we are flying into paris from dublin on 7/1 and leaving for amsterdam on 7/7. there's so much i want to see that i can't make up my mind. key interests are paris, reims/champagne wine country, colmar/route due vin, chateaux of loire valley, provence & the riviera.
i'm driving myself crazy trying to plan this, so any recommendations that will help me decide will be greatly appreciated!
Five full days is not enough time to do justice to more than 1, maybe 2, places on your list. If it were me, I would stay in Paris and maybe do a day trip to Reims. I wouldn't do more than that. Even 4 full days in Paris is not enough time to do it justice.
Start with the fact that you have 5 full days and 6 nights, and possibly a partial day on July 1st depending on what time you check into your hotel from the airport.Because of travel time required to get there, eliminate the Riviera from your list.A big decision is: do you spend all 5 days in Paris, only part of your 5 days in Paris, or skip Paris this trip to give the 5 days to areas outside Paris. I myself would prefer (it's your trip but you're asking for our opinion) what Susan is suggesting, all 5 days/6 nights in Paris at the same hotel, there is that much in Paris to do, with one day trip to an area comfortably reachable in a day from Paris such as Versailles (5 to 8 hrs including travel time) or Chartres (all day). When I made my first trip to Paris, I spent maybe 10 days there and still didn't do everything on my "really want to do" list. If you're first timers to France, I predict you're going to be tempted to "compromise" and split your 5 days between Paris and somewhere else. If you do this, pick somewhere else that is not too far from Paris in terms of the travel time to get there and get back to Paris--you didn't come to France to see the inside of trains.
Amber...listen to Rick on this...Paris for the whole time with an allowance for a day trip to (1) Versailles and maybe a 2nd day trip to Honfleur or Giverny. Anything else would be crazy....
thanks for helping to bring me back down to earth and get in touch with how short our time in france really is. you're right about our newbie temptation to split the time. truth be told, as people who live just outside of manhattan and can get our fill of big city life whenever, paris has an obvious allure, but the french countryside is what we're dieing to see. We're basicallly going for the food, the wine, the archtecture, and fields of lavender.
skipping provence is not the end of the world because I can work that destination into the second half of our honeymoon next year. it would land us in avignon right in the middle of the arts festival :o) is it reasonable to do paris, a day trip to champagne, and a day on the route du vin in alsace?
Amber,
How many days are you allowing for your next trip? It may be reasonable if you have alloted enough time, however, I don't advise doing one nighters every night...you start to feel like your on a treadmill...it may be a cliche, but you need to take time to smell the flowers. Remember it's not the destination that makes the trip, it's the journey.
our honeymoon (our next trip) will be about 16 days long (2 weeks + the weekend). We going to santorini first, and my fiance wants to spend a few days in capri, but I think we may end our trip with a few days in avignon. there should be enough time without destination hopping for one-night jaunts.
we're thinking of spending the first 3 days of this trip in paris, heading out to reims for a night, and spending our last night in colmar. the annoying part is is getting from strasbourg to amsterdam by train.
My first trip I thought five days in Paris would be plenty. Wrong! We are going back the end of this year (for New Years) and spending 10 nights this time. I don't know if we will get to everything we want to do...but there's always another trip another time. What do you want to see or do in Reims and Colmar? I spent an afternoon in Colmar, so admittedly I didn't get to see the whole town. It was very nice, but if I had to choose a day in Colmar or a little extra time in Paris when you will be there for such a short time anyway, I would surely choose Paris.
