England/France intinerary update and more questions

I'm curious about some of the abbreviations used by posters here. Maybe its because I have been away from the US for a lot of years and these abbreviations may be in general currency on TV or something. Christine here uses "dh". Does that mean designated husband?

Could be "dear husband." I think there is an element that thinks these abbreviations are cool, everyone understands and it carries a certain "with it" designation. Might understand if I thought someone was texting from an older model phone but from a computer - just lazy.

How does it feel to be an "element" Christine? Somebody didn't have their coffee before posting today.... Oh yeah, I almost forgot, LOL.

Do some of the Germany choices you listed-I think you have plenty of battlefields. What would you and your daughter enjoy seeing? While you are in your NOrmandy gite, you might enjoy taking some time to drive to Dinan and St. Malo-they aren't far from the D-Day beach area. (Edit note: And you don't need to apologize for using abbreviations like DH which are commonly used on many bulletin boards.)

Hi Christine- It seems like, from your current list, you're kind of heavy on the war history stuff (& possibly, on things not of great interest to 9-year old girls). You don't specifically say, but I'm guessing you're driving from Verdun to Baumholder? Why not spend a little time in the Mosel Valley area including Burg Eltz- favorite castle of Rick & a lot of folks? And/or, another poster on this site, Jo from Frankfurt, has a lot of interesting ideas on places to see in Frankfurt itself. Here's a link to that thread (copy & paste everything excep the quote marks): "http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/56626/germany-2011-itinerary.html"

I'm sorry on all of my homeschool boards and groups they say dh or dd ( dear daughter) or ds (dear son). I taught English and history in school, so I love the history stuff as well. We will definitely attend a Shakespeare play at the Globe. Also, we just spent the first 9 weeks of school studying pre to post WWI. This quarter we are studying WW II, so this is the ultimate field trip. I'll definitely look at the castles. My daughter would like that. She loves to sing and plays the violin, so we may try to attend a musical like Les Miserables that she loves in London. She goes with the flow. Christine

I havent attended a play at the Globe in London., but did do the tour- fascinating. If its not included in the program when you attend a play, I do suggest that you do that some time before the play. Interesting either to a Shakespeare or History buff. You could spend all two weeks in London and England visiting historic and historic battle sites alone

Christine, rent that car in Versailles if that's an option.

Let me caveat the car rental in Versailles. That was probably the biggest hiccup of our whole trip to France last year. Mistake #1: I thought the car rental place (Europcar) would be near the train station - wrong. It ended up being located quite a ways away. Mistake #2: I thought that a renowned site such as Versailles would have taxis everywhere - wrong again. After spending the day visiting Versailles, we came outside looking for a taxi and couldn't find one after 20 minutes despite crossing the street and standing in a designated taxi zone. Plenty of buses, but no taxis. Mistake #3: I then backtracked to the train station thinking surely there would be taxis there - nope. We then found a TI who said that a cab wouldn't have taken us anyway because the car rental place was "so close by." Well, after walking about a mile, I finally found it. It was a tiny office with their cars parked about two blocks away on a side street. Given all that - I would still rent in Versailles rather than Paris - just check out the location of your car rental place first.

Unless you've been to Paris before, I suggest that you skip Versailles and spend another day in Paris. It's not very difficult to drive OUT of Paris. Pick up a rental car at one of the outlets near Porte Maillot on the west side of Paris and head toward Normandy from there. There is a sizable fee for picking up a car in one country and dropping it off in another. You might find it cheaper to drop off the car you rent in France after you've finished visiting Verdun and then pick up a new car in Germany. Metz would be a good drop-off point and Saarbruecken would be a good pick-up point. Take a train from Metz to Saarbruecken.