We have returned from our first overseas travel since COVID – a cruise on the Seine River.
Before I post about all the marvelous aspects of our cruise – from Paris to Rouen and the Normandy beaches – here is an overview of our experience with COVID regulations and procedures for those who may be considering similar travel.
Preparations for our July 19, 2021, flight to France were more complicated than pre-pandemic, though not particularly difficult. Some systems that have been put in place to simplify the COVID public health paperwork still need to get the bugs out.
The fact that travel is still sparse is evidenced by the lack of passport lines in the above photo, as we prepared to leave France.
Regulations in France are changing even as I write this. Check the U.S. Embassy site and the Centers for Disease Control for the most up-to date information on travel to France.
First, if you want to travel overseas, get vaccinated – fully vaccinated. The definition of “fully” can vary by country. In the U.S., it’s two weeks past your final dose. In France, it’s two weeks past your second dose of the two-dose regimen but four weeks past the single-dose Johnson & Johnson.
As I write, France is allowing unvaccinated Americans in if they provide certified proof of a negative taken within 72 hours of entering the country, and a sworn statement saying that they have no symptoms or known exposure. However, I strongly urge everyone to get vaccinated unless there is a specific, serious health reason why they cannot. Vaccination protects everyone – especially those, such as transplant recipients, for whom the vaccine is ineffective
Our travel company for this trip, Viking Cruises, requires all passengers and crew to be vaccinated – and to take a COVID test every morning. Viking has installed PCR test labs on every ocean ship and has contracted with a lab at every river port. That is one reason that I felt it was as safe to travel with them in France as to go to the supermarket at home.
When you fly to France, you will need to bring your original vaccine certificate with you, but also take paper copies. We needed to show the original certificate when we checked in for our originating flight in Pittsburgh. My husband tried to give them a paper copy, and it was rejected. Fortunately, he had his original with him.
We showed the vaccine certificate again at passport control when we landed in France. Some tourist sites, such as Monet’s Gardens, the Louvre and the light show at the cathedral in Rouen, required a vaccine certificate for admission. They are inconsistent as to whether they require a paper copy or the original.
You will need more than your vaccine certificate, however.
Both Viking Cruises and American Airlines asked us to use the Verifly app to complete a pre-flight checklist of COVID documentation. We had to do it separately for the cruise line and the airline, but it stored our identification so the process was faster the second time around.
The app guides you through the process. You take a photo of yourself, enter your first and last names and your email address. Next you click either your destination, “A trip to France,” or your travel company, “A trip with Viking.”
Enter your flight or booking locator, passport number and upload your vaccination certificate. France required us to download, print and sign a paper declaration that we were symptom-free and had not (to our knowledge) been exposed to COVID recently.
It was easy. We were rewarded with a QR code that can be scanned at check in. But be sure to take your hard copies as backup.
Verifly worked perfectly with Viking, but failed with American. The Verifly app clearly stated that we were “ready to travel.” The American Airlines app (and website) didn’t recognize that we had even registered with Verifly and wouldn’t allow us to do mobile check-in.
“We are going to have problems at the airport,” I told my husband.
I was wrong.
We arrived at the airport four hours before departure, prepared for a bureaucratic nightmare. To our amazement, it was the fastest check-in we could remember.
When we stopped at the check-in kiosk, an eagle-eyed American Airlines agent spotted our passports and asked if we were headed overseas.
“Don’t bother with this,” she said of the kiosk. She waved us down to one of the lines and said, “they’ll take care of everything there.”
And so it was.
The only minor glitch was when my husband handed her a paper photocopy of his vaccine certificate. They needed to see the actual certificate – which he, fortunately, had in his wallet.
Get your certificate laminated and keep it with you.
Despite the horror stories in the news about unmasked passengers behaving badly, the people we saw in the Pittsburgh airport, the Dallas airport and on both flights were calm and compliant. During our Dallas layover we experienced new two health-related procedures.
While we waited, all passengers were required to fill out a contact tracing form for the French government. It had little squares for each letter of your answer and, in some sections, there were two few squares. It also wasn’t designed with cruises in mind. It asked for the name and address of the hotel where we would stay.
For hotel, I wrote “VIKING RADGR” and had to put the final letters of the ship’s name, “ID,” off to the side.
For address, I wrote “SHIP ON SEINE.”
At boarding, the airline staff took everyone’s photo – without a mask -- for French contact tracing.
At French customs we showed both our passports and our vaccination certificates. Although we spent some time in line, frequent French travelers told me the wait was far shorter than pre-COVID days.
Once we had picked up our luggage, a Viking host met us in the main corridor and took us to the van for an hour’s drive to the Viking Radgrid, which was moored near the Eiffel Tower.
As I write, France requires masks in all indoor spaces – including public transit, but not outdoors unless it’s a situation where social distancing is not possible (such as the Rouen Cathedral light show). However, crowds remain limited due to COVID. Our tour guides remarked on the startling absence of Asian tour groups, with whom Paris usually is a popular destination. We were among the few Americans on the streets or the rivers. I only saw four other cruise boats on the Seine during our 8-day trip.
The Rouen light show and some halls of the Louvre were the only places where we experienced something of a crowd, though a much smaller one than in pre-pandemic days. (Masking at the Louvre was enforced by staff; in Rouen, not so much.) Below are two scenes from the Louvre. The hall with paintings has the largest crowd we encountered. The nearly empty sculpture gallery was more typical of our experience -- and nothing like a typical Louvre experience.
Viking requires masks in all public areas of the ship, except when eating or drinking. Since we were eating or drinking a great deal of the time we are on board, mask observance by passengers (including me) was a bit spotty. The crew, however, was flawless.
Viking sought to keep is in a COVID “bubble,” although it was not sealed. For instance, when we visited the D-Day Museum at Arromanches on the Normandy Coast, the Viking group went in through what appeared to be an emergency exit from the outside, so that we were not standing in line with other passengers. But we sometimes mingled with the public in streets, shops and, on one walking tour, on the Metro.
The fact that Viking requires daily COVID testing (spit-in-the-tube variety) of all passengers, made it simple to get the test certification required for re-entry into the United States. Everyone on board received a copy of their test a day before departure.
We flew back on United Airlines, which has integrated a COVID-procedures process into its own app.
The United app will ask you to upload documents into its “Travel-Ready Center.” It was easy to take a picture and upload our negative test result certificates.
The difficult part of the United COVID process was scanning our passports. The instructions were confusing. The shape of the scan surface does not fit the shape of a passport, no matter how you turn it. A quick Google showed that is a common experience, and someone had posted a simple solution on TripAdvisor:
The scan window on your phone is divided into three rectangular areas of different dimensions. One of them is brighter than the others. Fill that entire window with the gray, coded strip at the bottom of the photo page on your passport. Then the camera will take the shot.
We completed the United app process with no glitches. But, when we got to the airport, no one asked to see my phone. They wanted paper documents. Make sure you have them.
In the rest of my posts from this trip I’ll write about the places we visited and our shipboard experience, but I wanted to get the word out about practical issues you may face with COVID travel.
Something that we found deeply moving throughout trip was the immense gratitude of French people at seeing American tourists back in France. This was exemplified in Charles de Gaulle Airport as we left to fly back to the United States. The terminal was a ghost town. No one was in line ahead of us at passport control.
When a young man who worked at security asked if we had been in France for business or pleasure, he looked thrilled when we said we had been on vacation. He exclaimed over how good it was to see travelers come back and said he hoped to see us again.
We assured him that he would.