veggiegarden

My parents are 68 and 78. Though they are pretty mobile at home, they won't be able to do extensive walking trips. Next May 2012 will be my parents 50th wedding anniversary. I would like to plan a trip to London and Paris to celebrate their annoversary.

They are also strict vegetarians, so when we travel in the US we usually find condo rentals where we can cook partial meals. Although this is not a requirement, I would like to keep that in mind while making plans.

Would a guided tour be our best option? Would it be more expensive to try to do this on our own? How should I go about this?

Thanks....

adrienne

Guided tours are usually more money than making arrangements on your own. London and Paris are two very easy cities to visit. Both have lots of 2 hour walking tours and guided visits in museums.

You should fly into one city and home from the other; take the Eurostar train between London and Paris.

First step - get a few guide books from your local library and start reading. Concentrate on the general information in the beginning of the book and then go on to decide what sights appeal to you. Start looking for good airfares.

There are many posts on this board about both cities and I remember one long post about vegetarian eating in Paris. It should be no problem to find restaurants to accommodate vegetarians.

Rather than staying in hotels a two bedroom apartment would be a good idea.

If you've traveled before in the US you already know how to go about planning a trip. It's no different to plan for a European trip than it is a US trip except you'll need passports and plug adapters for electronics.

immimi

As long as they aren't vegans they will do just fine in both
cities.

I took my (then) 76 yr.o. mother to both places and the
essential thing was down time in the afternoon and an early
supper then more down time.

Christina

I"m not sure what to advise about the tour thing and will leave those who have traveled with seniors more for that.

But I don't eat meat more than once or twice a week for health reasons and have friends who are vegetarians, and we go out to dinner all the time (in the US), so I really don't understand the idea that you can't eat out if you are vegetarian. In London, in particular, there are tons of Indian restaurants and they have lots of good vegetarian dishes.

avalon

ALmost every restaurant I've been in in London will offer a vegetariaan option. Seriously I cannot think of even one that doesn't. Lots of Vegetarian places in Paris too but most restaurants and bistros will offer at least 1 or 2 options.

Transportation is so reat in both cities, especially the buses that I can be out all day at age 72 and not feel a strain. I do not need to walk from place to place to sightsee.

Michel_Paris

The other thing to consider are Hop-On Hop-Off buses. In essence, buses that make a loop of all of the major tourist locations. You get on at any location, get off at any other one...or just stay on and loop.

That way you don't need to navigate the public transit system as much.

There are also a lot of walking tours, like London Walks and Paris Walks. They have tours of neighbourhoods, or of just one building (like St Paul's or British Museum).

veggiegarden

Thanks everyone. My dad defintely needs his afternoon naps. Sounds like an apartment would be a good thing to check out. I just googled vacation rentals london and got a lot of sites. would that be the way to go? Any other suggestions.

Michel_Paris

Tty searching here for London Apartment. Many people here have chosen thos route.

beachbum2

Just be very clear in asking how far is the nearest tube or metro station. They may say a block, but it can be a very long block. You need to be very specific. There is a lot of walking required in both cities, but you can make it easy by planning a visit to just 1 or 2 major attractions a day that are close. Apartments are great. That's what we always do. There are great sites like VRBO and homeaway that we have used many times. I am in the process of writing our trip report from London and paris with 3 kids. I can't imagine it would need to be that much different as kids don't have the energy to walk as much either, although we did pretty well this trip.

As for being vegetarian, you will not have trouble anywhere. There were many options in both countries. We are not big meat eaters, (with the exception of my son eating the AMAZING paris hot dogs on a daily basis). We had no problem finding great choices.

Do the trip on your own. You have plenty of time to plan and will be able to have more flexibility in your schedule. Grab some Rick Steves and Fodors travel guides from the library and search the forum for trip reports to see what worked vs didn't work for people.

It will be a great trip for all of you!

veggiegarden

Thanks Michel. I will try that.

Thanks beachbum2. I have used vrbo before. Can you tell me where you stayed (using vrbo or homeaway) and roughly how many $/per night I should plan for - for a moderate stay not extravagant - clean, comfortable and short walk from public transport so that we can do many (if not all) the major sites

nytraveler

Guided tours are a really bad idea - since they operate at a single speed and anyone who can;t keep up gets to sit in the bus and wait for others to return from seeing whatever.

Separately, many (most) tours won;t take children that age - often the minimum is 12 - since sitting on a bus for so many hours per day is not conducive to the attention span of small children.

Much better to organize the trip yourself, get an apartment so you're not sitting on top of each other every moment - and can do things at your pace - not someone else's. that will also give you the option of finding vegetarian restaurants - and doing some cooking/dining at home.

beachbum2

veggiegarden, if you click my username and go to my most recent post or search london kids, you will find the the trip report in progress. I have links to the places we stayed in both London and Paris. 2 years ago, our place was much smaller, but very nice and less than $250 us a night. This trip we opted for larger, more luxury places. Both were fantastic, but also had their advantages and disadvantages! They were both around $375-$400 a night which is cheaper than 2 hotel rooms and nicer too! Other things to consider are how to get there from the airport and train stations. In our first place in Paris, it was direct line metro from the train station making it very reasonable and easy for us to get to the apartment. The Paris one this year was not direct, so we had to book a minicab, costing significantly more. Hope that helps. I find Homeaway better for european travel too!

beachbum2

I thought of another thing......Also, bring an easy fold, but solid umbrella stroller. We brought a maclaren with a shoulder strap. It was a godsend! When our 5 year old was tired, we could keep going. It was easy to fold to deal with all the stairs at the metros as she just hopped out. It was also a benefit as you could get into a few museums easier with it. The line at the louvre was huge and we went to a side entrance having the museum pass. They told us we couldn't take the stroller down the escalator. I told him we could fold it up and he was fine. It saved us a good hour line!