7/22 from San Francisco to Amsterdam at about $900.
Thanks again
Summermouse

summermouse: If you book far enough in advance, you would be hard pressed to beat airvisitfrance.travel fares. Other plusses are: great equipment (provided you are not seated too far back in the Airbus 340), great food, and direct flights (from the east coast anyway.) Donerail

http://www.eltexpress.com/ has Iceland Air at $780

I checked a bunch of other sites and couldn’t find anything cheaper. It’s a good airline and I wouldn’t mind flying it to save a couple hundred dollars. (BTW, the Air France was down to $470 OW today)

You are going in the heart of the tourist season. That makes it more difficult. The airlines know everyone wants to fly then so they aren’t making deals. The deals were a month ago when they weren’t booked already. That’s no help now, but might be useful for future reference.

We just paid less than $600 each for round trip tickets to France in late September. We book early and we are out of the main tourist season. I realize most people don’t have a lot of choice about when they take their vacations and that tourist season is a lot of fun, but if you have any control over when you take your vacations, try to hit the cusps of the tourist season. You get the fun and the good weather without the high prices.

I tried the Oakland airport on a few sites and it was a little more expensive. You might also consider using July 21 instead of the 22 for a return date and see if that helps.

It takes a lot of research. You might get on Virtual Traveler, Lonely Planet, Frommers or Fodors web sites and do a search on low budget air travel. There are literally hundreds of web sites out there. Check the SFO web site and find out what international airlines fly in and check each airline web site on your own. Getting there inexpensively is a lot of work.

Good luck.

Check Orbitz.com. They usually have some good prices to Paris. Also, Continental has some deals from time to time. I haven’t checked recently, but I have had luck on those two sites. Priceline is only good if you are VERY OPEN in your flight plans. They’ll take you all over the world before you get to your destination, especially if you name your own price.

Also, if you’re not dead-set on going this time of year, I LOVE going around President’s Day weekend… it’s sale season in Paris, and I flew there for $375 round trip. If you’re a shopper, take a pair of jeans, a shirt, and a jacket, and fill up on fabulous clothes!!

Good luck in your search!

HG15