Many people here exhort (particularly new) travelers to NOT leave London or Paris to see Stonehenge or Normandy because of how much they'll be missing. The same applies to people who want to take a day trip from one of the two cities to the other, when it only takes five hours of down time to travel there and back.

I don't understand this.

It seems to me that even if one stays in a capital for a few days, months, or years, one will still leave vast areas unexplored. If a traveler thinks seeing Sutton Hoo or Chipping Ongar or Tooting Bec is preferable to the National Gallery, Harrod's, or the Changing of the Guard, <i>who is to say they're wrong?</i>

Your thoughts, please.

Time is a big factor. If you only have a small number of waking hours in a place, it's foolish to spend a lot of them in a car or in a train. There are obviously many interesting things to see outside of the capitals, but they are not likely to be RIGHT out of the capital. Unless you have a special interest in grotty suburbs you probably don't want to travel through them any more than you have to.

Also London and Paris in particular are so central to the life of their respective nations -- in a way that New York, say, is not -- that many of the sorts of attractions people tend to be interested in do, in fact, have their best examples in the capital. There are lots of things to see elsewhere, but if you can't see everything it at least makes sense to go to the place with the highest concentration.

Your question does not strike me as a serious one.

It would be best if we ( at this forum) could stop judging peoples' choices and taste.
Some of us like major cities and return to them over and over again ( been to Paris more than 20 times!), others wish to see every little town in Ireland ( boooring !).
For seasoned travellers , like most of us, it can be difficult to be objective
and ignore our preferences.

Interesting question Robespierre.

I have seen a lot of that advice and don’t really agree that if one has only 4-5 days in Paris, Madrid etc. that one should spend the entire time in the city. I always like leaving a city knowing that I have not seen everything there is to see, which ensures I will return in the future. Also, I find 5 days in a CITY to be exhausting – the noise, the pollution, the crowds, the stress: I find myself longing for some peace, fresh air and countryside after about 2.5 days in a city.

Even when I did my first trips 4-day trip to Madrid, I spent 2 days in Madrid and then two days in side trips to Segovia and Toledo by bus. My trip to Naples (3.5 days): I spent 1.5 days in the city, one day in Pompeii and Heraculum and one day in Paestum. Most told me to avoid the 1.5 hour train ride to Paestum, there and back, but it was a spectacular day out. During the train journey, I listened to an audible book on the history of the Roman Emperors, which made the 3 hour train journey worth-while and fly by.

My “rule of thumb” is that if I only have the weekend (land Friday evening, back on Sunday) it makes sense for me to stay in a city. I focus on museums, walking, architecture and restaurants. If I have 4-5 days, I generally decide on renting a car and heading off to countryside.

Actually, the more I travel, the LESS inclined I am to stay in a large city and the MORE inclined I am to explore the countryside, smaller towns and villages and less popular areas. For example, I have been to Spain, Italy, Portugal &amp; France a dozen times over the past three years and have avoided the major cities entirely – I land in the capital, rent a car and head straight for the countryside. I now prefer avoiding the cities, concentrating on the outlying regions.

My trip next weekend to Andalusia has me picking up a car at Malaga airport on Friday evening and driving 40 minutes north to an hotel in the hills. Saturday, I visit Alhama de Granada and Priego de Cordoba and stay the night in Ubeda. Sunday, I explore Ubeda and the area. Monday, I visit Baeza in the morning and then on to Granada. I explore Granada that afternoon and the following day and then back to Malaga airport for a late flight. Most travelers would consider this itinerary insane, and I may not be able to fit it all in, but these are the places that inspired me during my research.

I agree with nbujic's response. I think it is important for respondents to take into account what has grabbed the OP’s attention and passion during their research and instead of telling the OP that they are nuts to consider not spending the entire time in a city, draw attention to the logistics issue and ask them to consider if the OP believes that the investment is worth it. Let the OP make the trade-off between the so called &quot;must sees&quot; in the city and the experiencing the uniqueness of the regions.

Regards Ger

I'm not one of those people who recommend spending an entire trip, short or long, in one big city. I have seen many recommendations to spend a week in Paris, London, Rome, etc., with day trips here and there.

Personally, I love big cities, and love the crowds, the noise and the energy. But I also love seeing different parts of a country or a culture, so we always prefer to spend some time in the city, and some time in the countryside elsewhere. We rarely take day trips - primarily because, I guess, I'd rather stay in the countryside than just visit it. This is true even applying the great rule of thumb that you lose 1/2 day every time you change locations (though the travel time can be pleasant and interesting as well).

The best advice encourages the poster asking the original question to consider what they prefer - big cities, countryside, culture, people-watching, and so on. Then help the poster decide whether spending all their time in a city works for them and their interests (and to a lesser extent, their time).

