joscott2011

We plan to visit London, Amsterdam and Paris next month. The things we plan to do are:

London(3 Days)
-Tower Of London
-London Eye
-British Museum
-Change of Guard & BP
-Westminster
-London Bridge stroll
-Ride on a double decker Bus
-Thames River Cruise
-Food: ??

Amsterdam(2 Days)
-Keukenhof (will be there before they close for the season)
-Big 3 Musuems
-Canal boat
-Food - Fries(??)

Paris(4 Days)
-Louvre
-Eiffel Tower (Night Too)
-Arc de Triomphe
-Notre-Dame Cathedral
-River cruise
-Food: Gerard Mulot(Pastries), Berthilon(Ice Cream); Crepes from the street.

Can you please add anything else not to be missed? Any other great food places/restaurants (like Gerard Mulot - but for any kind of food) in London or Amsterdam. I am not looking for too fancy restaurants, but normal ones the locals flock too - including street food.

Also looking for simple things not to miss (like the London bus ride).
I also need advice for decent bargain places for luxury brand shopping. Streets to stroll around.

Also need tips to save on local transportation (oyster card?) and museum/city passes.

Kassandra

About food in Amsterdam, maybe try one of the funny automatic restaurants...you get a hot snack, most of the times something fried, like "frikandel" if you put in coins. it is still normal fast food freshly made and replaced but u buy it from the automat, it is kinda unique in holland, so don't miss it

A_Guy_80

Hi,

If I was you and I only had 9 nights I would kep my itinerary down to 2 places only. Am planning to go to London this year but I have been to Paris and my suggestion will be to keep it down to 4 nights each in both the cities and then add a night in whichever city you find a day trip that suits your interests. Thanks to Eurostar you have a splendid connectin between London & Paris which will reduce your travel time as well.

To be frank, we were in Paris for 5 nights and we didn't take a single day trip at all and trust me am not typical I can spend 2 weeks in paris kind of person but indeed Paris has a lot to offer.

Will leave London to others, but for a first time tourist to Paris what you don't have on itinerary is atleast half a day in Montmartre and another 3-4 hours in Marais. probably take a walking tour in for these areas to appreciate them better with also some dose of history.

Atleast keep 1 day for Louvre even if you are not a museum person like me. It's amazing, interesting and you will feel short changed if all you do is spend half a day there.

So given what u wanna do (and a little of what u should do) your itinerary will look like this:

Day 1: Arrive in paris , settle in hotel...walk upto Eiffel Tower , go up and take views then may be walk again to get better views across the river.

Day 2: Ile de la cite (for berthilion and just walking around) in the morning and Notre Dame & Towers , St. Chapelle etc. for remaing day

Day 3 Louvre with a break in Tuilires

Day 4: Montmartre for half a day and Arc de triomphe, Champs Elysees and Siene cruise for remaing half -d ay

Day 5: Half Day At marais and then either u may be packing for flight back or wanna go back to some place u loved or take a walking tour etc.

May be you can squeeze it in 4 nights and take a day trip out to Reims or Versailles etc. which obviously I didn't do. And believe me this is not a very relaxed itinerary as many will soon tell you [and me ;-)]

mjdh1957

Regarding your 'London Bridge stroll' idea - London Bridge is a boring modern concrete bridge. The older one was dismantled and was rebuilt somewhere in Arizona, I think. What most tourists want to see is Tower Bridge.

opaldog

I would go with only 2 cities as well. If you have never been to any of them I would probably do the 2 big cities, London and Paris. I visited Amsterdam for the first time in February. We took a train from Paris for one night and then return to Paris, due to time constraints.

Amsterdam was a nice experience, but again if I had to choose only 2 I would do London and Paris.

janisj

I would also stick to only London and Paris (and even that will be <u>quite</u> rushed)

Day 1 in London will be pretty exhausting/jet lagged. Then you lose 1/2 a day going to Amsterdam and another 1/2 day moving to Paris. So you really have 2+ days free in London, 1.5 days in A'dam, and 3.5 days in Paris. Or . . . if you depart on your 4th day in Paris (instead of the next day) -- that leaves about 2.5 days free in Paris.

If you have already booked travel for London/A'dam/Paris --that is unfortunate. But if so, just make the best of it.

BigRuss

Quite honestly, the only things you've put up as things to do are the most basic surface-scratch residue for each city, where your identifications are not wrong (TOWER Bridge -- the real London Bridge is in Arizona). This is just a tick list of things you've heard about (sure, go to the Louvre and stand in a Mardi Gras sized crowd just to see the Mona Lisa behind reflective glass designed to protect it from flash photography instead of the Musee d'Orsay, which has a better ratio of masterpieces/square meter) but who knows what you're interested in other than street food or high-end shopping?

