My husband and I have booked a July flight that arrives in Rome and departs from London. There are 11 full days between our arrival and departure. We know we want to spend at least three nights in Rome, two nights in Florence and four nights in London. Our question is should we spend more time in Rome and Florence and not try to squeeze two nights in Paris into this trip? If we schedule Paris, we arrive on a Sunday and depart on a Tuesday. We have learned that Versaille is closed on Monday, so our only chance to see it would be to do so after a 12-hour overnight train trip from Florence into Paris. I welcome input from all of you super-skilled travelers who can better understand travel fatique, as well as a reasonable time frame to allow yourself to experience a foreign town/country.

I think I would save Paris for your next trip. But if you decide to do it, forget Versailles and see the city. I say this with no experience on Paris as I will be seeing it for the first time myself in May. I do know, however, that the city has so much to see and do that two nights won't do it justice. I have been to Rome and think that you could definitely add more time there. Rome has tons to do and see and you may exhaust yourself in three days. There are many opinions here about Florence. I loved it and could definitely spend more than two nights, others will disagree. If you love art and good food, you will probably love Florence.

More time in Rome would be your best bet. You'll be jet lagged on arrival and so an extra day or two would be good. For me 2 nights in Florence was ample.

I love Paris and personally would spend less time in London to fit it in to the itinerary but I'd skip Versailles.

In your case I recommend you skip Paris and fly from Florence to London.

I agree that saving Paris for another trip might be best. In fact, you could adjust your trip a little bit to borrow a day from London and add it to Rome to help with the jetlag issue that Sassy_cat talked about, and then do another trip some other time that includes Paris and London. The Chunnel train runs right between the two cities, making travel between them quick and very doable. I think trying to cram Paris into this trip is going to be too much, and Paris is a very big city, with many things spread out from each other. So, you'd only be sampling a very small portion of the city if you did decide to go for two days. And as Elcon said, skip Versailles for sure if you do go.

I had this fight with my best friend last September. She wanted to take an overnight train from Munich to Paris for the day while we were at Oktoberfest. It just didn't make any sense, and after explaining to her how big the city was (and how long that train ride would have been), and how little of it she would see, she let it go. In fact, she's leaving for Rome/Paris next week because she took my advice to go back and do it another time.

Florence is amazing, but it's not very big and can easily be done in two days. I agree about Rome-- it's huge and there is a lot to see and do there. London is the same, but you could see a sizeable amount of it in three days. Hope this helps.

Happy travels!

First - you have too many cities for so few days - I would do either Rome/Florence of London with day trips.

Second, if you must keep Paris do not waste time on a train - but hop a plane and get there much faster - with more time to see thngs.

Thank you to all who responded. We've decided to ax Paris and spend an extra day in Rome and Florence. We will now fly from Florence to London.

Hi L2,

Any reason fro skipping Venice?

You can fly Venice VCE to LGW or Venice Treviso to Stansted.
See www.whichbudget.com

once you've been its pretty hard to forget paris...

Paris deserves its own trip. Been twice, and the third is in the works, for a month.