ialicek

Hi so my fiancé and I are planning our honeymoon trip to Europe (specifically France, Spain and Portugal) for two weeks in May and and wanted to get people's opinion or a better option.

We're hoping to buy a one way to France (taking a late flight from NY and landing in CDG in the afternoon the next day).

Planning on staying in Paris for 5 days (four full nights). I've been to Paris before, but my fiancé hasn't so it would be nice to show him around the 'touristy' spot.

After Paris, we want to go south of France, but not sure where are some good places to go for a night or two.

From there, we wanted to go to Barcelona, Madrid, and somewhere in Portugal (preferably Lisbon because we're hoping to fly home from there), but not sure how to distribute our days...

Also what's the best method of transportation between Paris and Spain to Portugal ?

Thanks in advance for all your help

traveller1959

Two many destinations for two weeks.

"we want to go south of France, but not sure where are some good places to go for a night or two"

I know many good places there, but it is not worth going there for so short a time.

My earnest suggestion is not more than 3 places:

Paris, southern France and Barcelona

or

Paris, Barcelona and Madrid

or

Paris, Madrid and Lisbon

traveller1959

Not "two" but "too".

Christina

I haven't been to Portugal so not sure the best way to get there, but it might depend whewre in Spain you were. I know there are trains, so that is a possibility. It's probably not too bad a route from Madrid, an 11 hr train ride , though, very long. It's certainly far enough, you could easily fly on a budget airline.

IN fact, my favorate budget airline, Easyjet, flies that route direct in less than 1.5 hours for less than 100 euro. Some other airlines do, also, you can compare prices (like Air Europe and Iberia).

But I agree your itinerary is way too much for only 2 weeks. You could do Paris, Barcelona (or Madrid) and LIsbon in 2 weeks, but not throwing in the south of France. Yes, you could do both Barcelona and Madrid if you only spend a couple days in each.

I'd drop Lisbon or drop Spain or something.

DO not even think about buying one way tickets for these flights, it will cost you a fortune (except for ones within Europe like Madrid to Lisbon or Paris to BCN). I don't think you've bought international airline tickets much, so maybe don't know that you can buy a ticket where you fly into one city and fly out of another, it is done all the time--I always do it when going to Europe. And the price will be close to the RT fare for one city destination. Of course it won't be the exact same as one city is always more expensive to fly into or out of, due to location.

Sassafrass

You are smart not to waste time backtracking with RT tickets, but don't buy one way tickets. Look for multi-destination or multi-city tickets.

Provence in Southern France is beautiful, but not a good place for just a day or two. It would be a great place to rent a car and explore for five days to a week. Easy, fast train from Paris to Avignon, then pick up a car. Ancient Roman buildings (some still in use), and aqua ducts, flowers, provincial towns and markets, interesting landscape all vie for your attention, as well as outstanding food and wines. Would that suit your interests though?

Rather than consuming time and spending more money to fly to Lisbon, why not explore some of the very worthwhile (some world heritage) sights in Spain. Toledo is less than half an hour by train from Madrid. Segovia is close also. Old world Seville is romantic and beautiful. The Alhambra in Granada is exquisite, even romantic, at night. It will be especially beautiful in May.

Kathie

I agree with others, you need to drop at least one destination. Also, your belief that you can get 5 days out of four nights is sadly mistaken. If you have 4 nights in Paris, you will have 3 full days, and perhaps parts of two other days depending on your transport schedule.

What do you want out of this trip? Are there particular sights out must see? Are you looking more for the experience of being in France or Spain or Portugal? If you want more of the experience, you'll want to give yourselves time to wander, get lost, sit in a cafe and sip wine, etc. In that case, you'd likely be happier with just two destinations.

Our advice to most first-timers is to slow down and visit fewer destinations. Note that each time you change location you lose from half a day to a full day (count from checking out of one place until you are tied in at the next).

ialicek

Hey everyone. Thanks for all your replies. Talked it over and we decided on Paris, Barcelona, and Spain. I guess I was being a bit too greedy trying to squish in a lot more than necessary.

As for the air fare, I forgot that travel sites like Expedia offered multi-destination flights; I was looking at apps like Hopper and Hipmunk that only offered the cheapest one-way or roundtrip air flights.

Any other tips or must do things at these 3 places would be great!

Thank you

Whathello

Don't book a flight with Expedia or bravo fly or kayak.
Never.
They add a filter to your actual airline.
Book via airline. They provide multi destination.
Booking with third party equals recipe for disaster if you need to change anything or if the airline changes anything.

Whathello

Hello

Here a balanced thread about Expdedia - please read it and decide if you want to book with Expedia. My opinion matches the one from Bill Hunt, post 8, whom I know is a very frequent traveler (and knows what he posts about).

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTop...ir_Travel.html

Mvg.

StCirq

Don't book with anything but the actual airlines (after doing whatever research you can on Expedia et al., of course). And never buy a one-way ticket unless you're not planning on returning home. What you want are multi-city (open-jaw tickets) - into Paris and out of Barcelona, for example.

Not sure what you mean by Barcelona and Spain, as Barcelona is IN Spain. In order for anyone to make suggestions on what to do and how to do it you need to provide a lot more information - your ages, your interests, how you want to travel around, etc.

traveller1959

Recently, I had tried to book flights with Expedia. At first glance, their rates looked better than the airlines' rates. But when I wanted to finalize the bookings all sorts of additional fees popped up, including huge fees for credit card payment (I have to pay by credit card because of the travel insurances which come free with my card).

Finally, I lost my confidence and considered Expedia an untrustworthy company.

And I booked directly on the airlines' websites (Air France and Lufthansa, in this case). Some things work more smoothly if you book directly, like reserving seats, changing the booking, being informed about changes and delays, online check-ins etc.

I also heard stories about consolidators (like Expedia) which issued documents that looked like tickets but were not tickets and ended up as worthless papers when the consolidator went bankrupt.

Re: one-way flights

Many European airlines have begun to offer one-way flights for very good rates. Just check. They also have engines for multi-city flights on their websites.

For flights to or from Spain, check Vueling. They often have good rates.

And use a flight search engine to find good rates and then book directly with the airline.

ialicek

@Stcirq- meant Barcelona and Madrid. Whoops

Yikes, I guess I never really looked in to Expedia. I've used it to book my flights to London and Italy before, but never had any problems. I'll have to take in all your considerations and look at actual airline sites

Thank you all!

StuDudley

When we do a short 2 week vacation - we like to mix in a little "countryside" in between big cities. Three back-to-back-to-back big cities is just "too much" for us.

Consider:

- Paris 5 nights
- TGV to the Avignon TGV station (less than 3 hrs) and spend 5 nights in Provence
- TGV from the Nimes station to Barcelona (3 1/2 hrs) or Madrid (6 3/4 hrs) and spend 4 nights in Barcelona or Madrid.

All these trains are no-train-change trips and there are many departures every day (only 1 train/day to Madrid - but many other schedules with 1 train change)

Stu Dudley