My husband and I loved our Best of Scotland and Heart of Italy tour with RS. We are scheduled for the Best of Ireland tour in September 2014. To celebrate my retirement, we plan to do the RS Best of Europe in 21 Days tour in April 2015. Once we end the Best of Europe in Paris, we want to extend the celebration with a second RS tour. Considering the Best of England but would love feedback on other options. Please note, we prefer to use the train system to connect the second tour opposed to flying out of Paris. Thank you in advance for your suggestions.
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16894 posts
Britain is an easy train connection, 2.5 hours Paris-London by Eurostar (those tickets go on sale several months in advance with better prices, probably in January for April). I would not repeat areas included on Best of Europe, but you could train to Berlin (8 - 9 hours with 1 connection by day, or a direct overnight train) to start Berlin, Prague, Vienna. You can also take a direct train from Paris to Barcelona or Bayonne to start one of the Spain tours.
Posted by
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA
14041 posts
I'm doing the 21 day this Sept and adding the Paris city tour on to that. I also belatedly realized it might be fun to do the Paris and the Heart of France tour as an add on, but I had already worked on other plans.
The Best of England sounds great as well, though. I have not done that one, but it starts in Bath. If the dates work out, I would make sure you get to Bath a few days early to see more than you would see in the full day on the tour you are in Bath. You can do a Mad Max tour from Bath to Stonehenge and Avebury which are not on Rick's tour.
Happy Retirement! (It's wonderful, BTW!)