Spend a week in UK or Crash Course of Europe
 

I'm happy to be here and hope you can help me. I'm haven't traveled alot and consider myself a novice traveler at best. However, my teenage daughter (14 years) is attending Oxford, England for summer school in July. She's never been to England or Europe and neither have I. I was planning to join her on her last day of school and the two of us could spend another week sightseeing and touring. This will be the last week of July and first week of August. My question is should we just plan to spend a week in UK or should we also try and fit in some other European cities?

I would love to visit all over, go to Paris, Ireland, Italy.... but we only have a week. On one hand I'm thinking if we focus on just visiting one place like the UK we might have a more quality time vs a whirlwind tour of Europe.

My daughter's program will allow her a visit to Stonehenge, a day in London. As much as I'd like her to show me what all she saw...I'm thinking it might be better to visit things neither of us has seen.

I have family that is likey moving to Paris next year, so I could get another trip in a year or so.

So...Maybe stick with the UK or whirlwind Europe? What shoudl I do?

Thanks ahead of time.

The obvious choice is to end your trip with a day or two in Paris, then fly home from there. Take the Eurostar train under the channel from London to Paris, and get your tickets early for a considerable savings. And buy open jaws (multi-city) plane tickets into London Heathrow, out of Paris; these should cost about the same as round trip tickets.

Even if you're going back to Paris in a year, you won't see everything this time.

For a taste of the slightly foreign, you could end your week in Edinburgh, Scotland, and fly home from there.

But I'd just stay in England, maybe 2 or 3 days in London, the rest elsewhere. Where you go depends on your interests and your daughter's. Tell us what they are and we'll make some suggestions.

Are you willing to drive? If not, York and Bath make nice train-accessible destinations.

BTW there's a bus from Heathrow to Oxford. That's the easiest way to get there -- short of a town car.

I suggest you arrive early by several days or a week to see some of England before your daughter's program ends then the 2 of you visit maybe 2 cities on the Continent, for instance Eurostar to Paris, train to Amsterdam, fly home from there.

BTW, what does she want to do?

What you call a "crash course of Europe" would be a course in modes of transport between places, not the places.

Hmmm.....what do we want to do? That's wide open. Right now the only thing we discussed was seeing a show in London. Other than that we're two wide eyed eager travelers. I guess we need to talking about that.

What is an open jaws (multi-city) plane ticket?

Open-jaw means you fly into one city (say SFO-Paris), make your way to another city on your own (say Paris-Amsterdam), and fly back from the "other" city (Amsterdam-SFO in my example).

I'd also fly in a few days ahead of the end of your daughter's course (maybe 3 days early). Stay in Oxford, recover from the jet lag, take walking tours of the city, take the bus to Woodstock to visit Blenheim Palace, maybe a bus trip to somewhere in the Cotswolds.

Then when your daughter is free -head into London for 3 days/nights. Eurostar to Paris for 4 days. Fly home from Paris.

This would allow you to see a couple of shows in London, a few of the major sites, and let your daughter 'show off' impressing you w/ what she's learned about England/London. Then the 4 days in Paris will let you get a 'feel' for the city and see a fair bit.

what jj said.

you will have a nice varied trip, but at a sensible pace [it takes a lot longer to get around than you think, especially in London which is pretty big.]

in July, I'd want a/c in Paris.

I'm liking your suggestions. Thanks for everyone's input.
I can't get much out of my daughter on what she wants to do. She mentioned visiting Ireland, but I think she said that thinking I would want to. But, there's no train to Ireland. ;)

I did drive a little in Japan once, so driving on the right side of the road isn't out of the question for me. I'm willing to drive, but would I need an international driver's license?

I was looking at the cost for the train from London to Paris. Seems as if I get the inflexible ticket it is very reasonably priced. For the flex price, it does up quite a bit. Does everyone just get the inflexible price?

" there's no train to Ireland. "

No, but there are planes and ferries. See seat61.com for info on getting to Ireland, France, and anywhere else you're likely to want to go, without driving. However, it would be easier to get around Ireland with a car.

I agree with the others - arrive early, and visit London and Paris.

"but would I need an international driver's license?"

It's an International Driver's Permit (IDP), the purpose of it is to convert the language of your licence to the language of the country you're going to drive in (and possibly to confirm your licence is genuine). Assume you're coming from the US, so we almost speak the same language anyway. :-) It's been reported on these forums in the past that "some" car hire firms stipulate an IDP requirement on their websites but don't ask for them to be shown when hiring a car.

"so driving on the right side of the road isn't out of the question for me."

BTW, we drive on the L/H side of the road, the steering wheel is on the R/H side.

Don't try doing both Europe and Britain. You'll feel rushed, will miss loads and regret it. If you want to see history spend 2-3 days in London. Take the train to York for 1 to 2 days. Then move on to Edinburgh for 1 to 2 days and finally go across Scotland to Glasgow for the day and fly out of Glasgow.Look at each city's web site to gauge how long you would like to stay.

While I LOVE England and <B>REALLY</B> love Scotland - I don't think you have the time to do a mad dash covering London/York/Edinburgh/Glasgow. Heck -I usually recommend folks spend a full week in London their first time over.

And - while driving in most parts of the UK is easy (other than in the cities) there is no reason to rent a car for this trip. Unless you just wanted to settle into the Cotswolds in a rented cottage for a week or something (which I'm pretty sure would not be your daughter's druthers), save the ££ and just do Oxford/London/Paris. Express bus or train into London. Train to Paris.