London, Edinburgh, Italy..HELP!
 

Hi there - thanks for clicking!

My fiance and I are planning 16 days in Europe - July 1-16. She is dead set on Italy. I am dying to go back to England. Sooooo.....we need a little logistical help.

Quick searching of flights yielded Phoenix (our location) to London to be the overall cheapest option. We are tentatively thinking of flying into London - doing a couple days there - then opting for driving around the English countryside with a few good stops. We thought we might do a day in Edinburgh if our countryside tour takes us that far north.

We can afford (with travel) to burn about 7-8 days doing this.

We then have several options to get from London to Italy. First, we thought of just driving it and stopping over in Zurich. However, we are not sure how feasible this is or how logical. Second, we could take a ryanair from London to Italy. We can then do 7 days in Italy and hop back to London for our flight home.

Our main questions:
1) Is 7 days too short a time to do London, the countryside, and a day and night in Edinburgh?
2) It is a lot cheaper to fly in and out of London rather than an open jaw flying home from Italy. Does it make sense to drive from London to Italy, or just save the time and fly?
3) Has anyone done this mix of places before with that amount of time? Any tips, tricks, or things we haven't thought of would be MUCH APPRECIATED!

Thanks,

Jess and Rhonda

I can't see any possible way that driving would work in terms of cost. I rather doubt any London rental company would rent you the car to take to Italy (and you dont want to rent a car to drive in Italy with a steering wheel on the right-hand side of the vehicle).

Ryan Air and Easy Jet and other cheap airlines fly to many, many destinations in Italy.

What are you trying to accomplish on your trip through the UK? Loads of sightseeing? Relaxing and enjoying? A road trip adventure? Where are you going in Italy and what for?

Plenty of people go to the UK and Italy in 16 days and have a great time.

I'd check carefully that you could take a rental car from the UK to the continent, and what the drop-off fees would cost you. Even if you can, would you want to (i.e. a right-hand drive car on the continent)?

Driving in Europe is not like driving in the States, necessarily. Bear that in mind before you plan a road trip the way you would at home.

I personally would take the train between London and Edinburgh, and fly between the UK and Italy, but it's up to you.

I think maybe the two of you need to talk more about where you want to go, why, and for how long.

And look carefully for flights before you decide an open-jaw ticket won't work for you. Sometimes you are not looking in the right place for open-jaw/multi-city/multiple destination tickets, and end up being quoted the rate for two one-way tickets instead. If you do fly in and out of London, and to some other destination in between, make sure you know what you're doing with an unprotected connection, fees on budget airlines, which airports you will use, et cetera. There are a lot of posts here and on other travel forums from travelers who didn't do their homework before they bought a plane ticket to somewhere they didn't want to go.

It makes little sense to fly into and fly home from London - you need a multi city flight - into London then home from Italy. Even if a multi city flight is more expensive the cost of having to return to London would likely wipe out any possible savings.

It also makes no sense to drive from the UK to Zurich.

After several days in the UK you could fly to Italy (or anyway else in Europe) from one of many regional airports (e.g. Edinburgh if that's where you end up) - there's no need to return to London.

What you propose isn't beyond the bounds of possibility but you need to begin clarifying exactly where you want to go and how many days you have for further advice.

This Google subsidiary www.itasoftware.com is an industry service for many airlines. It does not sell tickets but you can compare many possibilities. It shows that in early July, a round trip to London can be essentially the same price as going into London and home from Rome. I'm guessing you assembled two one-way tickets to decide that the multi-city price was much higher. This is common on these forums. Instead, use a multi-city or multi-destination function on an Internet travel agency such as Expedia or Hipmunk or Cheapoair (there are lots) or even the airlines' own sites. The combined itinerary should be much lower cost.
By the way, I was surprised at what you have to pay to fly trans-Atlantic from your city.
A useful tool for European budget airlines: www.skyscanner.com. Almost all these airlines sell only one-way tickets.

I'm not doing the research and checking, etc., for you, but--for an October 2016 trip from south Texas, it was almost $700 cheaper per ticket to fly round trip to Edinburgh compared to flying to London. You have probably looked at this, but just checking--are you sure flying into London is the cheapest? Could be your route/airlines/dates make it so, but we were quite surprised at the hefty difference (and so--we are going to Edinburgh in October!) And of course, I know that maybe there would not be a savings flying open jaw. Just suggesting.

