Need help for trip to Europe in June 2018

I'm sorry... but I'm not sure I get this. You buy tickets for London only because they are cheap, even though that's not where you want to go at all?

Have you compared prices on what traveling to and from Paris and Rome is going to cost you now, instead of having booked one of those destinations (or possibly even open jaw) to begin with? Not to mention your valuable vacation time wasted on getting there and back...? Those may be the most expensive cheap tickets you ever bought.

If you do the 7 day Paris tour, you really do not have time to do Rome. If you choose to do the Paris tour, I would spend the before/after time in London.

You could, if you choose not to do the Paris 7 day tour, spend the one night in London, fly the next day to Rome for 4/5 nights, fly to Paris for 4/5 nights, take Eurostar to London at least one day before your return flight. ( your 'go straight to Rome and backtrack' idea)

If what you really want is Paris and Rome, it would have been better to book an 'open jaw', either into Paris and out of Rome or the reverse, and done the Paris/Rome flight as a separate booking. Your overall travel cost may have been comparable to what going to/from London to catch flights will add up to.

Happy travels!

I have done a similar thing buying the cheapest tickets direct flights from Chicago that would get me closest to Europe. In my case it was to Copenhagen and Dublin and Stockholm, when I was on my way to Amsterdam or Paris.

You can do your own tour. Take the train from London to Paris. Tour Paris including some daytrips. You have to make each person in
your family do some research on Paris and the surrounding area so each can determine their own interests. I just got back from a trip over there and before taking my 20 year old niece I told her to do some research and we manage to go places she wanted or she went without me.

Next you can easily and cheaply fly to Rome from Paris. After touring Rome simply by a one way ticket flight back to London.

Factoring in all the travel you are realistically looking at 4 quality full days in Paris and 3 in Rome

If I were in your position I'd bite the bullet and plan to spend about half my time in and around London and half in and around Paris, which is easy to reach from London. Check the Eurostar website and get your tickets as soon as you can for lower fares.

You don't need a tour to see these cities and surroundings, just some planning of your own. Stay in the cities and spend most of your days there, but consider some easy day trips to places like Hampton Court, Salisbury, Portsmouth, Canterbury, Cambridge or Oxford (from London) and Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chartres, Reims, Giverny (from Paris). Don't spend time and money moving yourselves from city to city (other than between London and Paris).

Maybe you got such as spectacular airfare to London that you can afford to fly to Rome and back to London. If so, Rome could be an alternative or add-on to Paris for your time. Or you could go to those two cities and skip London except for the airport (what a shame though).

Ask your family if they would have a great time in London with a short week-long loop and then take the Chunnel train to Paris with possibly a day-trip for the second week. If so, you can take advantage of your flight and not waste valuable vacation time transferring to other locations.

Otherwise, if it’s Rome and Paris, I would fly between those locations.

Our first family trip to Europe was also two weeks. We spent one week in London and one week in Paris. We easily figured out all the logistics ourselves with the help of Rick's books and this forum. We booked the Eurostar from London to Paris (we flew out of Paris). Be sure to book those tickets months in advance to get the best rates.

For our family, it would have been too much to add in a third city in that time frame. I would encourage sticking to London and Paris as there is so much that can be done in both cities, including the day trips listed by previous posters. Take the time to enjoy both places although you could easily spend 2 weeks in either. We were amazed with how much we absolutely loved London. I bet your family will also.

When you find the next cheap fare, you can fly into Rome and perhaps doing an open jaw (fly into one city and out of another) to maximize your time.

Enjoy your trip!

I'd say forget the tour completely if you want to see Rome. Considering the distances between cities, flying is your only option to Rome. If your flight leaves June 6, then you likely won't land in London til the 7th. I'd bite the bullet and go straight on to Rome. But ONLY if you can get a flight leaving at least 6 hours after you are due to land, and ONLY if you aren't risk averse. Because if your arrival is substantially delayed, you could miss the next flight. And because it would be on a separate ticket, you would have to purchase tickets for new flights if you miss it. And these flights are only cheap if your luggage falls within the airlines particular limits ( which can be VERY limited). If you don't want that risk, then spend that night in London and fly to Rome the next day and stay for 5 nights.

