Hello!
I was hoping to get some advice as my fiancée and I go about planning our honeymoon trip to Paris and Switzerland for April/May 2020. It would, of course, be only my wife and I. We’ve been to Paris about 10 years ago as college students, and were there for about 3 weeks. This is our first time trying to plan a major international trip on our own, though, so any advice would be much appreciated.
The general blueprint is this: 12 days total
- 1 travel day to get to Paris
- 6 days in Paris
- 1/2 travel day to Switzerland (not sure where exactly yet)
- 3 1/2 days in Switzerland
- 1 travel day back to the US
We have a budget of roughly $5000, although we can likely expand that a little bit. We’re pretty easy going and flexible with most things, but the two parts of the trip we don’t want to compromise on the quality are (1) the flight to Paris and (2) lodging. We would like the flight to have one stop or less without a significant layover. We also want to stay in comfortable, relatively nice hotels—3 or 4 stars.
In Paris, we plan on a fairly relaxed schedule—walking around, sitting in the parks and gardens, visiting just a few museums and churches. If we’re feeling up to it, we might also take a day trip somewhere, like Versailles. As I said, we’ve spent a good amount of time in Paris before, and in this trip we really just want to hit those places that we loved in our first visit.
After Paris, we would like to go to Switzerland although we’re not sure exactly where we would like to go. Ideally, we would stay in a city (Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, or Lucerne) and take a couple of day trips out into the Alps. We’ve heard mixed things about the weather in May. We’re not planning on doing any intense hiking, although the main thing we’d want to do is walk around the base of the Alps and sightsee. Is this feasible in May? What cities would you recommend? Or would it be better for us to stay in a smaller town than a big city?
We’ve also made a budget based off a general itinerary that looks like this:
Flight x 2 to Paris/from Switzerland: $2600 (Does this price seem right? We were hoping for cheaper flights. We have some flexibility on where we fly out of: Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, or New Orleans).
Lodging in Paris: $150/night, 7 nights: $1050
Taxis from airport to hotel/hotel to Gare de Lyon: $100
Paris metro pass x 2: $50
Paris museum pass x 2: $125
Train tickets: Paris to Switzerland: ~$150-$200
Lodging in Switzerland: $150-$200/night, 4 nights: $600-$800
Food: $600
At this budget, we figured the trip would cost about $5500. Are we misjudging the costs for any of the above? Any suggestions for where we might be able to cut some costs? I know that there might be a few small costs that are missing from the budget above, but are there any big items missing? Again, any advice is greatly appreciated.