If you did this already, never mind, as Emily Litella used to say!

>>1) Is 7 days too short a time to do London, the countryside, and a day and night in Edinburgh? <<

yes -- way too short. Especially if you drive. London needs a minimum of three full days (4 nights) t see/do much of anything. And longer is much better.

That doesn't leave you much time for anything else. With even just two nights (one full day) somewhere in the countryside - you have a full day's drive to Edinburgh and would not have any time there since you'd only have one night and have to leave for Italy the next morning. Edinburgh 450 miles from London.

And driving to Italy makes no sense at all. - that would eat up at least 3 days in the car. Then you want to return to London -- which is crazy.

Even IF round trip tix are cheaper than open jaw - when you add the extra cost of returning to London to fly home it is most likely a very false economy. You would want to return to London the night before your flight home so not only are you spending extra $$/££/€€, you are wasting a day's ravel.

What you could do (easily) is fly into London and stay 4 or 5 days, train to Edinburgh and stay 2 nights, fly to Italy, fly home

Hi, I agree with the other replies, you need to narrow down what you want. We have travelled to the Uk a number of times and we love driving round the countryside, but even though the distances seem alot less than the US, and therefore easier, it can eat up travel time. I would pick a much smaller area, for example, we are off in a coupe of days, flying into Manchester, a smaller airport, really easy to get in and out of, picking up hire car and spending 5 days in the Peak District, understanding that its Feb and the days are short, and dark, it will probably be freezing and raining!! Some of the big attractions will be closed,BUT cosy Pubs, a gorgeous B&B, some pretty drives, afternoon tea and a couple of beautiful old houses!! We then fly(easyjet) to Faro in Portugal for a few days and drive up to Lisbon.We then fly to Barcelona(Vueling).
My point is don't be too ambitious, and try to see everything in too short a time. Its crazy to consider driving to Italy, fly into the destianation you want to see ie Florence, Venice or Rome, and spend your precious vacation time enjoying yourselves!!

Thank you so much for the heads up. You guys point out some things we didn't think of...others that we did.

We are having trouble narrowing down our destinations for Italy.

Initially we considered flying into Rome from England and trying to do Rome, Florence, and Venice. We would then fly home from Milan but are much less interested in spending much time there than the others cities; however, it just seems much cheaper to fly home from Milan.

Anyone done this particular set before or are we being too ambitious again. If so, we could do it in reverse: fly into Venice, then do Florence, and then end in Rome and fly home from there (effectively cutting Milan out all together). We do want to at least spend an over night and day or two in Tuscany.

Thoughts, ideas?

You want to do Rome, Venice, Florence <i>and</i> Tuscany (w/ or w/o Milan) in a week?

That is as hectic/overly ambitious as your ideas re the UK.

>>We do want to at least spend an over night and day or two in Tuscany.<<

To get one full day in Tuscany you need to stay two nights, two days means 3 nights and so on.

In all honesty, you are trying to fit a 4 or 5 week trip into 15 days

I assume you are using American for the flights.

I agree with the open jaw flight idea but you do not need to fly home FROM MILAN unless you absolutely want to. You can get back to PHX on AA from Venice flying through PHL. You might want to price both returns and compare.

There is no way I would use Ryanair for anything as compared to Easyjet which I have had MUCH better service from.

You can do 3 nights in Rome, 2 nights in Florence and 2 nights in Venice or some combination of that seven-night scenario. Personally I'd probably add a couple nights here or there BUT that depends entirely on your interests and not what somebody who has no idea what they are is arbitrarily telling you.

In saying that "we do want to at least spend an over night and day or two in Tuscany", I am assuming you mean the scenic wine country of Tuscany, and for that you will do best to rent a car. If you are flying from the UK into Italy, it might be best to fly to Rome and either pick up a car immediately and head to southern Tuscany (in the general vicinity of Montepulciano) or land in Rome and stay in Rome for a few days, the rent a car.

In your case, I think it might make the most sense to land in Rome, rent a car and visit Tuscany first. Drop off the car in Chiusi or Orvieto, then take a train to Rome. From Rome, if you take a train to Venice, you can stop en route in Florence (stow your luggage in the train station) for lunch and a gawk-around. If you want to spend more time there, up to you, or you can skip it. If you do decide to spend time in Florence be aware that unless you make timed reservations to see many of the most popular attractions (like Michelangelo's David) you can spend hours waiting on line for admission.