Then fly to Paris for 5-6 nights before returning to London.

Or scrap Rome for this trip, to save on all the extra travel time and flight expenses. Spend 5-6 days in London, doing a couple of day trips, then take the train to Paris for a similar length stay, again doing a couple of day trips outside the city. Return to London by train the day before you fly home.

I would not plop a one-week tour in the middle of your time, because (as you've already noticed) it leaves you with two short, hard-to-use periods before and after. There are definitely advantages to a tour, but I would say they are greater when the tour moves around a lot or is visiting an area with challenging logistics, language, etc. Neither of those situations applies to the Paris tour, and I think you can manage on your own.

I agree with Anna about your flight choice, but it is now a fait accompli, so onward you go.

The normal advice in a situation like yours (flying in and out of the same city) is to use your arrival day, when some or all of you will be zombified after the overnight flight and not in good shape for sightseeing, to get to the most distant destination, planning to visit your arrival city at the end of your trip. That way, you are not stressed about getting back in time for your flight. It also reduces the number of hotel stays by one, and checking in and out of hotels eats up time.

The tricky thing is that you just don't know when you're going to get through the arrival procedures at Heathrow, so it's hard to know what time you could get on a train (possible for Paris) or another flight. The good deals on early-purchased train and plane tickets do not allow changes or refunds. You need to be very careful here with four [oops--five!] tickets on the line. If you miss your planned departure, you'll probably pay an exorbitant price for replacement tickets.

Tell us what time your flight is due in, and perhaps someone will dare to make a timing suggestion (I would not), but understand that there is no such thing as perfect information here. Flight delays occur all the time.

In the absence of a burning desire to see somewhere in England outside London that wouldn't cost too much for a walk-up ticket purchased on your arrival day, you could accept that you'll be checking into a London hotel twice and spend 2 or 3 nights there at the beginning of the trip.

As to Paris and Rome, you can do both if you really minimize your time in England, but you'll be spending a significant chunk of one mid-trip day flying between them. To me, that's very disruptive of the vacation. I urge you to consider limiting the trip to just Paris and a bit of northern France (Normandy? Alsace? The Loire?) or a chunk of Italy (Rome and points north, or Rome and points south). Doing that will expose you to some smaller towns and cities.

What you can and should do right now, while you're mulling over the options (don't wait for a perfect solution, because I don't think there is one), is take a look at the travel time and cost of moving between London, Paris and Rome (in any order) during the period of your trip. Use Skyscanner.com to check flights, being very aware of the airports used. Some are much easier/cheaper to reach via ground transportation than others. With five of you, a taxi will be a reasonable expense as long as you are dealing with an airport that's not terribly far from the city.

For trains, use nationalrail.co.uk (England), sncf.com (France) and Trenitalia (Italy). Trenitalia insists that you use the Italian spellings (Roma, Napoli, Firenze, Venezia). If you have difficulties with any of those train websites, you can switch to trainline.eu. The purpose of this exercise is to highlight any travel legs with wildly varying prices so you know ahead of time about any really good dates or really bad dates before you're too far along in developing your itinerary.

It can get rather hot in Rome by mid-June, so if Rome is part of the ultimate solution, I'd try to hit that area as early in the trip as possible. Just playing the odds.

If you need a place to crash near Heathrow the night before you return home, check out the Premier Inn that's walkable from Terminal 4. It seems quite new and has had some very good rates recently. London hotels can be very costly.

If you need a place to crash near Heathrow

I really need new glasses. I just read "If you need a plane to crash near Heathrow". No, no one needs that! ;-)

Fly to Rome the day you arrive to London and work you way up north back to London. Spend you last 4-5 days in London before you fly home. Doing trains and discount airline you can hit 3-4 cities and not feel too rushed. I would not do the tour. A little research and you can see all the main sights. Have fun!