France/Italy/Britain Itinerary critique please!

Deanna, I don't know your interests or tastes and my experiences have only been with London, Rome, Florence, and Cinque Terra. Also, the time of year does have a major influence.

If you are in the Florence area I think a trip into the Chiant countryside should be considered. It would be sinful to not see some Tuscan hill towns, vineyards, and olive groves and savor the taste of Tuscan cooking.

Stonehenge by itself may not be worth a full day trip, but tying it in with Salisbury and some English countryside might be. A pub lunch along the River Test can be delightful.

Another possibility would be a drive through the Cotswolds and maybe include Oxford, a busy but engaging city.

Bath is beautiful and the Roman baths are truly awesome(to a Roman history buff like me!)

Hope this gives you some food for thought on where to spend an extra day or two.

Thanks for both your input. We'll be travelling in September. We've giving CT and Venice an extra day. I have looked at changing the order around and going from Antibes to CT, then Venice, but can't seem to find a way to get there. When I searched on the "train times" schedule, it seems to bring up Cinque Vie instead of Cinque Terre. Any suggestions?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that it's our first time in London... Do you think we have enough time to see the city and do a side trip to Salisbury and/or Bath? If we don't have time to see both which one would you recommend over the other?

Thanks so much Kent! You're right, we hadn't researched the travel time to those sites... We could allocate another day to Venice and Cinque Terre. Do you think that we should pull a day from Provence to allocate to the Cote d'Azur?

Okay, I just found out that I should be entering one of the villages of Cinque Terre instead. Oops..

HI, some suggestions:

Instead of staying in one of the Cinque Terre towns, we stayed in Rapallo, which is between Portofino and the towns. One day we took the bus half-way to Portofino and walked the rest of the way along the coast road to Portofino, had lunch and walked to the lighthouse (easy). Another day we took the train to the most southern CT town and walked between the first 3 towns. In Rapallo we stayed at Hotel Italia e Lido, www.italiaelido.com, right on the water with views of the harbor.

In Florence, we took a day trip with Walking Tours of Florence to San Giminangno (sp?) and Sienna, that included a lunch at a farm (free flowing wine and grappa)! My husband's favorite day of the vacation.

There is so much to see in London, with all your other traveling I don't know if a day trip to Bath is worth it (we did it). I did enjoy taking the train to Hampton court one day.

We loved Rome. Stayed at the Hotel Lancelot near the Collosium.

Have fun!

I think this is a delightful itinerary, though depending on your modes of travel I might reorder things a bit in Italy (or not).

Also starting in London and flying home from Italy might be a more efficient way to connect these dots.

This is a good itinerary. Be sure to research travel times in regards to your spare days. I am not sure if you are using public transport or a car. Generally IMO public transport is a lot easier. There are some areas (like Tuscany) where a car is better. If you can I would add a day to Venice or the Cinque Terre. If you like modern history you could use battlebus for a tour of the Normandy beaches with your two spare days. A side trip to Versailles from Paris makes for a good half day/day.