My husband and I are taking my kids to Europe for the first time - , kids 27 and 30. They know they want to go to Amsterdam and Paris, but in a 12-13 day trip, would we have time to see part of Italy. If not , what would you suggest.
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It%26#39;s a hike to get to Italy easily from Paris, but you could fly in-between if you really want to link it in.
Amsterdam - 2-3 days, then train (4hrs) to
Paris - 4-5 days, then fly to
Rome - 4-5 days
Fly INTO Amsterdam and OUT of Rome
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Italy is a country, not a city (smile!) Obviously, you can%26#39;t see Italy too. I don%26#39;t think you have time to go there (and remember what you saw where). However, if you decided you really wanted to go to Italy, where would you want to go?
Remember that the more times you move around, the more time you spend traveling, packing and unpacking, etc.
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I can%26#39;t say about Italy (haven%26#39;t been there, yet) but I will suggest Belgium. Brussels, Brugges and Antwerp are lovely. You could start in Amsterdam for a few days, bounce around Beligium and then end with Paris. Or add London to the itinerary. All very easy by train and not spending the whole time travelling between cities.
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Decdec, you could spend the entire 12-13 days in Paris and still not see everything.
I think you REALLY need to think about what interests you (eg, art, museums, food etc etc) and then work out the MUST sees and the NICE to sees. This will allow you to plan your trip and also help to get the most out of your time.
I agree with the previous poster that the last thing you want to do is to spend your time travelling. You basically waste the best part of a day when you move from one place to another when trying to fit in as much as you can in a short time frame.
If your kids want to go to Amsterdam, I%26#39;d stick to northern Europe. We spent little time there but I know I would like to go back but I wouldn%26#39;t want to stay near the Centraal station area - a bit too seedy for me.
We spent 5 nights in Brussels and I would endorse other posters views that Brugge is beautiful as is Gent.
Paris is fantastic and we spent 10 nights there, using 3-4 days to travel on day trips outside Paris, but we found that six full days in Paris still wasn%26#39;t enough time.
re Italy - definitely would need to fly there if you only had a few days as it would take about 12 hours from Paris to Rome by train, and longer to Venice. If you desperately wanted to go to Italy, you could spend say three days in Venice and get a reasonably good intro to the city, but I think you would definitely need more than three days if you went to Rome as there is much to see there.
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dedec20, this sounds a lot like what I wanted to plan, except my husband and I are your kids%26#39; ages :P
I had thought of doing Paris and Rome/Venice in 14 days, but it seems like this is not such a good idea anymore?
How far is Rome to Venice via either train or plane? Which one is more advisable?
What are daytrips from Paris that we could do? Is there some sort of tourist train pass that is offered for Europe? (We just came back from Japan and they offer something called the JR Pass, which includes all travel on bullet trains, subways, buses %26amp; ferries operated by the JR company... is there such a thing in Europe and or France/Italy?)
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Aquila, I don%26#39;t want to hijack the thread started by decdec, but just quickly:
Plenty of people spend a week in Paris and a week in Rome. So whether or not this is a %26quot;good choice%26quot; all depends on what your priorities are and what you are interested in seeing. This is what decdec needs to decide too although the kids have needs they want met too.
As noted in my email above, Rome is about 12 hours by train from Paris.
For a PLANE trip, you%26#39;d need to get on the web, find a site that compares different airline fares and do a comparitive search, checking what is available, times etc. As we found out, many airlines fly out of Paris to Italy, but there are usually stops along the way which can add a couple of hours to several hours all up to the overall travel time. When I last checked, Air France had direct flights to Italy as did some of the cheaper airlines such as EasyJet. The problems we found were that Air France was way out of our budget and EasyJet leaves from Beauvais - about an hour or more out of Paris. Also, once you put in all the costs, eg, airfare, weight of bags, airport taxes, cost of getting from Paris to Beauvais etc etc, there wasn%26#39;t a huge difference in the total price of other carriers - ie, if you managed to find a cheap flight with a larger carrier.
So the time it takes to fly from Paris to Rome or Venice very much depends on the flight you can book and the time spent on the ground at the stopover - if there is one.
Re : What are daytrips from Paris that we could do? Answer - too many to mention here.
Is there some sort of tourist train pass that is offered for Europe? Answer - Eurail pass
I don%26#39;t wish to sound rude, but if you search the Paris forums you will find a ton of info about day trips from Paris. You could look at the left hand side bar under %26quot;Things to do%26quot; and that may help
Re the Eurail pass - search TA for that and get differnt opinions as to what people think of it and also you can log onto the Eurail web sites and check out costs of tickets for individual travel and travel across various countries. As for travel within Italy, go to the Italy Forums and search there but I think you%26#39;ll find the concensus is that train travel within Italy is pretty cheap.
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