mmallahy94

My girlfriend are planning a trip to Europe in summer of 2018. My sister currently lives in London so we definitely plan on going there but have both already been last month when we went to Paris and London. We also want to spend 2-3 nights in Paris because we loved it so much. We are both able to take about 2 weeks off of work for this trip. Ideally we would like to do London first for 2-3 nights then Barcelona for 3-4 nights. After that either Amsterdam or Dublin for 3 nights and then end our trip in Paris for 2-3 nights. Does anyone have any suggestions on if this order makes sense and if we should do Amsterdam or Dublin based on proximity to Paris? Side note, we are flying from New York and the order of the cities we go to is not set in stone but only our ideal order. Thanks!

IMDonehere

Let be perfectly frank, it is an insane schedule. You lose at least 1/2 a day every time you move to a different city. Pick three cities max. Everyone one of those of those cities is worth at least a week, even two weeks, except Dublin. And Dublin is quite nice, just not that much time.

Man_in_seat_61

Makes more sense to go Dublin - London - Paris - Barcelona - Amsterdam, assuming you still want to include Dublin and make it a whistle-stop tour.

Dublin-London buy a €50 SailRail ferry+train ticket at www.irishferries.com

London-Paris by Eurostar in 2h20 from £44 www.eurostar.com

Paris-Barcelona & back by 200mph double-decker TGV train in 6h25 from €59 www.trainline.eu

Paris-Amsterdam by Thalys in 3h20 from €35 www.thalys.com or www.b-europe.com

But do plot out the trip, remembering that 2 nights can mean just 1 day, and that travelling time must be taken into account.

Man_in_seat_61

I should add that the Paris-Barcelona train ride has a lot to see, and hardly takes any longer than the 5 hours you'd spend in total by air, or rather, train-airport-flight-airport-train.

I have posted photos and a video of this journey at https://www.seat61.com/Paris-to-Barc...-TGV-train.htm

Southam

London-Paris-Barcelona. Quite enough for two weeks. If crossing the Atlantic, use a multi-destination search function for planes. Train makes sense, if tickets purchased long in advance for best prices. www.seat61.com is always the foundation of train knowledge, as he has shown here, and can help with on-line purchases. Eurostar tunnel train is an unusual experience; so is Paris-Barcelona on very long double-deck trains at head-spinning speed. Be poised to move when boarding opens in Paris Gare de Lyon since luggage space is cramped (your seat is reserved). If you insist on cramming in another location, consider Paris-Girona, a stop on the fast train, for a pleasant medieval city over night with great restaurants, then on to Barcelona in less than an hour. Separate tickets for each leg. Bookings:
https://en.voyages-sncf.com/en/
http://www.eurostar.com/

mmallahy94

Based off these responses and geographic locations, it seems like we may want to fly into Dublin from New York, then travel to London. From London go to Amsterdam and then end our trip in Paris. Barcelona would be great but can always save that for our next trip down the road. Does the order of Dublin-London-Amsterdam-Paris make sense?

dwdvagamundo

That makes more sense than including Barcelona, but I think you are still trying to visit too many places, unless your visit to London is only for a brief visit to your sister and to catch the train to the continent.

Why not plot out your trip on Excel or a piece of paper, listing the nites where you will lodge. That will show you how much actual time you have (that is, days) to see each place. As said above, two nites is one full day.

mmallahy94

We are now leaning towards 3 nights in Dublin, 3 nights in London, 3 nights in Amsterdam, and 3 nights in Paris. We have heard that Dublin and Amsterdam can be seen effectively in just 3 nights from my sister as well as friends that have visited both cities. As far as London goes, I forgot to mention that my Aunt lives in Derby so we would be going out there for a full day and spending the night there, or else we would probably only spend two nights in London.

Three nights in Paris is definitely enough for us since we were just there and just want to see a few things that we were unable to see. The way we're looking at it is that we want to see a couple of cities that we have not yet visited and being that these four cities are so close to one another, in our eyes it is doable. Does anyone have a strong opinion on 3 nights in Dublin and 3 nights in Amsterdam just being not enough? I truly appreciate all of the input that I have received in such a short period of time! Thanks!

Kathie

Four locales in your allotted time gives you almost no time to see any of these places. If you are taking 2 weeks off of work, how many nights on the ground will you have in Europe? Then as mentioned above, 3 nights in a place is just two days.

PalenQ

Great train info sites -Man in Seat 61 who posts above his commercial site: www.seat61.com and I also like www.ricksteves.com and www.budgeteuropetravel.com.

Does anyone have a strong opinion on 3 nights in Dublin and 3 nights in Amsterdam just being not enough?>

It's OK -but you really have two days factoring in travel time between them -but yes you can see the main sights - Dublin is kind of an outlier and IMO nice of course but you'd be better off spreading those three days into other places where in effect you only have two full days.

Less can be more, more or less!

PalenQ

I'd do Dublin 2 full days and one more in London if you have never been there.

Tony2phones

Makes no sense getting the ferry rail and sail spending 9 hours getting Dublin to London.. I wouldn't use Irish ferries anyway. Fly Dublin to London. Then fair enough take a night from somewhere possibly Dublin for Derby. Closest airport could be Manchester to fly to Mainland Europe.

Wekiva

You can absolutely see 4 places in 2 weeks. Some here like to linger for a week in one city...which is fine. But I've done 4 trips where we saw 4 to 5 locations in 2 to 2.5 weeks, and we loved every trip. If you don't mind 2.5 days in a city and then half day of travel then that's all you need to know. Enjoy the trip!

PalenQ

ditto to what Wekiva says- different strokes for different folks.