London trip

I wouldn't want to do that on a first visit to London because there's so much to see and do in London itself. But there are frequent trains between Kings Cross station and York. The trip takes about two hours, so you could leave early in the morning and return in the evening, with enough time to see a few of York's highlights. A more satisfying visit to York would be at least two or three nights, but you don't have that kind of time -- unless you've already seen a lot of London on previous trips.

A visit back in 1999 included a short visit to London, then a train to Edinburgh for a couple days and nights, then a 2-day visit to York, on the way back to London for the flight home. Not a long time anywhere, and not how my trips go now, but you could squeeze in York, especially since you’re not trying to fit in Scotland, too! We didn’t have time in York to go to Betty’s Cafe Tea Room, so that remains on the York Bucket List, even 21 years later . . .

You certainly can do that. I did. York is very much worth it.

York is 2 hours from London by train, so at least 3 hours door to door from your accommodation, so yes it’s possible. That’s 6 hours return. As to whether it’s the best use of your time when you only have 5 days in London ......

If you have been to London many times, then take 2 nights for York, as there’s enough there to keep you occupied for 2 full days. If it’s your first time in London, stick to London.

Is this part of your planned 6-week tour of Medieval cities? If so I might slow down, change locations fewer times and see things in depth a bit more. If it’s part of the 6 weeks, I’d add time to England and do the 2 nights in York.

Your travel style might be different from mine, though.

Editing to add: I looked back at your other threads. I’ll go out on a limb and say this forum works best if we have some interaction back from you. On your first thread you listed a bunch of cities, got input from several folks but haven’t updated you thoughts on there yet. There very experienced travelers here but the help is limited if we don’t know if we’re on target or not with suggestions.

Having been to London many times and York once I completely agree with Jennifer.

I will be 65 and my wife 59 when we take this trip.
We will have just retired as school teachers. This will be our once in a lifetime adventure. I'd like to really just have a great exposure to Old Europe that we can share when we're return. We're not shoppers. We want to experience the culture. We watch all Rick Steve's Europe videos. I have the Best of Europe, Europe through the back door, Germany and Amsterdam guide books so far. We plan on taking 6 weeks and would like to keep costs under $15000.

Another yes vote here. Easy to do. If you go as a day trip, don’t go the day before you’re scheduled to return to the states (assuming that’s where you’re from), in case something doesn’t go as planned. As examples, when we went to York, power in York went out and all trains came to a standstill for a number of hours. On a trip to Windsor, someone decided to jump onto the tracks and all trains were stopped for the better part of a day. Fortunately, we weren’t leaving the next morning and took it all in stride.

We plan on taking 6 weeks and would like to keep costs under $15000.

Food and lodging is likely to run $10k for the six weeks. Add airfare from and back to Dallas, all the intercity moves, transit within cites and admissions and that is looking really tight

In 2019, we traveled for 28 days to Athens, Budapest, Zagreb, Beograd, Timosuara, Oradea, and Amsterdam.

We spent $5200 for the entire trip, $200/day, for 2 people. We stayed in inexpensive hotels. We ate in local restaurants with mostly locals. We drank wine most days, and had plenty of coffees. We did not rent cars, but took trains.

How did we do this? We got our plane fares out of credit card point - we spent $2.86 for the airfare.

When I see someone say that they want to spend under $15000 for 6 weeks, this is $2500/week. You don't need to spend this kind of money. You can easily have a very nice time on half of that, and go back another time.

1) There are many hotels for $60-$70-$80/night.
2) You don't need to eat in restaurants all the time. We ate the breakfast in our hotel every day. We would then have a snack during the day, and a decent dinner, usually with wine.
3) A careful plan for each day will allow you to do what you want without wasting money.

You are younger than my wife and myself. We are 67 and 71 and plan on many additional trips. We don't plan on going to high-end hotels which are very expensive. We don't go to high-class restaurants. But we enjoy our trips.

Thank you all for your valuable input. I planned to go from London to Paris with a day trip to Versailles. Is 5 days enough time for this?

What do you want to do in Paris? Versailles is on a local train from Paris. Doing that on a day is fine - we did that in 1988 or so. What else do you plan in Paris?

Since another post said that you're interested in medieval places, and since the train from London to York is so fast, yes I would make the 2 day visit to York.

Since another post said that you're interested in medieval places, and since the train from London to York is so fast, yes I would make the 2 day visit to York.

Again, since your interest is in medieval, I would take train to Chartres for the day and skip Versailles, which is often quite crowded.
I prefer the Royal Palace in Madrid, as it is smaller and, in my opinion, more beautifully decorated. Versailles was so excessive that it really didn't appeal to me.

We both want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Louve an Versailles. I personally would love to go to Carcassonne.

We felt the same as Cala: other attractions in Paris held much more interest for us than the mob scene at Versailles but then, we're not glitzy palace-type of people either. For instance, the Residenz in Munich (I see that city is listed on another of your posts), most of which is reconstruction, lost our interest about 20 into its 120-130 rooms. You may feel differently but, well, there are so many things to enjoy in Paris without ever leaving the city!

If into "old", I'd make time for a day trip from London to Windsor Castle. That one has a long, LONG history and is a good companion attraction for Westminster Abbey and Tower of London. St George's Chapel alone is worth the jaunt, IMHO. Being you are educators, you could also make a day of it and walk over to Eton from Windsor for a look at the college and other landmarks of note?

https://www.windsor.gov.uk/things-to-do/the-eton-walkway-p1405401