Please sign in to post.

First trip to Europe/Mother Daughter Trip

Hi everyone!  I am trying to plan a 10-14 day trip to Europe with my daughter for her college graduation in May/June of this year..... would I be crazy to think I could pull this off at this late date? I am the worst planner ....  I have never been to Europe, but my daughter has ... she traveled to Barcelona, French Riviera, Nice, Southern Italy and Greece her senior year of high school. Could anyone suggest fun destinations for a mother daughter trip? And any suggestions on how to plan such a last minute trip? I am having analysis paralysis on where to go.... thinking either a Paris/London/Amsterdam trip or Italy or Greece....thinking maybe a cruise might be my best option as far as availability at this late date .... but would prefer a land trip (I think?) ... anyways I would appreciate anyone's insight/resources on booking this trip/itineraries/etc.... Thank you so much! I sooooo want to be able to do this with my daughter before she heads off to PA School in the fall!

Rina

Posted by
8572 posts

Fly to London spend 4 nights. Take the Eurostar train to Paris 4 nights there. Fly home.

Posted by
5955 posts

Welcome!
How exciting and fun.

Does your daughter have anywhere in mind that she would like to visit?

What are your interests? Art? Food? History? Outdoors? Etc

You can’t ever go wrong doing the Italian “holy trinity” of Venice, Florence, Rome
All easily done by train

My advice
Make the trip as long as you can- 14 nights if possible
The entire trip could easily be Italy and you’d be able to visit several locations with that amount of time.

Have you researched your flight options?

Posted by
694 posts

And your passports! Are they current with the required time format (6 months remaining on them at time of travel)?

Posted by
107 posts

The previous poster has the most important issue….check your passports.

My suggestion is by open jaw ticket into London and out of your final stop. Personal idea London-Stockholm-Berlin-somewhere in Switzerland-Paris and home. None of which is anything dtr did in HS.

If you want to do a cruise, skip coming to Europe, if you want luxury it might be late for bookings. You can fly or take train for some legs. Get a RS tour guide too.

Posted by
6228 posts

I like the idea of starting off in London and then going to Amsterdam and/or Paris. All of them are easy cities to get around in, especially London and Amsterdam, and easy to get to. They're fun and you will have an incredible time. I did a mother/daughter trip to London and Paris many years ago and it was wonderful! Amsterdam, though, is certainly worth looking at as well and I would strongly suggest adding that in, depending on the time you have. You could do 4 nights in each city, which would fill a 2 week trip there (counting travel time)

Posted by
483 posts

As this is the Italy forum, there's the idea of the Trinity: Rome-Florence-Venice, which has, perhaps the highest wow per square mile in Italy. But there's something to be said about a relief from the tourist hordes that will be mobbing central Florence and especially touristic Venice. I might throw in side trips from all of those to avoid the barbarian hordes in those areas.

Also, search the forum. Lots of people have done a trip like this, and gotten lots of ideas on how to structure it in a lot of different countries for this time of year.

Last: you are fine on your planning horizon, but get moving.

Posted by
4324 posts

if you really are "the worst planner," and based on the timing it seems you may be right, pay a good travel agent to put together exactly the trip you want. And they will have suggestions you haven't thought of.

Go to the websites for Travel & Leisure and Conde Nast Traveler and look at their lists of suggested agents.

Only you and your daughter know what you and your daughter would like, actually it might not even be the same things so be prepared.

Posted by
38 posts

My daughter and I did Rome-Florence and a night and day in Paris, and it was incredible, but it was off-season. You could try staying at my favorite hotel in Versailles outside of Paris (Le Cheval Rouge)--very simple, affordable and usually good last min availability. My teen would adore more time in Paris, although with their intermittent strikes, it can make it harder to get around affordably. Rome and Florence were way more walkable, but I wouldn't want to brave late spring crowds. Our tour guide showed us pics, and it looked insane.