Traveling before London Study Abroad - how far can we get?

We are both in good shape and like a wide variety of experiences, although I do have a little trouble with heights. We like to hike but also love museums, music festivals, architecture, and immersing ourselves in local culture.

How about Amsterdam & Bruges? Close but completely different from anywhere you've been. Flying into Frankfurt puts you pretty far east, and if you don't want to go to Germany it seems rather out-of-the-way and a waste of time.

"Immersing yourselves into culture" is a critical phrase and serves to contradict the question of "How far can we get?" IF you use distance and number of sites to visit to define your journey.
Given you are facing high temperatures and high season for tourist please consider selecting one place to use as a base and immerse yourself with day trips. Two areas come to mind:
- southwest france or
- northwest spain
Both offer the opportunity to take a deeper dive into the culture with an ample selection of menu items of things to do, places to hike and people to meet. Both are also slightly off the prime targets of tourists so should be slightly less congested (if such a thing still exists). And both are less likely to be areas where your daughter would visit on weekends.
Enjoy!

If you want to immerse yourself in the local culture, then just pick one or two locations. Amsterdam and Bruges is a good suggestion. The bigger the place, the harder it is to feel like a local, so Dubrovnik and Split in Croatia would be another suggestion for great architecture, history and food. Lisbon and Porto would also seem to offer what you are seeking. Avoid places that will be very busy in June such as Rome and Venice if you want to feel like a local.

Unfortunately for you, June is a busy holiday period, when those not tied to school holidays get away before the peak season. Therefore, flights, which have been available for months and accommodation, will be more limited and more expensive, as prices only ever head one way. Eurostar tickets are available 6 months out. Travel midweek for the best value and most availability.

Any major city has good flight options to London, so you can spend that majority of your time exploring the chosen area and less time on travel. See www.skyscanner.com for many of the budget airlines that have affordable one-way tickets within Europe. You can also try a wider search such as from Spain to London.

Spain. Fly US to Barcelona, train to Madrid, train to Bilbao, budget flight for her to London and home to US for you using a multi-destination ticket. Spain has markedly different regions and this route would allow you to see three of them in a week.

If you want to start somewhere on the continent and make your way back to London by surface transportation, have a look at http://seat61.com. It's a treasure trove of information on train and ferry routes between London and anywhere.

But as has been mentioned, you might decide that it's a better use of your time to fly to London from wherever you are on the continent.

Since you're coming at a time when temperatures in much of Europe are getting hot and a lot of places get very crowded, consider turning this to your advantage, and go to Scandinavia. In late June, the weather there is nice, while the rest of the year it...often isn't. You also get long days and a festive atmosphere, without crushing crowds. And as a final bonus, because most travel to the region is business travel, which is down in summer, hotels there are actually cheaper in summer. (Rick's Scandinavia book has lots of details about the money saving deals for summer travel).

My personal favorites are Stockholm and Bergen, but there's lots of choices depending on your interests. There are lots of flights from various Scandinavian airports to the London ones. Just be careful; Ryanair uses airports that are 90 minutes from Stockholm, and London officially has six airports, some much farther from the center of London than others.

Guys, this is all great!

We've copied and pasted some of Rick's tour itineraries (based on your suggestions and others) onto a Google doc and are making comments back and forth on the document (she's still at college, 19 hours away from me). We are thinking one, maybe two locations. I love Seat61.com but had forgotten about it! Thank for the reminder!

Am still open to more suggestions if anyone has them! And thanks again!

Oslo! Lovely city- one of the cleanest I've ever seen. Could also 'do' one other Scandinavian capital- maybe Copenhagen?