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Itinerary help needed - France/Italy trip, 3 weeks

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We will be traveling to Paris in July with our 14 year old daughter and will fly out of Rome three weeks later.

We love museums and are foodies. Moderate history buffs, would love to see some ruins. Our daughter would prefer to hike, explore the outdoors, swim, see beautiful cities and grand vistas; will enjoy museums with limits. She'll love Paris but does expect some swimming, especially since it will be hot. Grand castles, yet, but not Versaille--it just sounds way too crowded.

We keep getting stuck because we want to do too much. But we also want to relax and enjoy and need to develop a reasonable itinerary with connections, etc. We'd like to mix up taking high speed trains with driving; would love to see Provence; very interested in the Calanques, Camargue, Collioure/Carcassonne, Gorge du Verdon.

So, suggestions about France are most welcome, but I think Italy is even more challenging. We could fly to Venice and work our way down from there, spend time exploring Tuscany whether by car or train, maybe an agriturismo with a pool if we can still find one on airbnb. It's hard to skip places like Cinque Terre and Praiano --can you help us make these difficult choices? Thanks all!

Posted by
4 posts

p.s. Not counting our arrival and departure dates, we could spend 9 days in France, 12 days in Italy.
Disneyland Paris is a distinct possibility.
We already booked 2 days in Corniglia but we could cancel--they are weekdays, so we're hoping it will be a little more quiet than the rest of CT.

Posted by
11726 posts

If you are talking about July 2018, you need to be at warp factor 5 in nailing down reservations, not still in the 'where should we go' stage of planning.

Good luck

Italy is wonderful where ever you end up. I am still looking forward to going to France

Posted by
3398 posts

I would suggest getting out a map, marking all of the places you list above, and then see what interesting places are in between. You are waiting until the 11th hour to put this together. You won't be able to be choosy about lodging at this point. I, personally, would look at lodging on booking.com. They have the widest variety of lodging from hotels, to guest houses, apartments, convents, etc.
Castles near Paris - I would suggest Vaux le Vicomte. Check out their candlelight evenings - spectacular!

Posted by
4 posts

Anita, thank you for the suggestion of the candlelit evenings! That looks like an hour's drive from Paris, but we won't have a car at that point. Any idea how long by train?

Yes, I'm aware that time is short. Our place in Paris is booked, fortunately, and I like what I'm seeing in Arles or nearby. But after Arles-- we could go west, see a Medieval city, then fly to Italy from Barcelona; or go east, sightsee on the Riviera, and fly to Italy from Marseilles (or save the beaches for Italy).

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