Amiens

Introduction

Cathedral in Amiens

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Amiens is a major city in the French region of Picardie. It is the capital of the Somme department and has about 140,000 inhabitants.

Getting There

By Plane

Beauvais-Tillé Airport (BVA) is often billed as a Paris airport, but is just about 45 minutes south of Amiens. It is used by budget airlines, most notably Ryanair (Alghero, Alicante, Bari, Bologna, Bratislava, Cagliari, Dublin, Girona, Glasgow, Madrid, Marseille, Milan, Oslo, Pisa, Porto, Rome, Barcelona-Reus, Shannon, Stockholm, Trapani and Venice), but also Blue Air (Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca) and Wizzair (Bucharest, Gdansk, Budapest, Cluj-Napoca, Katowice, Prague, Sofia, Timisoara, Warsaw and Wroclaw). The airport is located roughly 85 kilometres out of Paris near the town of Beauvais.

To/from the airport

• Bus: Buses leave the airport 20 minutes after each flight (or as soon as they are filled) and charge €13 for the 80-minute-journey to Porte Maillot in Paris. Tickets can be bought at either the kiosk just beside the luggage carousel after immigration counters (cash only) or outside the airport (exit the airport, turn right and walk straight on, the ticket counters are just ahead to the right, cash or card). A cab would cost in the order of €120-160 and the small shuttle buses cost around €18 per person. For the return trip to Beauvais, buses leave Porte Maillot approximately 3 hours before flight time. Be there about 10-15 minutes ahead in order to allow time for passengers to board the bus and be filled. Ticket must be purchased prior to boarding at the ticket counter, and queue may be long. In order to save time, buy 2 one-way tickets upon arrival in Beauvais, and use the second ticket for this journey. Tickets may also be purchased ahead online but must be booked at least 24 hours prior to departure.
• To go to the town centre of Beauvais, you can take the commuter bus provided by the Transports Urbains du Beauvaisis. Ligne 12 goes to Mairie - Zone d’activités des Tilleuls - Tillé - Aéroport. The Airport Shuttle goes to Parc Municipal - Maillart - Cathédrale - Mairie (City Hall) - Gare SNCF - Kennedy - Descartes - Délie - Saint-Germain - Elispace - Airport.
• Rail: Beauvais train station is situated almost 4 kilometres away, with connections to Paris Gare du Nord, Amiens, etc.
• There are also many minibus and shuttle services that can bring you to Disneyland Park.
• Taxis and rental cars are both widely available at the airport as well.

Sleep

Keep Connected

Phone

See also International Telephone Calls

Post

La Poste in France is also referred to as the PTT (short for postes, télégraphes et téléphones). The mailboxes are painted bright yellow and often there is a slot for local city mail and another slot for "outside mail". Normally there is a queue in the post office, but most of the post offices have the self service machine installed which is quite easy to operate. Nowadays many of the tabac and even some of the souvenir shops also sell postage stamps. Normally an overseas postcard costs almost as much as sending a letter.
Post offices are generally open from 8:00am to 7:00pm Monday through Friday, and 8:00am to noon on Saturdays. Apart from the basic job of mailing letters, most of the post offices do some banking activities also and some even have photocopy machines and cyber cafes for internet access.

External Links

• Official Governmental Website