Tell us you're interested in X or Y and we can tell you where to go.

I'd also skip Amsterdam.

Finally, a direct answer to one question: Jermyn Street and Saville Row in London will enable you to spend lots of money on high-end items. Be sure to go to Fortnum & Mason for the food hall.

bachslunch

I'll just add that the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is from all reports not much worth the time and effort. If what I've seen is right, the amount of time ahead needed to claim a decent vantage point (of which there are apparently not so many), the short duration of the actual guard change, the possibility of cancellation, the drabness of the palace's outside, and the lack of anything dramatic happening during the changing would all seem good arguments against it.

I have seen the Changing of the Horse Guards which is supposed to be more interesting. It was okay, but I'd put even that pretty low on any "must" list of London experiences -- its main attribute is that it's pretty easy to fit in to a sightseeing day spent in Westminster, plus sight lines are at least good. Buckingham Palace is in fact well more out of the way compared to the rest of the area's attractions.

nytraveler

Agree that 3 days is pushing it. Also think it is to late in the year to actually see may flowers (doesn't matter if it;s technically open - most everything is gone). Amsterdam i s cute - but noting like London or Paris. And you haven;t even listed the things I would see first - like the Anne Frank House.

Four/5 days each IMHO is minimum for London/Paris to really get a feeling for the city. And agree that you have ignored some of the most major sights in each city: London (do you mean Westminster Abbey or the Palace of Westminster?, any of the other major or minor museums, Royal parks, Churchill's War Rooms, at least one show or ballet or whatever), Patis (Orsay Museum, St Chapelle, Rodin Musum, Invalides, Monmartre, Ile St Louis and any of th eother major museums).

In Paris you will want to spend some time - either later afternoon or after dinner sitting in a cafe in a popular area watching the world go by.

In London you can;t get into Buckingham palace (except picture gallery and mews) except when the family is n Scotland in Aug/Sept. Seeing the outside takes about 5 minutes and changing of the guard takes hours of standing (yo need to get there early to see anything). You might instead watch the changing at the Horse Guards - where you can get a lot closer and see more.

Michel_Paris

Non days is a bit rushed, due to the fact that day 1 you are jet lagged, day 9 you are leaving, and every time you switch cities you lose the transit time as well as the hotel find & check-in/check-out times.

You have booked Open Jaw airline tickets?

When I went to Amsterdam, I found 3 days to be plenty for me to see the city. For London and Paris, 3 days in each means compressing the list quite a bit.

joscott2011

Hi Good Samaritans:

Unfortunately I already made my stay and travel arrangements. I know that I am rushing through London/Paris - we do have future plans to explore them separately. As we are not sure whether we will get another opportunity to travel during the spring months(for visiting Keukenhof), we kind of made Amsterdam as the focal point of the trip and added the other two cities for the remaining available days.

nytraveler: I plan to visit Keukenhof on May 8th or 9th. Do you think it is too late? Yes, I did include include Anne Frank House(One of the Big 3 in the Amsterdam).

On hindsight we should have just added one city instead of two. We are not trying to do too many things - no shows/day trips, just hit the major sights and have some fun. Shopping is also not big on our list - only in case we have time in the evenings and get a break on designer stuff. Thanks for all your tips. We will try to get the best out of what we have now!

nytraveler

I was in Amsterdam on April 30th several year ago and while the gardens are still open my hotel advised me not to go - since they said the bulk of the flowers were already over - and the gardens stayed open only to accommodate tour buses.

Lexma90

Some food suggestions for Amsterdam:

De Prins, Prinsengracht 124, a typical Dutch restaurant/pub. It filled up fast on a Friday night.

We had drinks, twice, at ‘t Smalle, Egelantiersgracht 12. It is, indeed, small. There's a seating area above the bar area, climb the almost-vertical steps to get there. They also have a terrace drinking area across the street, right on the canal.

Fries are actually a Belgian specialty, but there's a (Belgian) fry place in Amsterdam that's pretty good, called Vleminckx French Fries, at Voetboogstraat 33. It's a to-go place; you'll identify it by the long line of people standing at the window.

A local item that we enjoyed was poffertjes, which are small pancake-like items. They're puffier than U.S. pancakes, and about the size of a golf ball. Served with powdered sugar or molasses. We stopped twice at ‘t Singeljte Pancake, Old Dutch Pancake house, 494 Singel, but plenty of other places serve them as well.