Yes. Bottom line: staying in a European capital to the exclusion of anywhere else is like visiting New York City and claiming that you've experienced the United States.

But you are not suggesting visiting the rest of the country; you're suggesting Tooting Bec. To continue your New York analogy, which I have already partly addressed, that's like saying you can't know the US by visiting only New York -- but you can if you head out to Flushing or Hackensack.

We visited Sydney and Melbourne in Sept. and loved both cities.
When asked how we liked Australia I always say &quot;we only visited S. and M. , I cannot say we saw Australia&quot;
On the other hand, how much of a country can a person experience in 1,2 or 3 weeks? Most of us are constrained in some way : time, money, kids, travelling partners etc

Europeans coming to the US are more interested in seeing N.Y. than Buffalo or Fresno. It is a big country and even cities like Boston or Miami, L.A. or Chicago are very differnt from one another.
What is a visitor to do?

fnarf999, you wrote: &quot;Also London and Paris in particular are so central to the life of their respective nations -- in a way that New York, say, is not -- that many of the sorts of attractions people tend to be interested in do, in fact, have their best examples in the capital. ...&quot; I realize the direction in which you were steering us with your analogy; however, I must remind you that, unlike London and Paris, New York City is not the capital of the United States. The District of Columbia is the capital of the United States. And I strongly persuade anyone planning to stay in D.C. for more than a day to plan day trips to wonderful sites in Virginia and Maryland. Now, getting back to Europe and the OP's message ...

Robespierre: I totally agree with you. I have traveled to France only once (am dying to get back there!), and even though Paris was my home base, I had made certain -- two months prior to my trans-Atlantic trip -- to include day trips on my itinerary. I was fortunate to travel 50-odd miles to Chartres via bus. I would have gone on the second day trip, to Monet's beloved Giverny, but I slammed my foot (inadvertently) into a pillar at the Pantheon. (Hey, it is pretty dark in there.) That accident, which left me limping and in pain, occurred a day-and-a-half before the end of my six-day trip, so I was afraid to travel too far from my hotel. Of course, I will return to France repeatedly in years to come, not only to travel to Monet's former house and gardens in Giverny, but also to Honfleur, Deauville (OK, I admit that I am an avid fan of A Man and A Woman), the Loire Valley, Versailles, Provence, Marseille. Basically, before I die, I want to travel throughout France. Thanks to great Internet fora such as Fodor's, and wonderful travel cable shows, I know about unconventional sites to see in towns far outside of European nations' capital cities.

I also want to state, here, that prior to my first trip to France -- which was also my first trip to Europe -- I received so-o-o-o much negative feedback from colleagues who had visited Europe countless times in the past. They sounded like snobs, yammering on and on to their fellow snobs about how I should not leave Paris without visiting Place des Vosges, the Ritz Carlton, etc., and then, in the same breath, telling me how I would not possibly be able to &quot;do Paris&quot; in six days. Well, I snorted at them and replied, &quot;That's you, not I.&quot; These are the same people who said I would have a lousy time because I was not a fluent French speaker. While I was in Paris, all of the consecutive months of studying &quot;school&quot; French through books and tapes helped tremendously, and Parisians (whom my colleagues had told me wer &quot;stuck up&quot went out of their way to tell me, &quot;Tres bien, mademoiselle&quot; when I would speak French when asking directions and requesting help in the retail shops. Those colleagues of mine are what I call urban snobs.

OK, everyone, I am sorry I digressed so much, but I hope my point comes through somehow.

Resolved: see what you want when you want to and don't berate what others choose to do. Realize you can't see everything and you are always missing something when you choose to see something else. But if you only have a few days, stay in Paris and don't waste time and energy flashing about the boonies trying to see second rate sites.

It depends on what you want to see

If it is achitecture or museums Paris is numero uno for France. If it is monesteries or vinyards then leave the city straight away.

I guess there is also a certain diffidence about where you go. If I cam home and said I've had a terrrific week in Barfleur many people would say where? while Paris has a certain alure and respect attached.

Finally there are elements of life line. I rememeber my first ever trip as an adult alone abroad was biking from Vienna to Budapest. I felt that Vienna was safe and international while the little villages and strange farming people I was staying with were not even national (in one case slightly worrying) hence the whole safety, clean water, running electricity bit kicks in.

Hi R,

&gt;What is more important about Paris than provincial towns?&lt;

Well, Provincial towns tend to be so.... provincial.

&gt;If a traveler thinks seeing Sutton Hoo or Chipping Ongar or Tooting Bec is preferable.....&lt;

People come here for advice. They might not know why they have scheduled an out of the way place other than that someone told them to.

