bonzhoor

I cannot seem to find this posting I made on the France board so I am reposting...where did it go? If it's a duplicate, my apologies - I can find it though if I do a search on my username but cannot find it in the list that appears on the left side of the screen...

Hello everyone, help please....

Can the kind and very knowledgable folks here please help me with our itinerary. I am too embarassed to say when we are leaving(it's along the same lines as Norcalif's travel)...

I do have a fall back plan with reservations that I made ahead of time and contacted the different hotels if they could accomodate the change in schedule and they can. From the time we first planned this, and since then, after reading everything mostly from this great resource, we are hoping to add a couple of places we initially didn't consider and wanted to fine tune it a bit more... can you folks provide me with input/critique on our itinerary, number of days to spend in each locale, reduce the places/or not, logisitics - train,car, both?

- We will be flying into London from Boston and out of Paris. Not counting the fly in and fly out dates, we have 20 days of travel.


- There will be four of us in our party(me, my husband, 5 year old daughter who is very easy going and very easy to travel with and my mom who is not extremely active but capable of walking for quite a bit with breaks every couple of hours

- We don't need to set aside time for "child-centered" activities like children's museums, zoos, etc. going to all the wonderful parks such as the ones in Paris and I'm sure in all the places we'll encounter is an adventure already for my daughter

- This is our third time in Paris, my daughter's second(we just went in March) but my mother's first time.

- The kind of travel we prefer is soaking in the place, the culture, the people, the ambience, enjoying the local people/customs/foods, people watch(we are only able to do this because my daughter takes a long time to eat : ) so being able to relax while eating is a good consequence,
BUT for the purpose of this trip, we want to get a flavor of each place but not too slow and not too rushed either - I know this is subjective

- We don't need to spend as much time in Paris this time, as hard as that is, so we can have some time exploring other parts of France. We are doing the Paris section of the trip for my mom who is more the type that just wants to see the major sights, take pictures and on to the next.

This is what we're considering-note that except for the days we fly in and out of the continent, all the other "days" include the days we leave and arrive the next destination

Fly into London

London - 7 days(take Chunnel into Paris)

Paris - 4 days - take train into Avignon

Avignon - 5 days - pick up car to explore the areas in and around - Avignon, Arles, Les Beux, St Remy, Pont du Gard

Nice - 2 days

Paris - 2 days

Additional questions:
From Avignon, take the train or drive into Nice - advise? I read that to drive is 2.5 hours and train is 4.5 hours, is that right? We are considering just driving into Nice, parking somewhere(approx how much is parking) and from Nice drive back to Avignon to take the TGV back to Paris - any other way of doing this without having to backtrack into Avignon(we want to avoid riding a train straight for 6.5 hours from Nice to Paris, or any train ride more than 4 hours with the little one(gets extremely antsy)

Should we reduce the # of days in London and add that to some other stop, or maybe add Loire(we really wanted to do this for two days so are considering reducing the London stay-advise?) This is our first time in London and intend to go back at a later time on the way to explore other parts (Edinburgh, outside of London, etc.)

Thank you all for you patience!!!



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Author: bonzhoor
Date: 08/08/2006, 11:14 pm
Wanted to add, since i've been looking and thinking about this for so long already, I think I am not thinking outside the box already and just caught up in my own mind(is that the right way to put it?) - will welcome new insight : )



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cls2paris

Hi, just an FYI - to see all of your posts, click your name. sounds like a fun trip!

Mimar

You could catch the TGV from Aix-en-Provence or Marseilles. Both are closer than Avignon. Aix in particular is a nice medium-size town to visit.

janisj

here it is http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34850414

(BTW - there is no "France board" - just Europe)

Christina

FOr future reference, if you can find your post by clicking on your name, it exists. If you don't see it at the left, it's probably just that it's moved down in the queue due to new posts above it.