for flight ease I'd probably do England-Paris-Amsterdam (probably cut Brussels for time imo) and go train
If you're actually serious: If you are comfortable paying a lot more to avoid minutia, go for a travel agent. The people in this thread generally *enjoy* planning travel This thread would also say that four cities shouldn't be done in 10-14 days. 2-3 max
Too many cities in too little days is the consensus. Unless you were fine with one city essentially just have one day/night. I guess that is better than nothing.
Yet people come back and say I wish I would have done just 2 days in Paris instead of 4 and went to Brussels. It really just depends......it is better than nothing depending on the city and person. For example, from Medellin I flew to Bogota in the morning just to a day/night there to check it out before going home. It was worth it. But I can't make that argument for every city/country. I get your point about moving too much, wasting hours, using more energy, etc. I fully agree. With that being said, some times there are exceptions though.
Yea I'd want to be involved in the planning of things to do and wear to eat and all, just dont feel like fucking with hotels and car stuff. But I assume that wouldn't be too bad so probably a waste to hire an agent.
I was thinking 3 days in London, 2-3 in Brussels, and then probably 3 in Paris. A day of travel between each. Amsterdam is the opposite direction from Brussels to Paris so I'd probably leave it out. Really just want to go to that one gallery, honestly. But it would add a travel day from Brussels to Amsterdam and them another from Amsterdam to Paris. What's the best way to travel between London, Brussels, and Paris? Car or train?
imo you'd spend the same amount of time finding out an area to stay/budget as you would to get a travel agent. So I don't see the extra cost being worth it Train or even fly. Flights are so hilariously cheap there
If we do that instead of car, best way to get around those cities? I know Uber is big in London, what about the others? I assume they have some type of driver for hire service.
Lotta hate ITT when someone asked a question and I gave an honest answer. How many of you have actually even used a travel agent? Based on a lot of the responses, it’s clear a lot of you don’t even understand what they do. It’s a travel AGENT not a travel planner. I didn’t delegate any decision making to them. It was like a secretary who planned aspects of this trip that I didn’t care to spend time planning.
just pretend it's a trip to NYC. In London they even speak (kind of the) same language as you. Outside of the passport and the different number in front of the number of dollars, it's not that big of a deal
the point people are making is twofold the cost of a travel agent in the age of the internet, they aren't really doing anything you can't do in a few clicks. there's no secret travel agent world. and two, most of us enjoy the minutia of organizing
I taught the last travel agent I worked with about Priority Pass The previous one I worked with had never been outside of North America/Europe The one before that specialized in cruises....can you imagine that? Paying someone...book a cruise? For when travelling on easy mode is too difficult
Is them being to every city really that important? Idk I feel like I'm just paying them to do all the Google for me and then give me a list of options. I know that sounds lazy but I'm really bad at cutting a list down bc I want to do everything.
His point was that they were more valuable than that. In 2019, among this group, it is paying money to save prep time. That's it. And that's fine
Paying a travel agent to discover the city you're about to go to is dumb. I want to research the nhoods and find all the attractions. It helps me understand where I'm about to go
If we were doing one city, I wouldn't have considered it. Doing research on 3-4 sounds kinda shitty though. My wife doesn't have much of anything to do though so I guess I could put her on it.
You've already spent more time itt discussing it than would be needed to pick three hotels Google search for "best neighborhood to stay in London to [eat/be closer to everything/feel local] then a Google hotel search for that neighborhood with your dates and requirements (4 or 5 star, has a pool, under $400/nt)
not trying to be cheeky but why travel somewhere, spending thousands, if you don't want to learn about it and find out what you specifically want to do
I did the Amsterdam/Paris/London trip in a week during the summer of 2018. It can be done. My biggest piece of advice is, especially if you don’t know when/if you’ll be back, to see as much as you possibly can. Flew into AMS and landed at like 6 AM local time and spent the entire day there. It was a long day, to be sure. Woke up the next morning and took the train to Paris. Spent the next two days there. Then took the train from Paris to London. Spent the next two days there. Finally, we took the train from London to Amsterdam and flew out of AMS the next morning, so we effectively got two days in each city. Could you spend a week or more in each city? You bet your ass. But having never been before, I’m glad we did it the way we did. We never rented a car, exclusively took the train between the cities. Each city had Uber and, if need be, both Paris and London have extensive transit systems. You could speak English everywhere and navigate yourselves with ease. Also, we mixed our lodging between hotels and AirBNB. That is one area that ain’t cheap over there. ETA: Amsterdam is quaint compared to Paris and London. Both cities are massive and feel like NYC or any major American city. There’s plenty to do. IMO, there’s less to do in Amsterdam unless you’re super into art. In which case, do you!
