Best transport options between London/Amsterdam/Berlin/Paris

Hi Diane. With 11 days on the ground, if you visit Paris and London that's an average of 5.5 days per city without accounting for travel time. If you want to squeeze in 2 more cities, you'll have an average of a little less than 3 days per city without accounting for travel time. I urge you to stick with London and Paris and save the other cities for another trip. There's plenty to see and you have an easy connection between the two, the Eurostar train. Tickets for September are only $67 per person (prices will rise as the cheaper tickets are bought), the trip is 2.5 hours, and you go from city center to city center. Even so, you'll lose about half a day to travel.

Sarah is right, too much travel time between cities, even if you fly between Amsterdam and Berlin. The train will cost you almost an entire day each way. London-Paris is the logical flow; Amsterdam you could visit from Paris via train but you'd seriously be short-changing yourselves if you took too many days away from London and Paris. Driving and navigating would not be hard but parking would be a total nightmare. In the cities you'd have to stash the car and rely on local public transportation. Of course, you asked about transportation options and not a sermon about best use of your time. Check out the airberlin website and Ryanair for travel around Europe; there are other airlines, too. Read their luggage restrictions (size, weight, limit of bags allowed) very carefully and check out the airports they're flying into; not all are even near the cities they serve nominally.

IMO, you should strongly consider skipping Berlin this time. However, if you are set on including it, then the logical route is London-Amsterdam-Berlin-Paris. (Sarah and Anna have given some good reasons for skipping Amsterdam as well.) The search engine skyscanner.com will show you both budget airlines and national airlines that fly those routes. If you book tickets well in advance, flying can be cheaper than taking the train. That said, I prefer trains to planes whenever possible. If you limit yourselves to London, Amsterdam, and Paris, then you could take the Dutch Flyer (train-ferry-train) overnight from London to Amsterdam and save yourselves the cost of a night in a hotel while giving yourselves more daylight hours for sightseeing. Take a high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris. Booked well in advance at thalys.com, you can get a discount fare. If you stick with going to Berlin, you could take the direct Amsterdam-Berlin CNL night train, but it arrives in Berlin at 04:26. Booked well in advance on the German Rail site, you can get discount fares. Booked well in advance, you can get a discount fare as low as €39.00 for a daytime route that will take nearly seven hours. There is a direct Berlin-Paris CNL night train that arrives at 09:24. Booked well in advance on the German Rail site, you can get discount fares. Booked well in advance, you can get a discount fare for daytime routes that will take nearly nine hours.

Thank you to everyone for your sage counsel and other tips for travel. I had been feeling that Berlin was a bit out of reach geographically (given our time), and your consistent opinions helped me "let it go." In our limited experience, we also like trains so the advice about high-speed options between Paris and Amsterdam is very helpful (I know, think twice about even bringing Amsterdam into it!). In London and Paris, if you have any thoughts about "why don't more people visit X instead of spending all their time at the usual tourist spots?" would love your input. Thanks again.

You're welcome, Diane. No budget airlines fly Amsterdam-Paris and the fare is high on national carriers. When you factor in the time it takes to get to and from airports, taking a Thalys train is faster than flying anyway. Book ASAP (up to 90 days allowed) at thalys.com to get the cheapest discount fare of €35.00. You'll pay over €100.00 if you buy tickets at the last minute.

I don't know when you're going, but right now there's some major issues with the elevators at the Eiffel Tower. Regardless of that, I often wonder why so many people spend so many hours to get to the top of the tower. It's worth seeing from the base, and fantastic to get pictures of it from across the river, but there are easier, faster ways to get better views of Paris, imo. With regards to Paris in general, there are a million things to do, but most tourists seem to hit a few major sites regardless of their interest in them because it's what you're "supposed" to do. You don't have to go to the Lourve if no one in your party is excited about art. You don't have to go to Versailles, particularly if you're not interested in baroque architecture, decorative arts, and French history. Etc. Figure out what interests YOU in Paris and build your trip around that! I'm sure the same applies for London as well.