Family of 6 - , London, Paris, Switzzerland

I made some suggestions for good apartment choices on your other thread. Ifyounwould rather do four-star hotels you will likely need two rooms. I'll repeat: VacationInParis forParis, Vancouver Studio apartment in London. You will have trouble finding a car for six peopleplusluggage, and you do NOT want a car in London or Paris anyway. The train connections between London andParis are excellent. It is the Eurostar train and will get you there quickly and comfortably. Things to do in London: Tower of London ( crown jewels), Buckingham Palace Changingof the guard, London Eye, walk thru Hyde Park, see a play, cruise the river to Greenwich to see the prime meridian, go to Windsor and walk along the river. For adventure take a train to the Cotswolds and walk from village to village. Paris: the Eiffel Tower, Versailles ( rent bikes and ride around, spend the whole day), art museums..... I am running out of ideas here because our girls that age liked London much better than Paris.

hi, you may want to p/u RS book "Europe travel through the back door". it covers alot of your basic questions. Itineary: This is a personal type of question. I dont know what you or your fam likes or dislikes. I would go online and google "things to do and see in (city)" and make a list, discuss it with all involved, and go from there. from there you can get a rough idea on how long you will need. Not that the time will be avialble. Travel to/from. I try to travel in some path where i dont backtrack or cross my path so that im spending less $$ doing it. That could also translate into time wasted. Sometimes circular paths work out, sometimes not. by the way, RS book covers transportation methods. In general and what i use, i try to keep my travel time by train to < 6 hours or less. If it gets longer, then i look at air travel for speed. I see it as, if my butt is warming a seat on a plane or train, im not pounding the ground seeing what i went there to see/do. you may see/feel different. The Train system in Europe puts ours to shame and they make it easy to dump the car. However, there can be places you will need one. I perfer NOT to drive, but leave that to someone else, while i kick back and relax. Lodging: once you figure out WHERE you want to go, then you can deterime WHERE you want to stay. there are several lodging web sites to be used. Booking.com is one of them. It has filters for cost, type of accomodations and such. It will also map them out for you too. again, RS book covers this item. happy trails.

When you start planning your itinerary take a look at Cynthia Harriman's book, Take your Kids to Europe. Her concept of each family member having a "Day to Choose" really worked for us, even when the boys were 9 and 12. Then work your itinerary around the "must sees". If they were my children I'd know that in London we're going to several Harry Potter-related sights. If your girls are readers look for the guidebook to sites featured in children's stories in Great Britain (I'm blanking on the name). I can't help you with hotels. We stayed in $$ hotels and accepted "rough edges" (such as no elevator or tiny rooms) to have more money for adventures and meals. I will say that spending more on hotels means you'll have larger rooms and the family members won't get on each other's nerves so much. Have a great time!

The book is Once Upon a Time in Great Britain by Melanie Wentz. You'll want to verify times and routes since it's over ten years old.