Too much for Belgium imo. You only need a night in Brussels and if anything go up and spend a night in Bruges. But I would prioritize Amsterdam over Belgium. There is a direct Eurostar train from London to Amsterdam now, then can take a direct Amsterdam to Paris train or vice versa. Take a train to all these places. You would have a blast in Holland, its a great entryway to European travel.
We're going to Brussels mainly to go to Cantillion so I'll need a recovery day to do not much of anything.
doing 3 nights in brussels coming up, 1 day trip to bruges then 5 nights amsterdam, but will be tulip season so likely a full day running out to keukenhof
this is where I'd argue if you're doing the speed trip the self research is even more important because you'll have to be able to decide which of those big stops you'll want to skip like running to Versailles OR doing the Louvre is a decision you might have to make
3-4 days in a city doesn't feel like a speed trip for me. We aren't huge museum people so we won't waste day after day doing that.
This encapsulates what I meant when I said a few minutes ago that it doesn't seem like folks understand what the agent does. If those are your options for travel agents then yeah that's a total waste of money. This post sums up part of it. Travel agents are convenient and save time. I told the travel agent I wanted to go white water rafting, and she suggested a hotel that, to even get to, you have to white water raft or take a helicopter. It's on the same river my raft guide buddy said we had to hit, so there you go: it was a good rec. The other thing I found valuable was the agent I used was someone who was well traveled and with whom I could bounce ideas off of, and when they didn't have an answer or an idea they put me in touch with someone who did. Even though the agent I used had been to Kenya and Tanzania, she put me in touch with someone in Kenya when I started asking questions she didn't have an answer to, such as whether their heavy duty tent was sound proof enough for having honeymoon sex in (it's not - but it's far away enough from others that it doesn't matter). My first call with the agent was: "We can go anywhere in the world, and we don't want to sit on a beach or bounce around Europe. We're thinking X, Y, Z, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and recs." She then put together itineraries for X, Y, Z to give us an idea of what 2 weeks in those places would entail. For what I paid given the services received and the amount of time saved, it was well worth it. Again, the context of the question was for a honeymoon, which is why I used a travel agent. This isn't a backpacking trip to stay in hostels with your bros.
If we did Amsterdam, it would be 1-2 days max. Like I said previously, I really just want to go to the Parra studio. I'm sure there's more there but that would be the reason for going there.
Yeah, I think I get the travel agent thing more than most itt but I haven't found a use for it. And I guess I see here, reddit, etc as the expert you found your agent to be. I could see "we're going to Africa for a month and don't know where to start" and "we are going to Cuba and have no idea how to book things with the travel restrictions"
If Amsterdam makes the cut, that would definitely be something we'd do. That's much more our lane than an art museum.
I view it the same as NYC or Chicago. Of course I could stay longer in each but 3-4 days is enough for one trip. Maybe these will be different.
It's a 3.5 hour train to Amsterdam from Paris. You could easily do a day trip. 615am train and you get in at 945 leave early afternoon and back to Paris by 7 for dinner Trains are super easy. No security so you hop on and go
i get the different strokes thing, we did 4 nights in london and it was great but we were kind of good after. similar to stockholm, was fine. will probably go back as part of longer trips but won't go out of our way. we did 5 in paris and are dying to go back, feel like we didn't do anything.
I did 3ish and while I feel like I did a lot I otherwise feel the same way. Completely intoxicating place.
We're bad about jamming so much into a few days that we're exhausted after 3-4 days of non stop stuff.