In April my husband and I went on something of a whirlwind trip of Europe. As part of this trip, I first flew Air France Business Class from New York-JFK to Paris, having used the JFK Terminal 1 VIP ONE Lounge to pass through security, having used the Air France Lounge in JFK Terminal 1 for a bite, relaxation and a lovely facial, and then flew over to Paris in the kind of worn but still comfy business class seat of Air France’s Boeing 777-300ER. The service was great and the food tasty, so I arrived in Paris about half an hour before schedule, very pleased with the flight.

For the next leg of my trip, I’d be flying Air France Business Class on one of their A320 aircraft to Lyon, but before I’d board that flight, I was able to visit the Air France Lounge at Paris’s Charles-de-Gaulle airport Terminal 2F, which is the Shengen terminal at the airport. As such, I’d be visiting the Air France lounge dedicated to intra-Europe flights, or at least, those within the Shengen zone (which would exclude e.g. the UK, for instance).

Briefly, this lounge is great… My impression was that it can get crowded at peak times, but the design of this lounge is just beautiful, and of course this being France, the food was lovely as well. I arrived during breakfast and stayed until lunch was served, and saw the menu change from croissants and other pastries, to sandwiches, various spreads, quiche and a variety of other foods. And, champagne! I would gladly come back to this lounge!

1. Entrance requirements
2. Hours and location
3. Seating and design
4. Food and drink
5. Restrooms, showers and Clarins Spa
6. Summary

Entrance requirements

Unlike some other Air France Lounges in Air France’s network, the Air France Lounge in Terminal 2F can only be accessed through:

• Business or first class ticket;
• Having Flying Blue Gold or up status;
• Or have SkyTeam Elite Plus status and flying with a SkyTeam airline, in line with SkyTeam lounge access rules.

Note that as a SkyTeam Elite Plus, you’d also need to be ticketed on an itinerary on SkyTeam airlines that includes at last one international destination (which, within Europe, would probably include 90% of the itineraries from CDG).

Hours and location

The lounge is open from 5:30AM to 10PM every day, which covers most if not all Air France departures from CDG Terminal 2F.

The lounge is located in-between the two piers of Terminal 2F. After passing through security, you should be able to see signs to ‘Salon’ (Lounge) and follow them in the appropriate direction. If you’re coming from the fast-track security, you’d turn right, while if you come from the normal security lanes, you’d probably turn left.

Ultimately you’ll get to the front entrance of the lounge, which looks architecturally quite interesting.

As you step in, you’ll find yourself in funnel-like hallway that gradually narrows the further you walk through it. The bright Air France red of the carpet and columns to the sides are quite enthralling and make for a royal entrance…

Finally you found yourself in something of a lobby, with a beautiful, rounded balcony adding height to the entrance, and a stunning mesh-like wall separating the lobby from the space on the other side. The gates are fully automatic, but should you have any trouble, there are attendants that I saw springing into action if there were any issues. Truly, this is a beautiful entrance like I ever saw, if a little bit cramped. But it would turn out this was only the start to one of the most beautiful lounges I have visited so far.

Seating and design

As you progress past the entrance, you enter the first of a series of spaces. The overall shape of the lounge is that of a T, and the lobby and this first space are at in the base of the T. Already here the lounge has a gorgeous design. While you cna walk uninterupted on either side, in the center is a variety of seating with couches, chairs and low tables. Drinks can be had from a drink station, and beautiful tables hanging down from the ceiling. A central buffet table (one of several) is also placed here.

Keep walking towards the curved windows at the far end of the lounge and you’ll bump into more of these beautiful suspended bars, this time with a variety of liquor. Here you’re also getting to where the tow arms of the T come together, and you can turn either left or right to find more seating, buffets and drink stations.

I’m skipping ahead a little in terms of the photos, but it’s honestly hard to capture this place in photographs. The below photograph perhaps best showcases the sheer beauty of this lounge. The archetuzture is truly something else and I think you’d be hard pressed to find something mroe tasteful.

I believe this is the most beautiful lounge I’ve visited so far. The design of the lounge is truly gorgeous. Above all, it is elegant due to its simplicity – in colors, in shapes. The design manages to be elevate not because of opulence – quite contrary! And that’s what I find to be so beautiful: it is in its simplicity that the lounge is truly elegant. Less is more, as they say, and to me, that’s the strength of this design.

The huge, curved windows provide a fantastic view of the apron, with in the distance one of CDG’s main runways, and spread over two floors, a central, monumental stair case connects and strings together the spaces with such ease and flawlessness… I realize my writing is bordering the poetic, but no, I’m not drunk. I really find the lounge to be that beautiful.