I live in Italy and fly Ryan Air to and from the UK all the time, and use EasyJet in Europe (and other budget airlines). Ryan Air is the equivalent of all the others and delivers good (if not better) customer service in certain aspects. In the end, you should pick the flight that best suits your budget, schedule and itinerary and not worry about the carrier.

Coming from the UK, you can do the Italian portion of your itinerary just about any way you like -- meaning, you can find flights from the UK to Venice or Florence or Pisa or Rome or even Bologna that will put you in a good position to see the places you've said you want to see. How much time you want to spend in each, seeing and doing what, and whether you want to skip some places, is up to you and most of all your fiancé, since she really wants to visit Italy. It's not easy to make choices since there is so much beauty and interest in Italy, but it is best if you make your own choices.

I have never flown out of Venice airport to the US, but many who have find that the flights often leave so early in the morning it is something they would never do again. It is not a simple breeze getting to the airport in Venice unless you pay a lot of money for a water taxi.

Got it! You all are helping so much. Can anyone tell me a little more about Ryanair or EasyJet? Specifically, do we need to book that well in advance (just as we are booking are international flight) or does it work just as well to book that once you arrive?

Anyone have experience with this?

>>or does it work just as well to book that once you arrive? <<

Book as soon as your dates/times are set. The cheap fares disappear and walk up fares can be as very high (and the flights could be full if you wait too long.

IMO/IME easyJet is better than Ryanair - but it has been a long time since I last flew Ryanair so things may have changed/improved.

There are other decent discount carriers in Europe -- but easyJet is a good option.

As for 7 days in London, countryside and a day and a night in Edinburgh, I recommend you to take a flight, because if you drive to Edinburgh it will take the whole day. In fact the best would be 5 days in London, 1 day for a 1 town around (Oxford or Cambridge or Bath), then flight to Edinburgh on the morning and spend there the 7th day and a night.

Here are a couple of slightly different takes with Reasons. I don't know how many days it will take because I am only focusing on the flow.

Fly into London.

After London, train to Edinburgh. There is a lot of scenery between the two, and you can drink beer while you are looking at it. Sit on the right side where most of the views are. Stop overnight in York as a substitute for a London day trip. Minster, city walls, National Railway Museum, etc.

Edinburgh. Terrible place to drive, excellent place to walk. Take the train to Stirling if you want an excursion or St Andrews if you are a golfer, but plenty of art, history, good food, shopping in Edinburgh. Tram to airport.

Cheap flight from Edinburgh to Venice. You don't necessarily have to fly to Marco Polo as there are alternative airports in the area or you could fly to Milan and train to Venice with a stop in the lakes or Verona.

Then train to Florence or Orvieto. Rent car (easier in Orvieto) and drive around. This is the first time you have had to rent a car. Southern Tuscany is easy driving and you need one to get to Sienna, San Gimigniano, Pienza, the Val di Orcia, etc. I find this area lots more satisfying than Chianti.

Return car in Orvieto, train to Rome, fly home from Rome.

Why fly into Venice and home from Rome?

Because there are direct flights from Rome to the US, and they leave at reasonable times.

Flights from Venice require a change in Europe and probably another in the US if you are going to PHX, they leave godawful early, and they arrive at your destination godawful late.

>>then flight to Edinburgh on the morning and spend there the 7th day and a night.<<

Flying up to Edinburgh is usually not the best option. A train is city centre to city centre w/o the schlepp out to/in from the airports and is just easier all around.

Door-to-door the train is as fast as flying, and is often faster depending where one is staying.

You have clocked that the notion of renting in the UK and driving that same rental car in continental Europe is completely daft, right? Your UK car is fitted for driving on the wrong side of the road viz. the continent and returning a hire car to another country incurs a large drop charge (which is likely to be larger from the UK because the car is completely un-rentable on the continent).

You need to stop thinking in absolute terms of flight X costs ___ and flight Y from a different city costs ___ (see Milan/Venice, Milan/Rome issues) because that doesn't account for the cost of travel to Milan.

A UK car is fitted for driving on the left not the "wrong" side.

Last check, if you're driving your car on the LEFT side of the road on the continent, you're driving on the wrong side.

Read what I wrote, northie.