Furthermore, the vast majority of the suggestions I have seen are in regard to short stays and recommend staying in the major cities with daytrips.

&gt;New York City is not the capital of the United States. The District of Columbia is the capital of the United States.&lt;

DC is merely the political capital.

NYC is the financial and cultural capital.

&quot;Resolved: <b>see what you want when you want to</b> and don't berate what others choose to do. Realize you can't see everything and you are always missing something when you choose to see something else. But if you only have a few days, <b>stay in Paris</b> and don't waste time and energy flashing about the boonies trying to see second rate sites.&quot;

See what I mean? And what exactly is a &quot;second rate site?&quot; And who arrogates to himself the right to define them?

Is Normandy, where the most important battle in the history of civilization took place?

Is Bath, where an almost perfectly-preserved remnant of 2000 year old history exists today?

I confess that it is the big cities that attract me, but I must also confess that my only knowledge of certain countries consists of the capital city (UK, Ireland, Tunisia, Cuba, Malaysia, Bahamas, Senegal, Austria, Myanmar, Ethiopia, etc.). Whenever I can make a road trip, I do so, and then I see all kinds of places -- I have driven more than 3000 km per trip in countries like South Africa, Australia, Canada -- and quite a bit in places like Senegal, Malta, the Channel Islands, Tahiti, Mauritius, and most of continental Europe. In other countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos or Indonesia, I have ridden buses until I had sores on my butt.
But I grew up in a small town and always wanted to be in the big city -- the bigger the better. And I have never changed. A weekend in the country almost always bores me to tears, even in fabulous French or Italian villages. The exception that proves the rule: I spent a week once in a village in Andorra, did nothing, and loved every minute of it.

New York City is not the capital of the United States. The District of Columbia is the capital of the United States.&lt;

DC is merely the political capital.

NYC is the financial and cultural capital.

I think the United States is too big to have one financial and cultural capital. I live in California and New York City seems to me to be a huge city that has a lot to offer but which doesn't have that much cultural influence on my life 3,000 miles away.

For my two cents worth, I don't want to spend a lot of my time while in Europe traveling from one place to another. It's at least a 14 hour trip just to get there and another 14 hours to get back and that's more than enough travel time for me. But this can vary for different people. If somebody wants to spend a big chunk of their time in Europe traveling, that's their choice.

robes, my last line was a joke. Get it, a departure from what I had said earlier? There is a time and place for just about everything.

Is Normandy, where the most important battle in the history of civilization took place?

I assume you've added a comma, and no of course it isn't. It isn't even the location of the most important battle of the mid-20th century: Kursk, Stalingrad and Dover (as the locale for the Battle of Britain) were far more important. Midway and Liverpool (as the locale for the Battle of the Atlantic) have to count as far more important among WW2 battles that involved the US. All five of these, had the Allies lost, would have given victory to the Axis: Normandy, had we lost, would merely have produced a different, later, Allied victory.

But do any of these really compare in importance with Marathon, the Milvian Bridge or Tours?

All of those battles were important, but I can't agree that losing any of them would have been fatal for the Allies. Even losing the Battle of Britain wouldn't guarantee that the Wehrmacht could just walk in.

In the end, the war was won by American industrial power, the <i>sine qua non</i> of the ability of the democracies to wage war. From bomber and tank and ship production to the Manhattan Project, we outclassed the Axis in every category. Unless the enemy could destroy our factories and refineries (as we did to Germany) or deprive our industries of raw materials (as we did to Japan), the eventual outcome, no matter how protracted, would never be in doubt.

I said that Overlord was so important because it was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. <i>Vivent les Alli&eacute;s!</i>.

Personally, when I am planning a longer trip, I plan for a chunk of time in the capital and time out in the countryside.

So for England, I've seen London- but also Surrey, Stonehdege and Bath. Ireland -Dublin, but also drove countryside for 10 days, Ghana - Accra, but also some of the furthest out, end of the road villages, Austria- Vienna, and then 7/8 days out,etc...

I can see/do Boston in 2 or 3 days, I can't see/do London or Paris in that time, or even 2/3 trips. But I've also come to realize that some of my best memories of France were driving the backs road of the Loire valley, getting lost, stopping in small villages, great scenery...and on another trip the food and history of Lyons...So I 'force' myself to not keep going back to the same places.

But for someone who has not been to a major city, I wouldn't recommend 2/3 days then going off to do something else. Could they? Sure, but should they? That is where this forum comes in useful in helping people understand the scope of what could be done, with the final decision left to the traveller. Some people want a blend of city and countryside (like Boston and Cape Cod). I would NEVER go to Euro Disney, but I will (weakly) defend your right to do so. Chacun a son gout...