Help me pick a destination!

Nice, France, perhaps. Very beachy and close to Nice airport.
Easy jet flies out to London.

Start by looking at the wiki page for each airport. Toward the bottom you'll see a table listing all the airlines and destinations. Find the destinations you can get to from Geneva, see which ones match up with either AMS or LHR.

Beaches - any country with a Med coast, or just about any island - Sicily, Sardinia, Malta, Cyprus. See what pops up and then come back with your short list.

Mallorca would be my choice.
Some cultural sights, good beaches, nice countryside, great food, plus nightlife too.

Crete is fantastic! I was there 2 years ago, after visiting Athens, Naxos, Santorini, and lastly Crete. I loved every one of those stops, for different reasons, but unexpectedly really fell in love with Crete. It still seems a little wild and untamed, from a nature perspective. The cities and people were helpful and nice, they were not wild . I can hardly wait to go back again and spend more time on the island than the 3 or 4 days I was there.

What time of the year do you plan on going? I was there end of May and beginning of June and the crowds had not set in yet, and it was warm enough to go to the beach for us Mid - Atlantic folks. Although I suspect that even in July-August it won't be as crowded as Santorini, for example.

I think there are some really fabulous beaches on the eastern part of the island that I would look into. We went from the center to the western part, and we could see great beaches that families were going to right off the main highway. We did not do any beaches on Crete because we ended up going to the hospital for our respiratory infections we were fighting and ended up relaxing at our gorgeous hotel pool instead.

I would suspect you could fly into Heraklion and get a rental car or a bus from Heraklion. I found it very easy to drive there, and I was impressed with the bus service to the Chania airport from the main part of the city where we had to turn in our rental car. Looked like there was a pretty decent bus system on the island, based on what I saw at the bus station.

Beaches in Greece are fantastic! I didn't want to originally go to Greece but my adult daughter suggested that instead of going to Amsterdam as I offered. Never regretted that decision and now can't wait to go back!

Frannie

Thanks to all for the suggestions!

That is quite the endorsement for Crete, Frannie! I think if we can make that happen we will do it. I was worried it might be super busy, but that is good to hear that it was less busy than other destinations.

We took an olive oil tour a couple years ago and our expert said that Crete was the best destination for vegans, and truffles, so I was leaning that way anyway :-)

Switzerland is a great country to visit, but be aware that it is one of the most expensive in Europe. I particularly like the area in central Switzerland around Interlakken.

Not sure where you live, but if it is North America, you can save a lot of money going to the beach in Mexico instead of Europe. If you just want to relax and not take in the sights, enjoy the history, culture and art, why go to Europe?

If you really want a nice beach, the Greek Islands beat the heck out of the South of France or Italy.

Still, Monaco, Nice, etc. is great to visit for the sights.

@geovagriffith

Thanks for the heads up - we are using free night certificates/hotel points/travel credit-redeemable points for all our hotel nights, so we will be OK for that week.

Switzerland is officially planned, so it would be a long trip to Mexico from there :-) That's why we're looking for beaches we can fly to from Geneva, which is our last stop in Switzerland.

I think we may have luck with an Easyjet flight to Sardinia and then maybe Madrid for an Iberia flight home (doing Avios flights on the way back).

Really want to go to Greece but I think the lack/sporadic scheduling of flights is going to be a killer on the tight schedule. Might save it for next time...

Greece is better when you have more time.

My husband and I are also planning a 2 week trip to Europe this summer and would like to go to Switzerland for part of the time. Can you share any places you're planning to go and things you're planning to do while you're there for 8 days?

Thanks!

hi chrissiesydness -

Honestly, our route planning is a little odder than most - our building lets us pay our rent with a credit card, so we do that all year and spend our bonuses on travel. So partly we let the points dictate where we go, which works basically fine because there are so many place I want to go that it actually helps make decisions!

That said, our rough outline right now is 2 nights in Zurich (we are flying in there, plus it's got the world's oldest vegetarian restaurant), 2-3 nights in Bern, 3-4 nights in Gimmelwald, and 2 nights in Montreux. I think that's 1 day too many actually...but as I said, just an outline right now.

I like water-related activities in the summer so I loved the idea of enjoying the river in Bern. The Menuhin festival is also going on in Gstaad around when we are going so we might lose a night in Bern to go to a concert or 2 there. Gimmelwald mostly for hiking in the middle of nowhere, and then we are 2 nights in Montreux MOSTLY because I've got certificates for 2 free nights in a suite at a fancy hotel, which we thought would be nice after all that hiking, ha.

Mostly we picked Switzerland for the week because 1) I wanted to see the Alps, and 2) I'm guilty of schlepping us around on incredibly ambitious itineraries, so sticking to 2 countries in 2 weeks seemed like a good idea.

@acraven,

agreed...I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to justify 6-8 hours on either end of those 6 days, and I think we are better off when we can do short stops and see what we want to see. I also would really like to go to Ikaria for the food festival at some point, so makes sense to save Crete for another time when we can at least do both of those.

Hello sporkynoodles. I suggest Corsica, if you can get an airline flight from Geneva to Corsica. Corsica is an island of France. Corsica has the best beaches in France.

Hi Ron,

Do you think beaches in Corsica will be more busy than Sardinia or Sicily overall?

To me, Sicily is a bit like Greece in that there's so much to see (and such a variety of places to go) that it's not a good choice for just a few days. I haven't been to Corsica or Sardinia so can't rally compare, but I know at least one person here has said that the beaches are a big part of why one might go to Sardinia.

ok here's one - i'm vegetarian/mostly vegan and we both love olive oil. we were told on an olive oil tour in italy that crete is the best place for vegans and has great olive oil so that was part of the reason we wanted to go. of corsica/sicily/sardinia/mallorca, any one stick out more food-wise for us? on the last, i had a tough time eating in madrid but i've since heard people say it is a more meat-heavy city than even other parts of spain.

I found Spain as a whole much more meat-centric (and in some areas seafood-centric) than Italy as a whole. I was last in Greece over 20 years ago, so I don't have current information about the food situation there. I have no opinion about the relative quality of the olive oil produced in the various areas around the Mediterranean. I do not believe, however, that anyone has ever said that the food in Greece was as good as Italy's. Quite the contrary.

I think it is difficult for someone not a vegan to judge how easily a vegan could manage to eat happily in a given area. There is no shortage of good vegetables in either Italy or Greece, but I'm not sure how readily available you would find alternative sources of protein (bean and lentils?). In my (non-current) experience only a limited number of options can be expected in the basic sort of restaurants one encounters in Greece, though the situation was better at more up-market places, including hotel restaurants. It used to be common to see rather long menus posted outside simple spots, but when you went inside it turned out that only a very few things were actually available.

Sicily's food is quite varied and noticeably different from what you'd find on the mainland. Whether that would be helpful to you or not, I am not sure. You might try Googling "Sicilian food" to see what information pops up.

I think this would be worth starting a separate thread with a title like "Vegan Options in Sicily vs. Sardinia vs. Corsica".

great idea acraven! our main focus was getting somewhere quickly and easily, but all other things being equal, food is usually the tie-breaking factor for us.