BrittNeal

Hello!
My husband and I are planning our first trip to Europe together for June 2016. We are hoping for help assessing the feasibility of the countries we hope to visit. We will have 18-20 days total to travel. We are in our early 30s and active. We like major sites, outdoorsy things and anything that gives us that feel of being in another country. We are not big museum people, but will make an exception for the Louvre. My husband loves soccer and the trip was initially inspired by the EuroCup being held in France.

Right now we are thinking Switzerland, France, and England. Is it feasible to see something of each of these countries in that amount of time?

I have been to Germany and Austria, he has been to Ireland. We are don't want to overlap with something one of us has already done.

jent103

Think in terms of cities/places, not whole countries. For example, in England, you'd probably want time for London, but then maybe you want to also see the Cotswolds or the Lake District or Liverpool or York or... you get the idea. Likewise in France, you've got Paris, but it looks like the Euro Cup is held all over the country, and maybe you want to see Normandy or Provence as well. You could easily spend three weeks in France if there were that many places you're interested in, or you could spend five nights in Paris and be done.

So my first step would be to figure out where exactly you want to go in each of those countries. What made you pick them? Different destinations would need different numbers of nights, but with ~18 days I'd pick somewhere around 3-5 bases depending on what they are. It'll also take more or less time to get between places depending on where you pick: you can fly from London to tons of places in continental Europe, but getting to, say, Paris from the Lake District is more time-consuming.

annhig

yes, of course you can see something of each of these countries on 2 ½ -3 weeks but you won't get more than a taste. what, apart from the European Championship [the European cup is a club championship, not an international one] would you like to see?

anyway, here's the schedule for Euro '16:

http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/...8_DOWNLOAD.pdf

of course we don't know who's going to be playing where [the qualifying matches haven't finished yet] but getting tickets for the early rounds shouldn't be too hard.

if you are not big museum people, why the Louvre? it has always seemed to me to be one of the least accessible of museums; the Orangerie and the Musee D'Orsay which have large numbers of the works of the Impressionists and other lovely things might well suit you better. But how long would you like to be in Paris? do you want to see a football match there or elsewhere?

You could make France/Paris the centre of your trip, possibly spending a few days in Switzerland to start off with [the Bernese overland has wonderful mountains which can be reached by the trains that go up from Wengen] then going to Paris, [with our without a side trip to a football match] and finally taking the Eurostar train to London.

how does that sound?

BrittNeal

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I've thought it through a little more and come up with a little more specific plan and ideas to the "why" for each. I've just read enough of these forums to know people try to do too much so I'm hoping this is somewhat realistic. I really like the basic gist of annhig's idea so here is what I came up with. Would love any feedback!
TRAVEL
Day 1-Leave LAX

Day 2- Arrive Zurich and travel by train to Berner Oberland region

Day 3,4,5-Berner Oberland Region. Here we are just looking to be outdoors, hiking, breathing fresh air. I've heard that fresh air does wonders for jetlag .

Day 6 Travel to Lyon

Day 7 Lyon (See EuroCup match)

Day 8 Travel to Paris

Day 9,10, 11 Paris (See EuroCup match)

Day 12 Versailles

Day 13 Normandy (specifically want to see Mont. St. Michel)

Day 14 Travel to London

Day 15, 16, London

Day 17 London or maybe day trip to York (I like the Medieval feel of the city and would like to experience that)

Day 18 Leave to travel home

annhig

well apart from the day trip to York [which you could decide on closer to the day] i think that it's a great plan. You might find the trip to Mont St Michel a bit of a stretch too - but again you can decide on that while you are there.

as for Versailles, you could do that on any of the days you are in Paris, though it can be a good idea to book in advance as the queues for tickets can be very long. If possible i would try to space out day trips so that you don't have 2 in a row, or just before or after a travel day.

Have a great trip!