We would like to travel to 4 different major cities in one trip to Europe.
They are Rome, Paris, Madrid, and Krakow. We would like to unpack once and spend about a week in each city.
You have tours for Rome and Paris like this, but not Madrid and Krakow. Will you be, by chance, adding them to a tour schedule? Or how about a major city only tour?
Thanks,
Rick and Paula
Hi Rick and Paula and welcome to the RS forum. This forum is not monitored by Rick although occasionally his staff members check in. Mostly the replies are peer-to-peer. Many of us have taken his tours, others have used his guide books for independent travel.
He's never had city tours to either of those locations so I'm guessing they are not in the cards for now. His big multi-country tour, the 21 day Best of Europe includes Rome and Paris but not Madrid and Krakow. Both of those cities are covered on other tours but not combined with Rome and Paris.
When are you planning to travel? If it's spring I'd start in the hot countries and move north. If it's Fall, I'd start north and move south. You have 4 rather disparate locations so probably best to fly between them.
Your question will not be viewed by Rick Steves Tour staff. This is a forum for specific travel questions with answers provided by other experienced travelers.
It's easy enough to do city stays on your own. I've done city stays of from 6 days to 30 days and I agree that it's nice to unpack once in a place and explore the area on day trips or day tours. With the cities you want to include in this one trip you would have to be sure that in addition to the week in each you allow for a whole day's travel between each base city. It's certainly possible to take trains from Madrid to Paris, and Paris to Rome but they are each about 10 hour trips so flying would probably be the choice for most people. I usually limit my train rides to 6 hrs or less but I've been known to take long train journeys like this because I hate flying and I hate airports. However in this case you most likely have to fly from whatever city you're currently in to Krakow as there are no logical train connections between them.
Logical itinerary would be to fly into Madrid, then Paris, then Rome, then Krakow and fly home from Karkow - or the reverse. If I had the time and the funds and those were the cities I wanted to visit I'd do it.
It would take some research and planning but certainly doable independently. Unfortunately, you'll never find a tour of any kind that would do all four cities on one tour. You could possibly search for custom tours but the cost may be prohibitive.
Good advice above about sequencing the cities for weather and/or transportation efficiency. If you're considering the RS tours of Rome and Paris, that might also affect the sequencing. If you haven't spent much time in European cities, you might want to start with one of the tours for a little "hand holding" before tackling another city on your own. Or you might want to start with a city on your own, then move to one of the RS tour cities for relief from having to do it all yourselves. I remember flying to Budapest, spending a few enjoyable days there on our own, and feeling the relief when we got on a boat for a Danube cruise where everything was taken care of. We're all different and we don't always know how travel works for us until we do it. Hope this is a great trip for you.
