We are planning 10 days in Paris. We would like to take a train (or best way) to some other country(ies) while we are in France. If we wanted to give another country just a quick look/see, which or how many additional countries could we work into this timeframe. Thanks. We are just beginning to put this trip together.

I'm not sure if I understand your question, but
it appears you want to visit other countries to
sightsee during the day and then return to stay
in Paris at night. If so, the only city to visit
within a reasonable travel distance is Brussels,
which is about 2 hrs by train from Paris. Geneva
is almost 4 hrs, London 3 hrs, etc., by train
ONE-WAY. So, while you could go to these places
and back in one day (also Amsterdam),you'd have
to turn right around and go back to Paris
within a few hours of arriving. I think it would
be a waste of money for the train fare. There
are many nice places in France you can visit from
Paris on day trips, why don't you do that instead?

I am sorry my question wasn't clear. We have booked only our air at this point. No lodging or any other reservations have been booked. So we are free to be away from Paris as long as necessary except we need to depart out of Paris on the last day. I am interested in the places that you mentioned. Could you tie those locations (and any others) together in order and give me an idea of distance between them in terms of hours. (The way you did on your last message.) Of course, I realize we would need to backtrack if we went to London. So I am interested in going in a direction that would include more places on the continent. So I would be interested in tying together as many countries as possible in one trip even if that meant spending the night along the way. We could then make our lodging reservations accordingly. A second question would be, would we want to consider booking a berth on the train and travel at night? Thanks.

Try the following data sources, www.ricksteves.com and www.eurorail.com. The first source offers tours, you can get an idea of possible route/stops for your European tour. Also sign up for their newsletter. It includes a decent map of the train system with estimated distance and travel time for each route. The second source I found when I searched for eurorail in Yahoo!!. I bet if you called them they'd help you out on a realistic route. I looked in Frommer's and his response to the question, Europe in two weeks was "London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam". That URL is www.frommers.com.

Last spring I travelled to Chamonix, France on the overnight train from Paris. It's about seven hours. Chamonix is a wonderful small town to visit on the Swiss/Italy?French border. It's a skil resort town. In the off season you can take the gondola to the top of a mountain and view Mont Blanc. We stayed in a B&B called the Hotel Savoyarde. Stay in room 5 for a picturesque view of Mont Blanc. The train ride is better if you go first class.

Yvonne, great websites! Thanks. Julie, your's is exactly the kind of information and ideas I am looking for. I will check it out. Thanks.

If you head north, I'd go to Brugges -- it's only about 1-1.5 hours from Brussels and is one of the best preserved medieval cities you'll ever find.