Back to where we were – the ground floor of the lounge. Here, next to the staircase, is a variety of seating, from lounge chairs, to couches, with small, low tables that offer a comfortable way to lounge and relax. Best of course is to face the gorgeous, curved windows. If you sit here it’s as if you’re sitting ina. greenhouse, because the curved glass hoes up and over you, so you’re really sitting beneath the sky. It’s a lovely experience!

A little further along the windows there are couches with a bit of a taller backrest, while on the other side of the pathway there is more of na restaurant style seating. This part of the lounge is not as nice and airy as the parts along the windows, but it is a lot more comfortable for eating.

On the far end of this ‘arm’ of the T is something of a bistro counter. I got the impression that you could order some light foods, though I didn’t see an actual menu. People seemed to mostly order various drinks. While I was here (at around 11AM) there was nobody actually sitting at the counter though, but people were sitting over at the tabes. The tables on the other side of the counter are along a range of windows that give lovely views of the tarmac.

Looping back and going the other direction, past the stairs, you enter an area with additional seating. To the left was also something of a literature wall with magazines that you could pick up and read. Again, isn’t the stair case so pretty?

Past the staircase, there are two kinds of lounge-style seating. Either bigger swivel chairs with low, round tables, and fixed, low chairs with side tables and lamps. These look simple but are very nicely thought out, as they have USB and electricity plugs so you can comfortable charge your electronics, use the table and have a light all in one piece of furniture (that’s also nicely designed).

On the wall, there are comfortable couches with small tables. I like there are partitions so that one can sit on the couch and still maintain some privacy. Though I do wish the partitions looked a little less boring.

On the far end of this part of the lounge is more seating of various kinds, including some lounge chairs, restaurant-style chairs and tables, and another buffet and drink station. This part of the lounge was somehow a little more quiet than the rest of the lounge.

Continuing past the buffet are two quiet areas. On the right is a space intended as ‘instant relaxation area’, while on the left are a series of darkened rooms intended as nap rooms. These spaces are meant to be quiet zones and much to my pleasure it was kept pretty silent.

The quiet area is sort of themed as more broadly a ‘wellness area’, with a special buffet that includes fruits, juices and smoothies. With the dimmed lighting and frosted glass walls, it indeed felt ratehr relaxing and pleasant. I wonder if the glass walls helped in insulating from noise from other parts of the lounge, though there were signs posted asking for people to keep their voice down in this room as well. Seating was otherwise similar to the rest of the lounge, though.

So that’s essentially the extent of the bottom floor of the lounge. To get to the second floor, you can take an elevator or walk up the grand escalator. The steps are a little low, but I love how they loop around halfway, focusing your attention to the windows and the apron.

You arrive upstairs and your attention is immediately pulled along the curved windows. Also up here, you cna venture into three different directions. So as you come off the stairs, you cna go straight ahead, and take a seat at one of the couches or lounge stairs along these curved windows for fantastic views of the apron.

…or you can turn right and you’ll immediately bump into a buffet…

…or you can loop back and go tot he back of the lounge.

If you walk straight ahead, you’ll first come across a variety of different seating, though none that are particularly different from what’s elsewhere in the lounge. Really though, the seats along the windows are the best as they give fantastic views over the apron.

A little deeper into this part of the lounge is more restaurant-style seating with regular tables and chairs, but also a communal counter with high-top chairs.

In the back are more lounge chairs similar to what’s downstairs, and like at the bistro downstairs, the windows here give you more fantastic views of the apron. One thing I did notice was that this part of the lounge was quite a bit less busy than downstairs.

Looping back and then turning left past the buffet, is more lounge seating, high-top setaing at a counter, as well as a long couch. Strangely, people were sleeping here, taking up essentially all seating space… I was a little surprised this was allowed, especially given that nap rooms and relaxation areas are readily available.

Going back and then going to the other side of the lounge from the chairs, there’s more seating along the windows here, and this is where I ultimately sat down with some food. I love the fact that glass railings were installed, so that there’s nothing blocking your vie through the windows as you sit down. Any other railing would have certainly blocked your view, given the lower height of these lounge chairs.

Overall, this lounge is just gorgeous. The center piece is the curved balcony with the monumentla stair case that curves up, and the fantastic curved windows out front that provide beautiful views of the tarmac. Overall, I did prefer the top floor, as it was less crowded and th ceiling felt a little higher up there. But really, there’s efw place sin this lounge I wouldn’t want to sit at.

