Advice needed for mom/son Europe trip please
 

Berlin, London, Paris work together. But 7 days would not be enough to see 3 different cities. Even 10 days would be tight once you subtract all the travel time (getting to Europe and back, then moving city to city) would barely give you 2.5 days each place. Really only 2 cities would work better or stretch your time to 12 days of possible?

Staying in hostels and taking trains around is OK too.

Fourteen year olds don't have a good sense of distance or time required to travel. Dachau is over 300miles from Berlin.

When you factor in check-out time, getting to & waiting for transportation, actual travel time, and getting to lodging on the other end it will take you a full day to transition from Berlin to Munich, Munich to Paris, then Paris to London. Is killing 3 days out of your 7 to 10 day trip really what you want to do getting between these places?

An alternative is to spend the entire time in Germany. There are more than enough historical places of interest. You could use Berlin as one base, and Munich as another, with day trips in or near each city.

Darn it!! I was posting along very detailed response and puffft . . . it disappeared :(

Welcome to Fodors victoria. To get two days in a place you need to stay 3 nights -- so you barely have enough time for London and Paris let alone those other places. a 7 day trip total will net you just 4.5 days free on the ground. 10 will get you about 7.5 days travel between destinations will cut into that even more.

So you need to decide if London + Paris (or JUST London or JUST Paris ) is what you want - or if you'd rather visit Germany instead. London has some wonderful WWII sites including the Imperial War Museum and Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms/museum. And from Paris you can visit the Normandy beaches. But a 7 day trip would not be enough time for London + Paris + Normandy.

Because you are a barnd new member, there is a limit to how often you can post -- I think you are restricted until tomorrow. So you and your son discuss some of the feed back you've received so far and kick around some ideas and come back for more discussion tomorrow . . .

Yes, but you only have 7-10 days and doing all 3 would be a stretch. Figure out exactly how many days total you will have.

Does your 7-10 days include your flight days to/from home? More than likely, those days will be eaten up by time getting to/from airport and checking in/out of lodging.

I noticed you are new to this site and only have 2 posts in a 24/hour period. So, use this time to do some research on all three (or four) cities, sit down with your son and identify which in each are your top priorities. You will then have an idea of your base itinerary.

Remember to figure in how long it takes to get to/from each destination in your plan. With a full 10 day trip you could do either Berlin/Munich (Dachau) or Paris/London. You could also consider Paris/Normandy as well since he likes WW2. But the two of you really need to discuss your goals and what you really want to see before you land on your destinations.

Get a good guidebook for all locales (try your local library) or at the very least use the Destinations tab at the top of this page.

Janis was posting as I was typing. Apologies for the seemingly "repetitive" post!

Especially if you can stretch it to 10-12 days I think you can add in London to Germany. I often find (depending on where you are flying from) that it's much cheaper to fly to London then take easyjet or similar to Germany. But that only works well if you have at least 2-3 days to spend in London (in case the first flight is delayed, etc. I like to spend at least 1-2 nights, 3 would also allow you to see a few highlights of London, and if it's your first trip to Europe you get somewhat acclimated while in an English speaking country). I would definitely forget about Paris and definitely try to take as many days as possible.

It was just great minds . . . ;)

I've had that occur, too.
Yet often when i post, I see a little "autosaving" icon.

So, if a partial post is "autosaved", where does one retrieve it?

I would suggest that you explore Normandy and Paris and if you have 10 days maybe add in London. We have brought our boys to all of these locations when at least one of them was the same age as your son. The best trip we had where we spent time on WW2 history was to Normandy-- my boys learned so much about WW2!

In that case just click on the 'autosave' and it will bring back whatever was there at the time of the last autosave. This time there was no 'autosave' - everything just went away :(

Great advice above.

Keeping prices down; Germany is full of little B&Bs which are very cheap or perhaps keep in the east where even "international" style hotels are very cheap.
Major cities are always more expensive, commuting can also keep the price down. Or visit the second city of an area. I was recently in Leipzig and Dresden and it was good value. German food is also pretty cheap.

Keeping prices down; in London, it is worth looking and the yha.org.uk who offer really good hostels in the city centre at good rates. Also useful if you join the international association (brings prices lower) and if you travel around the UK you will find yha all over the place. Two-for-one tickets and most museums are free helps with the ticket shock of meals in London. But lots of picnic foods easily available in London.

KPD; general go vegetarian, avoid international brands saves hoggins.

It used to be that when I lost a post, when I returned to reply I would get an on-screen message asking whether I wanted to restore the autosaved post. Lately this isn't happening, and I've just had to begin again.