Rakuraku

Hi all,
My husband and I are planning our 1st big European trip in June next year. We are leaving from Australia and will be there for 30 days (not including flight to and from Sydney). We are interested in experiencing as much as we can but don’t want our trip to be too rushed – we are hoping to come back for more next time. We want to do the usual tourist things – sightseeing, trying different food, visiting museums, and just experiencing what Europe is like. The must see places are London, Paris, the Swiss Alps (Janfrau) and I would love to drive around the English countryside.

We are in our mid 30s, fairly fit (I like to think) and haven’t had much problem with jetlag in past trips to the US.

Budget isn’t really a huge issue but we would of course like to keep it reasonable (maybe $20k give or take).

We are still in early stages of our planning and after consulting this and other forums, we came up with the following draft itinerary:

Day 1 to 5 – London
Day 6 to 10 – Paris (include day to Versailles)
Day 11 to 16 – Swiss Alps/Lucerne (thinking of taking the night trains to Amsterdam so won’t lose a day travelling)
Day 17 to 18 – Amsterdam (fly to Edinburgh)
Day 19 to 28 – Driving from Edinburgh to Bath – hoping to stop in on the Lake district, York, Cotswold district. Is this too much?
Day 29 to 30 – back to London

Are we being too ambitious with the above itinerary? Happy to forego Amsterdam and/or Edinburgh. They were included more for the connection between Lucerne and the drive down from the Lake District.

Thanks for looking and any help would be greatly appreciated.

S

jamikins

Can't add much now as I am at work but I would fly directly to Paris and home from London or vice versa and avoid backtracking by putting all your London time together.

jamikins

Oh and drop Edinburgh if you just plan a night there! That doesn't even give you a day to see it when you allocate the transit time on either side!

Rakuraku

Thanks for the quick reply Jamikins - loved to do the open jaw option but flights have been locked in already (got a cheap deal

Question: If I drop Edinburgh, where should I fly to from Amsterdam?

mamcalice

I would find a day to add to Paris, especially if you plan a day at Versailles.

bilboburgler

I'd keep Edinburgh and make the drive south into say
Edinburgh 3 nights
Lake District 3 nights
Cotswolds 3 nights (no "district")

Crossing to York means you need to scrape 2 nights off other places which would be tight

hetismij2

Skip Amsterdam. Depending on the time of your flight you have at most a day and a half for the city, which is not enough. Fly from Switzerland to the UK.

jamikins

I would still put all your uk time together. On landing get z flight to Paris.

Cheap deals that involve backtracking sometimes aren't worth the 'deal' in lost time and additional costs to backtrack...

janisj

Don't drop Edinburgh - just give it some time. But if you can't stay 3 night/2 days minimum in edinburgh, then consider flying into Leeds or Manchester instead and visit the Lakes/York/ Cotswolds / Bath without Scotland.

I'd also group all the UK time together. If you must fly into london, book an onward flight the same day to either Switzerland or Paris.

dulciusexasperis

Are both your UK/OZ and Amsterdam/Edinburgh flights locked in or just the UK/OZ flights?

You are not allowing for travel days. You need to count them separately in order to see how much time you are really going to spend in each place. If you say day 5 London and day 6 Paris, one of them is not true. One of them will be spent getting to Paris from London. The same applies each time you move.

Your car rental may cost you a 'drop-off' charge since you are renting in Edinburgh and dropping the car off in London.

With 30 days I would not plan on making more than 7 stops of 4 nights or more each. Count moving days as a percentage of your total to compare moving time to time spent in places. Looking at percentage gives you a different perspective on all those moves. When you see you have 40% (for example) of your days spent moving, you start to realize it is not best use of time.

When you write "day 19-28 Driving from Edinburgh to Bath – hoping to stop in on the Lake district, York, Cotswold district. Is this too much?", the answer is not if you only stop in 2 places, yes if you stop in more.

janisj

I have rented scores of cars in the UK - and foreign visitors are almost never charged a drop off fee. We pre-book and drop off, extra driver, etc are almost universally included.

IMO 9 days is fine for your plan with 3 or 4 stops - lakes, York, Cotswolds, Bath.

Oaktown9

Looks solid.

Don't. Drop. Edinburgh.

neckervd

6 days in Switzerland: what do you want to visit exactly?
Day 10 or 11: you may spend the whole day in Paris, board the Paris dp 18.23 Interlaken bound TGV and arrive at Basel at 21.26 and at Interlaken shortly before midnight

travelnut265

Hi Rakuraku
Just to throw you a totally different view I'd drop the drive around the Uk and spend more time in Europe. You say you want to try and see different things you couldn't do better. Save the Uk drive for another trip.20k Aud would do us two for 2 months.

neckervd

I know that Britains love their (eurostar disturbed) splendid isolation. But their Islands are in Europe nevertheless.

travelnut265

Geographically speaking Europe is a continent and the Uk is separated from Europe by water called the English Channel.

isabel

I think your itinerary is not bad as it is. I would NOT go straight to Paris on arrival but keep the days in London as you have it. There are several issues involved with going to straight to Paris - what if your flight is late - then you miss your flight from London to Paris (or your eurostar train) and now you've wasted that money plus you're stuck with having to buy a very expensive last minute ticket. People will say leave plenty of time between flight from Austrialia and next flight but that doesn't help if your flight is many hours late, also means you'd be spending 'many hours' in an airport/train station. Then there's the fact that your second flight might well be at a different airport and transfers from one airport to another in London are not quick (or cheap). Plus makes that first travel day hell - much nicer I think to settle in to London and start to sight see.

I think your time in Paris is OK, but I probably wouldn't bother with Versailles with only that amount of time.

The Swiss part also looks good.

What I would change is I'd take a few days from your driving around England portion and add one or two to Amsterdam, and one or two to Edinburgh. That would still give you six days to drive from Edinburgh to Bath which seems like enough.

neckervd

"The Swiss part also looks good"
I didn't find any comprehensible thing about it, however.

"Geographically speaking Europe is a continent and the Uk is separated from Europe by water called the English Channel"
So according to you, travelnut, Santorini, Venice, Copenhagen, etc. are NOT part of Europe as well as Singapore is NOT part of Asia. Right?

dulciusexasperis

Then there are Malta, Sicily, Corsica, the Balearics, all the Greek islands, etc. All also separated from the 'contintent' of Europe by water.

And every one of these maps is incorrect too I guess travelnut since they include the UK in Europe.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=conti...w=1280&bih=687

Very amusing.

BrunoTraveling

If you could add 1 more day to Amsterdam I would strongly suggest this option. We LOVED Amsterdam super cute/charming. Also you could always do night train from amsterdam to prague possibly if that is of any interest to you.