Food and drink

Around the lounge are multiple buffets, drink stations and bars of various kinds. I won’t provide photos of every single one, given that they all double up to some extent, so I will show you different pictures of the kinds of foods that were available. I’ll also add that when I got to the lounge, breakfast was being servedm, while around the time I left, breakfast was being replaced with lunch. At that point the champagne was also brought out, and attendants even walked around proactively offering champagne to guests. How nice is that??

Below you can see some of the food selection available for breakfast, which included various juices, cold cuts, (chocolate) croissants, buns and yoghurts. I did get the feeling that some foods had already sarted being cleared when I got here, given that there were some empty spots.

There were several drink stations, all with the same setup. All included a water dispenser, a hot drink machine for coffees and tea, and a fridge with various sodas, or beers. As you can see, not every station was quite as well-stocked as others.

And then there were separate bars with a selection of liquors. Later, as lunch was brought out, the champagne and wine was brought out as well. I thought it was interesting how these were not always put out, like in other lounges. Perhaps Air France feels quite strongly about the kind of drinks you are supposed to drink with certain meals?

I had mentioned the relaxation and quite areas on one end of the lounge, and here there was a buffet with a special selection of drinks, mostly including different fruit-infused waters and juices.

On the upper floor, the bar with liquors also had some baskets with chips and crackers.

And then as I mentioned, the wines and champagne came out at lunch time, at special areas with coolers for the wine:

The breakfast spreads were completely replaced with a wealth of beautiful salads, cheeses and ingrdients to make your own sandwiches.

And if you didn’t want to make a sandwich, there were several premade already, as well as some quiches, with or without pate on the inside. Colds cuts and various juices were also present, including tomato and orange juice.

So I went ahead and made myself one of my favorite things to eat in Paris: a sandwich with tuna, egg and pickle on a tiny baguette. And the croissant can’t be omitted, of course!

I thought the food was lovely at this lounge. I reckon it’s not a wealth of choice like there may be in other lounges, but I felt the quality was consistently good for the various dishes I tried. I will say that the French tradition was omni present in all choices, so it did occur to me that if you’d like something different (perhaps noodle soup, rice dishes, etc), you may be out of luck.

Restrooms, showers and Clarins Spa

The Air France lounge has a full Clarins spa, as in the Air France lounge in JFK’s terminal 1 and others. I didn’t go in since no bookings were available within the timeframe I had available to me, unfortunately. Other amenities include a changing room and nursery, a nap room and showers, all down the same hallway.

Turning left at the spa, you walk through a hallway with ‘instant relaxation’ and nap rooms on the left and right.

Looking into one, you’ll see curtained areas. I didn’t go in to check out exactly what the setup was, but there’d be beds to lay down for a while. The area was perfectly quiet, thanks to the carpeted floor and curtains that also serve to drown out the sounds.

Walking further along the halwayy there are a multitde of shower cubicles. I had a peak into the one that happened to be open right as it was being cleaned. Thus, I didn’t snap a picture, but found it was fairly comparable (though more modern and nicer) to the shower cubicle in the JFK T1 Air France Lounge, or the Amsterdam Airport KLM Lounge showers.

The restrooms are elsewhere in the lounge on both floors. Below picture is from the restroom on the upper floor. The dark blue walls that are also prevalent in the nap rooms and showers are also found in the restrooms, which I thought had an elegant feel to it. Each of the stalls had a toilet, and the restroom otherwise had two urinals in it as well.

Overall, I found that these amenities were thoughtfully designed, with nice features that both look good and work well. The Clarins spa is unfortunately rather overbooked it seems, though that wasn’t much a surprise for me, after seeing the popularity of the much smaller JFK T1 Air France Lounge.

Summary

Overall, I very much enjoyed my time in the Air France Lounge. This lounge is just gorgeous, a really beautiful space that is thought fully designed with a lot of natural light coming in through the beautiful curved windows. The monumental staircase to the upper level is a statement piece. I also found the food to be of good quality and I much enjoyed tasting my way around. The champagne service by the staff is a lovely touch. The Spa, if you can get an appointment, is a great feature, and the multiple nap rooms and showers give you a place to refresh. That said, I did get the feeling that the lounge can get very busy at peak times, though the lounge’s design and space never really gave me that feeling. I generally found that there was enough space to sit down, though it may not always be with a view. Overall, this lounge was a great place to spend time before my flight to Lyon – highly recommend!