France/Italy September honeymoon
 

My fiance and I are planning to go to France and Italy for our honeymoon. Does anyone have an itinerary to share for an 11 day trip (not including travel days so 13 days total). I'd love to fly into London and do London for a day or two...but if that means we don't have enough time to see the other cities thoroughly...I'll pass since I've been there before.

Thanks for your help! :-)

I would pick either Italy or France as 11 days isn't long enough for two countries.

Up to you whether you want to take a high-speed train from London to Paris, and then consider either a flight from Paris to an Italian destination, or an overnight train from Paris to an Italian destination. Many people don't find the overnight trains from Paris to Italy enjoyable, and if you wanted a southern Italian destination, it would really make more sense to fly given the length of the train journey. But you might find it more relaxing and more rewarding to spend all of your time in one country.

September weather is generally beautiful all over Italy (but nobody can promise you it won't rain). In addition to the destinations people usually think of as "honeymoon" spots (Venice, Rome, the Amalfi coast, Lago di Como and increasingly the Tuscan wine country and le Cinque Terre), Italy is a country of tremendous variety, with lovely accommodations and food everywhere. So in September you could also consider a relais in the Piemonte for outstanding food and wine, ditto Umbria, or extraordinary scenery and outdoor activities in the Dolomiti, again with great accommodations and excellent food and wine.

If you ultimately decide that you want to visit only one country, please don't be misled into choosing Italy by the thought that in 11 days you'll at least see one whole country. Spending 11 days in Italy moving from city to city switching hotels is not necessarily an improvement between seeing France and another destination in Italy, especially if that's what you would really rather do.

You could do London for a couple of days (LOVE London!), take a train to Paris, stay there a few days, then perhaps take a train to Bordeaux and explore by car Arcachon/vineyards/Dordogne area and fly out of Bordeaux, or go from Paris to a city in Provence, visit the area (perhaps with Cassis or Aix-en-Provence as a home base)and fly out of Nice or Marseille! All options are good specially in September!

My only tip : do not try to cram too much in 11 days, specially if this is your honeymoon. Better to stay more days in one place and really relax and soak up the atmosphere!

Enjoy!

Just noticed that you want to do France AND Italy! I guess you could take a train from Paris to Nice and drive the coast to Italy! But in that case, I would drop London... Too much beautiful stuff to see!

We've decided on the following trip:

London - 4 nights
Paris - 4 nights
Tuscany - 5 nights

What I'm having trouble with now is figuring out how to get from Paris to Tuscany without it costing me my first born! I'm thinking I can take an EasyJet flight (for cheap) to Venice and then drive to Tuscany from there. But then I'd have to drive back to Venice to depart and that's a drive.

That's what I'm finding is that Tuscany is a drive from everyplace there is an International airport.

Has anyone been to both Venice and Tuscany? Can you recommend which one we should see for our honeymoon?