dw says,

>I believe that nine nites in Paris (or seven for that matter) are too many.<

chacun à son goût. Over the years, I have spent weeks in Paris and have always loved it. "Age cannot whither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety".

((I))

Amsterdam over Brussels every time if transport allows.

Depends how your team gets on with each other and being abroad. Holland has very high levels of International English available so makes an easy start (like London or Dublin) but is sufficiently different as to give the aborad feel (plus drugs, beer, night life etc).

Paris is clearly aborad and a foreign language. The danger isn only going for 4 days is that just about allows you to see all the top sites but you stay in the safe US state of mind. I reckon add a couple of days to get out say to Monet's garden or go to Epernay for the Champagne. Still world class sites but more the real france.

London a great place to finish.

I like Bardo's itinerary. If you really want to go to Belgium, I would spend one night in Brugges on your way from Amsterdam to Paris. So, you could tweak Bardo's itinerary like this:

Fly into Amsterdam
3 nights in Amsterdam,
Train to Brugges
1 night in Brugges
Train to Paris
8 nights in Paris
Train to London
4 nights in London
Fly home from London.

In my opinion, you can't have too many nights in Paris. I could visit for a month and still not see all I want to see. . . .I definitely would save a trip to Provence for another time. If you want a side trip from Paris, go to Versailles for a day.

Have a wonderful trip!

One other thing to consider -- flying out of the UK costs quite a bit more than other countries. Their exit fees are much higher than France or the Netherlands or Belgium.

So open jaw is your best bet - but you'll save $$$ if you fly in to London and home from one of the other cities.

Good point from janisj. For my spring trip to London the best deal by far was on NW doing a RT to London via Amsterdam both ways, rather than direct in and out of London over the pond.

I like Brussels, but wouldn't spend four days there, either.

AS for Paris hotels, it isn't so much that September is "high" season for hotels, it's just normal season and August is low season. I think August is about the lowest hotel rate season in Paris because there aren't many business customers. It's the same way in most any major city I know of (in Europe or US, anyway), September is never a cheap hotel rate period, it's always high.

"I would for sure do a trip to Glastonbury after a stop at Stonehenge. It's the Woodstock of Great Britain"

Wrong

The Woodstock of Great Britain is...Woodstock. The real one.

It's true that the Glastonbury Festival is mostly patronised by people who would have been active participants at the New York festival in 1969 if they'd have been able to afford the airfare.

But - unlike the deservedly obscure minor village in New York - Glastonbury has been attracting seriously A list visitors (From Jesus Christ, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Joseph of Arimathea, to King Arthur and Merlin) for around 2,000 years, all doing far more interesting things (like bringing the Holy Grail and Moses' Burning Bush) than just chanting "Give me an F" in a rainstorm.

DEFINITELY worth a couple of days. And several hundred pinches of salt. The real Woodstock's nice too.

In my opinion, 4 days in Brussels is 3 1/2 days too long.

We took a cityrama (I think that's the tour company name) tour from Paris to Brugges. It was one long day but we covered everything but the lace-making place as it was closed that day.

3 changes of hotel is plenty IMO.

99% of people will enjoy basing in Bruges or Gent or Antwerp far better for 4 days than in Brussels, a city that fails to impress most people. Indeed i'd say overall the most blah capital city in Europe by far.

flanneruk - you on about Woodstock, the tiny village where the fantastic Blenheim Palace is located?