EDI-London-Paris in 10-11 days

"I've read everything from that much in 10-11 days is way too much to that's a perfect amount of time (...) My gut inclination tells me this is too much cramming all this in.. and that maybe we should just do London and surrounds and Paris this time, and try for Scotland another day. "

Hi Caller9,

Trust your gut on this one: 11 days is barely enough time for London and Paris. In fact, my first jaunt overseas was 14 days and I just had enough time for Paris and London as it was. Scotland isn't going anywhere, so you'll be able to visit it sometime in the future.

Remember, you've got your arrival day and departure day, so you're really only looking at 9 days total. You'd be better off flying into LHR, enjoying London for 5 days, then taking the train to Paris and flying home out of CDG (like you suggested).

-- Mike Beebe

Your gut instinct is right. cut Edinburgh or Paris.
You know That train takes about 6 hours to reach London from Edinburgh. It was cheaper and quicker to fly in my case.
Your London stay is too short considering the daytrips you planned.
Buy that Eurostar ticket a soon as possible the tickets get expensive the longer you wait, showing $61 one way for April 1 currently

This is alot of travel for only a short period of time. I would leave out Edinburgh as you are really there only two days and one of them you will still be jet lagged. Then you are spending most of a day checking out/in of hotels and taking train to London which could be tiring. That means you have only Tues and Wed in London. Anything extra you get done on a travel day is a bonus. Just checking out of a hotel, transferring to train or air, then transferring to hotel at destination and checking in take up most of the day. And with so much to see and do in London, you won't have time for a day trip to the Cotswolds. You could maybe see the highlights of Paris in 3 days with careful planning, but be sure to check which sites are closed on which days. I am 73 and have been traveling to Europe for 35 years, particularly in Great Britain and France and Italy; For your cost estimate can you provide a $ range estimate as London and Paris are expensive cities. As you probably know, flights and hotels will be the major costs. Yes, there are biking tours, but those aren't as much fun in big cities so I would suggest walking tours. For an example look at London Walks. They have a large variety walks and are reasonably priced. I was last in Paris in 2016 and remember there were lots of docking stations with bikes to rent around. I don't remember that in London, but there was so much construction going on in 2016 they might have been as noticeable.

Another advantage of dropping Edinburgh is there are lots of direct, nonstop flights from Chicago to Heathrow.

Mid April is Easter school holidays, so transport and accommodation will be busy and expensive. You may not want a schedule, but if you want to see some of the major sites, you will need to get tickets in advance, particularly during school holidays.

The others are right - you need to drop Edinburgh or Paris or extend your stay. You will lose the first day with jet lag and your last will just be getting to the airport, so you have 9 days.

You would have to leave your hotel in Edinburgh by 6.30am to be in London by noon.

London and Paris ideally need a minimum of 5 full days each to just scratch the surface of the main attractions without undertaking any day trips, so on that basis, I would opt for London and Edinburgh and cover Paris in another trip.

Oh, gosh, yes. I agree with the others. Drop one city. I'd personally drop Edinburgh and do London and Paris with the Eurostar connection between them. I've traveled from London to both locations and yep, the train trip to Edinburgh was longer and less comfortable.

I'm not one that suffers from travel burn out (well, I haven't burned out with trips of 8 weeks so I don't actually know if I have a limit) but I think you increase your chances for it the more you move around. For 5-6 nights in each big city, with some day trips, you are just scratching the surface. You are just learning the transportation systems and where things are located around your hotels. You will also have time to poke around some of the smaller side streets in your area.

I am a museum person so for Paris I always get the Paris Museum Pass. I love the unlimited visits. You don't bypass the security line in any museum but you do bypass the ticket line. It allows you to do several shorter visits to the big museums - for instance I've learned not to stay in the Louvre for more than 2-3 hours. I can go for a visit, leave for lunch and come back the next day for another part of the museum. No need to buy it ahead - it's very easy to purchase there.

http://en.parismuseumpass.com/

For London, many of the big museums are free, or actually free but they ask for a donation.

Take a look at London Walks for city walks and day trips (www.walks.com) and Paris Walks for city walks (www.paris-walks.com ).

I'm not sure when Jazz+Travels was in the UK, but currently the Edinburgh-London trains take 4 h & 20 min if you catch one of the East Coast trains that don't stop south of York. The stopping ones are 20 minutes slower.

To arrive at noon in London, there is a train which arrives at 11:49.

That leaves Edinburgh Waverley at 7:30, calling at Berwick-upon-Tweed, Newcastle, Darlington and York on the way into London Kings Cross.

That 4:19 time centre to centre is faster than you can fly.

Sounds like an early breakfast to me.

If you leave London St Pancras in the late afternoon for a Eurostar train trip to Paris Gare du Nord, you get there later than you think because you lose an hour of time zone.

The 17:01 (1 minute after 5 pm) arrives at 20:17 (8:17 pm) for example.

Don't forget that you need to check in to Eurostar about an hour ahead, given that Brexit doesn't drop us off a cliff, so that you can clear security, British exit Border formalities and French entry Border formalities.

My experience is that if my gut tells me something it is probably right, more times than not.

but don't want a schedule of any kind. NO buses.

I've just gone back and seen this again. If you want a day tour of the Cotswold area it will - almost certainly - be by bus. Maybe a little bus, maybe a big bus, but unless you want all the hassle of renting a car for a day and figuring out the single lane roads and farm tracks and driving on the left, it will be a bus. Sorry.

