With Aer Lingus not offering a lounge in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Terminal 1 for both AerSpace and their own AerClub members, we elected to try out the Extime Lounge for non-Schengen passengers, to while away the time leading up to departure.

The Extime Lounge can be booked online in advance (currently for about €95 per person, quite steep), or at the entrance for the rather less attractive €110 per person. Booking online was slightly bizarre in that you book, then it still insists on sending a follow-up ‘confirmation’ later on – so perhaps online bookings are manually evaluated against how busy the lounge is likely to be with airline passengers.

Unfortunately, and this was by far the biggest drawback of the lounge, we had very little time ultimately to spend there because of the extremely slow immigration and security processes at the airport. In fact, if there was one drawback that would make me question visiting this lounge – the uncertainty of how long I might get to spend there would be it.

Terminal 1 is decidedly vintage at this stage, with check-in and immigration housed in a large concrete bowl – before a not-insignificant trek out out to one of several ‘satellite’ buildings, where the gates are located.

Immigration for EU citizens has been entirely outsourced to eGates, while for non-EU citizens such as…one of us, we had to queue up for one of the two deeply disinterested guards. Mine, of course, suddenly took great personal interest in my passport, scanning it, asking for a picture, scratching his face repeatedly, then asking for fingerprints (which I’m not sure I need to provide as an EU citizen, but anyway), then a long wait.

Security, equally, had three lanes open – two together, and one at the far end of the concourse. Every second bag went for additional checking, with only one, sometimes two when they weren’t chatting amongst themselves, agents available to inspect the bags manually. It is certainly not an airport I would want as my home airport, that’s for sure.

Finding the lounge proved easy enough from security – with lifts to the end of the concourse on the left, ready and waiting.

From the top floor, there’s a well-signposted hallway down towards the lounge, where we were welcomed, check-in quite quickly (thankfully) with our boarding passes and the lounge confirmation e-mail I had.

Given the lounge serves what appears to be the big Middle Eastern carriers and a handful of others, and I presume this was not the time any of them had flights, I couldn’t believe our good luck – a completely empty lounge!

The lounge extends quite far out, either side of the reception area, with plenty of rows of seating – and a variety, including typical lounge armchairs, dining areas, and bar stools.

One of the nicest features of this lounge has to be the full-height floor-to-ceiling windows that run the full length of the lounge area, bringing in a lot of natural light and affording excellent views out over the airfield.

In terms of offerings, there were a number of Le Creuset casserole dishes with hot food offerings, and I helped myself initially to a small plate of rice and beef stew to line the stomach ahead of the several glasses of wine I tried to pack in with the 20-minutes or so we had to spend in the Extime lounge.

Aside from hot food, there were fresh fruit bowls dotted around the facility, as well as cold food options and pastries (of course!).

The adult beverage selection was as bountiful as I typically hope for with a selection of wines waiting for me in an ice bucket, as well as a comprehensive selection of spirits available to self-pour.

Soft drinks, tonics and mixers were all available from a fridge behind the alcohol selection, as well as a coffee machine.

There are also shower facilities, which we didn’t use, but the bathrooms were spotless if not a little on the small side for the number of guests the lounge seemed to be able to host.

After 2.5 glasses of wine and a few plates of food, we sadly had to leave – such a shame, but as I say, the inefficiency of the departure processes at CDG T1 being the one thing that would make reconsider pre-booking into the Extime lounge in future.

Overall, even if this lounge had been busier as opposed to completely empty, I’d still say it was right up there as one of the more relaxing, well-appointed spaces to while away some time, with plenty of food and beverage options to keep you well satiated.

Hopefully we’ll be back one day – with more time to spare!