Angelo_Gou

My friend and I finally booked our trip after several months of deciding where to go.
Our plan is to fly into Paris and spend 5 days there then fly to Verona and spend 3 days there (I have a good friend there), and we were thinking of a day trip to Venice from Verona. Then we will train to Rome and spend 4 days there. We have both been there before but still want to see more of it. Then we will fly to Rhodes, Greece and spend 6 days there. We will wrap up with 5 days in Istanbul. We were wondering what we NEED to see in Paris and if there are any good day trips we should take e.g. Normandy. We were also if it would be possible to take a day trip to Florence from Rome. And finally, what NEEDS to be done/seen in Istanbul. We both enjoy history a lot and visiting museums. We also like the beach and bar scene as we are in our early 20's. We will be in Europe from the end of may until mid June. Thank you

jent103

Normandy (well, part of it) is possible to do as a day trip from Paris, but be aware that it's a very long day. My brother and I did the tour with Fat Tire back in March; we caught a train around 8 or 8:30 and didn't get back until after 11. We were delayed an hour or 90 minutes due to a late train in Caen, but it would still have been well over 12 hours total. That said, our guide was great and I'd recommend the actual tour. We visited Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and the American cemetery.

What "needs" to be done in Paris is totally up to your interests - my list might not match yours. Do you have anything already on the must list? Other than the most obvious (Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower), some of my favorites included

- the Pompidou - I did not expect to like this as much as I did!
- walks with Paris Walks (great, inexpensive guided tours)
- Sainte-Chapelle (try to go on a sunny day)

It is possible to do a day trip to Florence from Rome - I've not done it, but there are lots of discussions here about it.

jent103

One more piece of advice - look for trip reports here (marked with the yellow book; you can search in the box above). I always find those to be helpful when starting to plan a trip.

annhig

angelo - there have been a lot of threads here recently about Istanbul - you can easily search the forum for them by going to the search box and putting in Istanbul. you can also use the destinations button above for researching Istanbul and Paris.

Of course there is more to see in Paris than would fill 4 weeks, let alone 4 days, and it's up to you to do as much or as little as you wish. some guide books [eg the excellent Michelin green guide] will have suggested itineraries for any number of days; my 4 day itinerary would be something like this: Notre Dame, St. Chappelle, the Marais [Victor Hugo's house] on Day 1, the musee D'orsay, St. Germain, the musee du moyen age, on Day 2, Versaiiles on Day 3, and Day 4 the Eiffel Tower, les Invalides, the Rodin museum on day 4.

Everyone else will have their own ideas, and will probably shoot me down in flames - where is my seine cruise? where is the Louvre? Where the Orangerie? where the opera and the grands boulevards? I said that it was MY 4 days in Paris, didn't I???

you could add or subtract anything you like, but it's a good idea to group places by area so as not to waste time criss-crossing the city, and to make sure that you have made sure that the place you want to see is shut on the say you have scheduled for it. you cna get a museum pass for 24,28,or 72 hours - it may not save you that much money, but it'll stop you having to wait in long queues, which is important if you want to see the Louvre or the Musee D'Orsay.

StCirq

Guide books and maps are the places to start, plus reading Fodors and other travel sites on the web. There's no such thing, really, as a "must-see" anywhere - it's entirely up to you. Once you have digested enormous amounts of basic information and sifted through it, make a list of the things that interest you most in each location, then come back and ask for details and specifics and recommendations.