How to plan a trip

Sheryl....most of the ticketing websites (kayak, orbitz, travelocity, etc....and the airline sites) will have an option called "multi-city" or something similar. Use that option to fly into one city and home from another. It can be as cheap (or as close to it) as buying a round trip ticket to one destination and back. But it's not the same as booking two one-way tickets.

I think it is safe to say that all booking sites have open jaw or the more proper term is "multi-city" and you may have to select the advance search button on the site. We always do open jaw. Our most recent trip over New Years was into Madrid and home from Malaga. Obviously works best with straight line of travel or half loop but with your proposed trip it could be little more difficult -- maybe into London/Paris and home from Shannon. Even for three week you are covering a lot of ground with long travel distances.

And let me be the first to chime in...."Paris, Isle of Man, Ireland, Italy & Spain" is probably too much for three weeks.

I'll second David's post (above). Allowing for travel time between destinations, when planning your itinerary, can make the difference between an enjoyable trip and unknowingly getting yourself into a death march to exhaustion. The distances and travel times are longer than what you might think just looking at a map on a webpage. Here's a link to Europe trip itinerary planning Tips on Europe Itinerary Planning

I am so grateful for all the help from everyone. I see where we need to come up with a better itinerary. Our daughter is studying in Paris so we definately need to go there. My husbands ancestors are from the Isle of Man, which really doesnt look that exciting. We would love to see countryside as well as city. Some winerys would be good. Do you think its worth paying someone to help us plan our trip??? We will probably need to leave out Spain this time, but definately want to go to French coast , italy and other than that not sure. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you.

I agree with the others who say that three weeks isn't enough time to visit all the countries on your list without spending a disproportionate part of your time enroute from one country to another. I suggest eliminating either Spain or Italy.

Before you pay someone to help you plan, click on the "Travel Tips" tab at the top of the page you're reading now and read all the articles there that might fit your situation. They are condensed from Rick Steves' book Europe Through the Back Door which is an excellent planning guide. For more detailed information, buy the 2009 edition of the book.

With your Daughter studying in Paris, I'm sure she has some good ideas on how to spend some of your time. How much of Paris does she want to show you, and how much time would that involve?

I always fly open jaw on vacation. Is it cheaper? It depends on where you are flying to and from. An open jaw into Frankfurt and out of Rome will be more expensive than round trip to Frankfurt but cheaper than round trip to Rome. As Rick says, you should also factor in the time and transportation savings of not having to get back to the airport at the end of your trip.

I search for tickets using www.sidestep.com (there is also www.kayak.com but I believe they now are owned by the same company and give identical results) and usually a few others including the airlines directly. Sidestep lets you search for open jaw tickets. It also allows you to do a flexible search (up or back a few days) to see if there is a significant difference in price. I also check nearby airports for savings worth taking advantage of (you might check Portland, Seattle and Vancouver BC). I always set up a daily fare alert by email so I can watch the price for awhile before booking.

Sheryl: Your last post seems to say you're considering eliminating Ireland and Spain? That reduces your destinations, although Ireland kind of made sense because you said you have to do Isle of Man for family reasons--the Isle, as you probably know, is between England and Ireland and getting there will eat up travel time, assuming you fly into London, then back down (south) to your other destinations.You may want to consider flying into an airport closer to Isle of Man than London. However, in your last post, you also added the "French coast", which is a separate destination from Paris, so your list as of right now is: Isle of Man (UK), Paris, French coast, and Italy.Now then, one of the first things to do in itinerary planning is count how many full days you have, not including your flying in and flying out days. You said about 3 weeks--count how many full days you actually have, and then get back to us and we'll go from there, step by step, and see if we can help some more.And if it gets too overwhelming, you can contact travel planners at Rick's, who will help you at reasonable consulting rates.

We flew "open jaw" on our last 2 trips, into Amsterdam/out of Paris and into Rome/out of Venice. As I recall in both cases that ticket was only about $50 or $75 more than the standard round trip. Research these options on a site like Expedia where "multiple destinations" is a search option and price them out. Both times we bought directly from the airline as well. I imagine time of travel/home city/destinations will be a factor. The time and convenience versus cost will be your call, but in our case the higher cost was minimal and the advantages far outweighed the few dollars difference.

Since you're in the same neck of the woods, how about taking a short ferry ride and heading to the ETBD offices in Edmonds? You can get help (free and otherwise) and purchase the books the other posters are mentioning.
It'd seem to me you'd want to narrow it down to Ireland, the UK, and France.
Its easy to plan and purchase air tix "open jaw." Use one of the websites posters are naming, an airline, or RS' recommended travel agent.

Just sit down with some guidebooks (or, if you want to keep it simple, just use Rick's), make a list of every place you want to see, figure out how much time you'd need in each place (you can estimate by reading about the sights in the guidebook), then start prioritizing the list to fit your time frame. It's always a process but most of us travelers find it fun (though sometimes frustrating).

If you want to make it REALLY easy, you could always just look in the front of Rick's book (or really most guidebooks), for the section that says, "If you have 5 days in France, go here...".