I'm planning my first trip to Europe, and would like any advice on if it's doable and ideal. I think I want to take a train to each destination. My preliminary destination outline is below.
London: 3 days
Paris: 3 days
Venice: 2 days
Florence: 1 day (?)
Rome: 3 days
Should I cut anywhere out and spend more time in other destinations? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
My thoughts,
I agree with Steve. Many (not all) experienced travelers cut down on travel times in order to get more out of their limited vacation time.
While visiting many seperate cities in the shortest possible time seems like you are getting a lot out of your trip, you lose so much of your time to travel that you don't get to see much.
It's best to map it out and see what your actual schedule would be to get the point.
Am I training? What time does the train depart, how long will it take me to get up, pack, get showered and dressed, check out of the hotel, catch a ride to the station so I can make the train. When does the train arrive? How long will it take me to catch a ride to my lodging, check in, get settled, find something to eat so I can start seeing the area? If you are traveling by air, the same questions apply.
My technique is to keep my trips to a logical regional swath and keep travel times to a minimum. In this case, I would fly into Milan or Venice, see Venice 2 days, Florence 2 days, Rome 5 days and use the remaining days to stops between the three.
I like to keep London with it's own British Isles itinerary and Paris with either an all-France itinerary or coupled with Belgium and Netherlands.
Your sensible choices are pretty much:
London -- Paris
London -- Paris -- Rome
Italy
You can fly into London, train to Paris, and either fly home from there or fly to Rome then fly home. (Maybe train from Paris to Rome is cheaper/better/saves a hotel night?)
Any other grouping pretty much wastes too much time traveling or spreads you too thin in each spot.
Hello Colleen,
I would suggest a week in London, Eurostar to Paris for a week, Eurostar back to London to fly home. I am currently researching flying open-jaw SFO to London, Paris to SFO---the cost is several hundred dollars more than just round trip SFO to London. And Eurostar round trips are only a bit more than one way trips. Both United and Virgin Atlantic have fairly comfortable flights from SFO to London. Also, this schedule will allow you enough time to do some day trips out of the two cities to see a bit of the countryside. If you want day trip suggestions, send me a PM.
Agreed with everyone. For a first trip this is certainly trying to work in too many places that are too far apart.
Your time in transit will eat into your sight-seeing far too much.
If you just want to have lots of desitnations, pick an 'end of Europe' with more cities closer together and hopscotch those. For example, doing London-3, Paris-3, Belgium-3, Amsterdam-3 makes more sense than your trip, as all those train rides are much shorter. On the other end of the continent you could prospectively do 2-weeks mixing Italy and Switzerland.
Either way -- you will want to simplify some.
Thank you all for your responses! This website and helpline are wonderful!
I'm going to look into flying into London, Eurostar to Paris, then flying (or an overnight train) from Paris to Rome... I know I should save Italy for a trip on it's own, but I really want to visit Rome on this trip.
I bought Rick Steve's Best of Europe 2010 book, but it's still a bit overwhelming (but thoroughly enjoyable) to delve into. I'm going to purchase the Europe Through the Back Door book as well.
I forwarded all of these responses to my husband and in-laws, and we're going to go over our options and will let everyone know our preliminary itinerary once we officially narrow cities down and add specific travel times. Thanks everyone again for being so helpful!
Colleen - We're going on our first Europe trip in April - mine is a little set in stone as part of it is an ice skating competition. But, from reading the guide books and asking questions here. This is the plan.
fly from Chicago to London
London 2 days - eurotunnel to Paris
Paris 3 days
- train to Toulouse (the competition)
Toulouse 2 days
drive to Cinque Terre - Italy 2 days
Florence 1 day
Rome 4 days
Hope this helps
Chris
We did our first trip over the summer. London 5 nights, Paris 4 nights and Rome for 5 nights. We rode the Eurostar to Paris and flew to Rome from there. When planning your trip, keep in mind the time traveling from one city to the next. Allow time to check out of hotel, enough time in case you get lost, check in and security, travel time, time finding hotel, check in. We allowed a full day just to travel from city to city. Its time consuming and can be mentally draining. Sure getting off the Eurostar, the metro into the city is close and easy to find, but dealing with the line, finally getting to window and women will only take exact change. Sorry, just arrived into your country, no change.It took a good hour just to get tickets to ride metro. I am sure there are machines to get tickets, but followed the crowd to metro tickets. With only 12 days, I would cut to only three cities. I never traveled Paris to Venice on a train, that has to be a long trip. I didn't see much from train window. Within 5 minutes pulling out of London, the motion of the train knocked me out, slept like a baby until some women screamed "France!" as we exited the chunnel. I would personaly do: London 4 nights, Paris 4 nights, Rome 4 nights. There is so much to do and see in each.
