Barcelona-Paris in a week
 

We're going on our honeymoon Sept 2002. After a weeklong cruise, we'd like to go from Barcelona to Paris. Any suggestions on where to go or where to stay? We'll be traveling by train on a moderate budget. We'd like to spend a little time at a beach along with seeing plenty of sites between Northern Spain and Paris.

How long do you want to spend on the trip? I ask because there's an overnight train that gets you into Paris in twelve hours, but you only get to see about 3 hours of scenery. <BR> <BR>If you'd like to spend a couple of days at the beach, I'd suggest you spend a couple of days in Barcelona, then take a train to Figueres or Sitges or any of the other seaside towns around Barcelona to spend a couple of days. Depending upon how much time you want to spend going from northern Spain to Paris, there are a dozen itineraries for scenery and stopovers...give me an idea how much time you want to spend, and whether you want to layover anywhere, or just see the scenery from the train.

oh, the choices, how about 2 days in barcelona, train over to the riviera, with a stopover in toulouse/albi/or carcassonne and spend a day in cannes on the beach ... the rest of the week in paris, with maybe a stop at one of the chateaux in the loire valley .... if you want to avoid the travel hastle, just spend the whole week in paris - you won't run out of activities in either city

Thanks for the replies. Here's a little more info on our plans: We get into Barcelona Sept 8th in the morning and fly out of Paris on the 14th. We'd like to spend a few days in Paris, so we'd like to shoot for arriving there on the 11th. If you could recommend a chateau or castle to stay along the way to Paris, that would be great.Are the beaches around Barcelona nice, or would you recommend one further up the coast. We're trying to decide between staying around Northern Spain and taking the overnight train all the way to Paris, or going halfway and stopping off mid-way to Paris and spending time somewhere that is convenient to get to. Thanks for your input.

Skip Barcelona and take the train to Collioure, Port-Vendres, Banyuls, or Cerbère and park yourself from 9/8 thru 9/10 then take a late afternoon train to arrive Paris early evening 9/10. <BR> <BR>The Languedoc has beaches, castles, abbeys...and vineyards. It's not a popular area for foreign tourists (it's mostly the French that vacation here) and it's great for exploring (with or without a car; you're more limited without a car, but you can still visit Carcassonne and Perpignan and the coastal towns via train, and there are tour buses from Perpignan to the countryside).

Thanks, that sounds exactly what we're looking for.