msangie824

I'm taking my 19 yo daughter for our first trip to Europe on 5/16. We'll arrive London on Tues morning and will return to US on Saturday. With 4 full days to spend is using one of them on a eurostar trip to Paris feasible? Since it's taken me 45 yrs to get there I want to see as much as possible. Thanks!

jody

It certainly is feasible...but with only 4 days in London , I certainly wouldn't consider it advisible. You could spend 4 weeks in London and still have missed many things.

Paris deserves a trip all it's own!

Keith

Which is probably the reply 90% of the travelers on this board would give. Including me, and I squeese a lot into my travel days.

Keith

PatrickLondon

Plus, at this short notice, fares on Eurostar will be pretty high. In 4 days, you're not going to have much time to relax anyway, so why add the extra stress?

jay

The previous posters are correct. You dont have enough time. Just enjoy London. I guarantee that once you go you will get the travel bug. If you want a nice day trip you may want to consider taking the tube to Richmond and and the bus or maybe a boat up (or down is it?) to Hampden Court. Maybe even a walk in Kew Gardens. That would take a good day and you could spend some more time in London at the end of the day. But that is even pushing it. Just my opinion. Maybe Mr. Haines has some suggestions?

Kayb95

We took a guided tour daytrip to Paris from Golden Tours. We took the Paris Splendour trip that does Paris and Versailles. We knew ahead of time it would be a whirlwind day, but we kind of just wanted to get our feet wet and get a "feel" for Paris. We were a bit intimidated to do it on our own since we didn't know Paris, don't know any French and since it was kind of a last minute trip, didn't have time to do enough research to do it on our own.

We met the Golden Tours rep at Waterloo Station at 5:30 AM and took the first Eurostar train to Paris. Once there, we met our English-speaking French guide, boarded a bus and drove by many of the main Paris sites. We then took an hour-long cruise down the Seine (starting and ending at the Eiffel Tower.) We then went to the second platform of the Eiffel Tower.

At this point in the tour, the people who only took the 1/2 day tour were on their own for the rest of the afternoon. We were all dropped off at the tour office (which is across the street from the Louvre.) This is where everyone would meet later to be taken back to the train station.

Since we took the full day tour, we had about 45 minutes for lunch, then boarded the bus again for our trip to Versailles. Traffic in Paris is very heavy and it takes a long time to drive anywhere. We arrived at Versailles, walked to the gardens with our guide for a brief history of the palace, then had about an hour to tour the State Apartments. (Note: Hall of Mirrors is under refurbishment until 2007 - only half was viewable.)

Because traffic was good coming back into Paris, we had about 45 minutes of free time before boarding the bus back to the train station.

We did not get to see anything indepth, but got a nice (but quick) overview of Paris. We plan to go back again on our own to see more, but that's what you can expect on a guided tour.

As others have said, you can easily fill 4 days in London and still not see everything on your must-see list, but a day trip to Paris is do-able if you have your heart set on it.

But once you've tasted foriegn travel, you'll become addicted (like the rest of us) and you'll be back.