Thank you so much to all who have jumped in to help; your advice and recommendations are spot on and, fun to read. I hope to read more.

The consensus seems to be, do two cities..not three. (Or make the trip longer!) So, I'm thinking we will drop Scotland. We definitely want Paris, which leaves one of the other two, and I think England deserves to be first. I should have known the train from Edinburgh is a longer trip than I had read. And, while I said NO BUSES, of course, we probably will have to do that on little day trips..and that's fine. I guess I mean there's no way I'm spending 10-11 days getting on and off buses all day. And I've driven in Ireland and am not interested in driving on the wrong side again. Get this..the very FIRST ROUNDABOUT I had EVER driven on was within the first few minutes of our drive many years ago, 2006 I believe...in a rental... from Shannon Airport to Killarney. Wrong side of car, going the opposite way in the roundabout..my head almost exploded, But, thankfully I quickly caught on.

A new question to pose: which touring/travel agencies do you all seem to like? There are SO many, it's head spinning. I tried putting the "trip" together using Expedia just to give me an idea of cost, the hotels, etc....wow. I hope it's less going thru some travel service, or we might just be going to one city!

Thanks again to all.

Well, I don't use travel agents and I'd wager most of the regulars who post here don't either. Both of your destinations are very easy to book on your own.

Get on your airline website of choice for flights from Chicago and start pricing them. I have no idea what air fares from Chicago might be but I'd start with a mental figure of $1,500 and you can probably get it for much less. I fly from an end-of-the-line airport with limited service so I know my fares are premium because of that.

I'd also get the RS guide books for England and Paris and take a look at some of his hotel suggestions. It's plenty easy to book your hotels via internet. Make sure you check whether the rate is refundable or not. I prefer to pay a bit more and book a refundable rate. After looking at hotels in the guidebooks and then checking them out online, if you can't decide, post a question here on the ones you've narrowed down to. You do need to do some footwork first.

As far as hotel costs, the hotels I usually stay at in London and Paris during that time frame for 2 are around 150GBP and 150EUR per night with breakfast. It helps to start thinking in the local currency instead of US Dollars.

Bike Tours:

Bike About Tours, http://www.bikeabouttours.com, within Paris and Versailles

Fat Tire Tours, https://www.fattiretours.com, London & Paris

Walking Tours:

Paris, http://www.paris-walks.com/index_m.html

London, http://www.walks.com

No need for a travel company. Get yourself a good travel book, Rick Steves Europe or Country/CIty specific, or any other travel companies.
I prefer booking my flights directly with the airline, that way if there is any issue I am not going through a third party. But you can scan for prices & routes through Expedia, Skyscanner, Google Flights and such.
As for hotels, Rick Steves books will have a listing. Another good site is www.booking.com, you can select 1 - 4 Star Hotel, breakfast included & other amenities that you want to narrow the search down. Then book directly with the hotel. I always choose a hotel near a decent transportation point (Metro/Subway/Tube Station) and within the city I am visiting.

We did all 3 of your locations you listed (plus York and the Cotswolds) this past June on a 3 week trip. I agree with the others that you should probably save Edinburgh for another trip. The Eurostar to Paris was very easy - book tickets well in advance for the cheapest prices. Sometimes they have sales too. You can sign up for emails from them to be notified.

We planned everything ourselves with no travel agent. I think you'll be fine. In fact, we're traveling back to London this spring break with my parents who will be visiting there for the first time. We just bought our non-stop round trip tickets from Chicago to LHR for less than $900/person.

Pam is right - most of us on this forum are do-it-yourself planners and bookers. If you're not, there are certainly various tour companies that will offer a London and Paris combo. If you want to see some options and get some ideas of what escorted tours will look like, look at Gate 1 (midrange) https://www.gate1travel.com/europe/france/2018/independent/london-paris-rail-8dlonparrw18.aspx and Tauck (high end) http://www.tauck.com/tours/europe-tours/great-britain-and-ireland-tours/london-tour-wl-2019.aspx. Note that you can add days to any package, if you wish.

If you want to do it yourself, here are the steps:

Look at airfare into London and out of Paris, as well as the reverse, for your travel dates. To do this, use the "multiple destinations" or "multi city function on Kayak, Google Flights, Matrix ITA, etc. For various reasons, it may be cheaper to do it a day earlier, or to fly in one direction or the other.

Once you have your flight dates, figure out how many NIGHTS you will be spending in each city. Then, book a Eurostar ("Chunnel") train between the cities. These trains start out affordable if you book far in advance and can accept non-refundable and non-exchangeable tickets, but become very expensive at the last minute. They go on sale 180 days in advance, so the cheapest tickets for April will already be gone for the most popular times, but you should still be able to get something reasonable. Remember Nigel's point that you need to get to the station 1 hour before departure.

Next, book hotels. To find these, look at Rick's books as well as other sources. If you want specific hotel recommendations from this forum, be sure to indicate a budget in actual currency ("moderate price" means different things to different people, whereas "€120-150 per night" is something people can work with). More and more hotels have discounts if you're willing to prepay the whole stay and have it be non-refundable. Just make sure you fully understand the cancellation policy of any hotel you book, BEFORE you make the booking.

That's it. Once you've got flights, hotels, and the Eurostar, you can fill in the rest of the trip between now and April. You're all set!