Althekillr

Hi all, taking the family of 4 (kids are 8 and 13) next summer on the british airways 500 dollar tickets was able to book. here are facts for my trip

-flying in and out of London from the USA
-cities we must visit- London, paris, venice, sienna

proposed itinerary

London (3 nights)
train to brussels- 1 night
train to bruges- 1 night
train to paris 4 nights
overnight train to venice (3 nights)- train just for experience vs flight?

from there I'm not sure on a couple options, we have 8 nights left to visit sienna and one more city probably. (we can also add a night to one of the above cities)

Here are my questions

1. best way to get to sienna from venice? should I stay 2 nights in Florence and do a day trip to sienna? or possibly stay one night in Florence and and direct to sienna?

2. and then last 5-6 nights of the trip deciding whether to go to rome (beautiful but we have been there before, or fly to Barcelona (wife really wants to go). leaning towards Barcelona but a shame to skip rome since we are so close. or do a quick stop in Rome and then Barcelona?

3. best way to get back to the united states? we have a 4pm flight the day we depart, should we just do a flight back to London that same day and then fly to the US? Do we have to fly the same airline to get bags transferred? Or should we consider flying in the day before and staying one night in London and then flying to the USA?

trip is kind of a whirlwind, which we normally don't like, but its the kids first time to Europe.

I'm also debating on our inbound flight taking a connecting flight straight to paris and staring our vacation there, so the leg home(when we are more tired) is easier.

Belgium visiting quickly for some beer producers I want to visit. cantillon,drie fonteinen and Westvleteren.

we've been to all the cities before except Belgium and Barcelona.

Any other cities between paris and rome that are really compelling? that would allow us to skip Barcelona?

For every major city, we plan to do the guided full day whirlwind tour one day of most of the sites (with line passes) and then explore leisurely the rest of time.

Any portions of our trip where we can and should rent a car?

Thanks for any feedback and reccomendations to our trip.

Althekillr

not sure 3 nights in London is enough on our first leg of the trip, last time we flew to rome it took us 4 days to adjust to jet lag.

JBord

Florence? Not really requiring too much wasted travel time from Siena.

As for London, I don't think 3 nights is enough, regardless of jet lag. It has so much your kids will be interested in at those ages. But yes, even more difficult if you need to take a 2 hour nap every day there .

One other suggestion, I'm not sure you'll need 3 nights in Venice, unless you were counting the overnight train as one of those nights. Just an opportunity to cut out a day if you were looking to add one somewhere else.

Palal

Any reason you're not doing Bruges as a day trip from Brussels?
Any reason you're not visiting other Belgian cities?

1. Florence is worth a good 3 days. Base there and do Siena as a day trip.
2. Pick one and stick with it. Both are valid choices. Personally, if I'm in Italy, I'd stick to Italy and save BCN for another trip.
3. Either way is fine. IMHO you could always fly in the night before, stay in town, see what you missed the next day, and take the tube to LHR after lunch to catch your flight home.

dsdwe234sfd23

IMHO, too much travel detracts from the trip enjoyment. I did 20 days in Europe and tried to get as many places in as I could. BIG MISTAKE. Felt like I'd missed so much because we left a city well before seeing all the interesting places it had to offer. Really regret the very short times in Prague and Vienna. So _almost_ everything in the other cities, but 1-2 days more would have been perfect in each.

Arrival in London - expect to lose a day for jet lag. 4 nights, min.

Florence needs at least 4 nights. Love that place.

Barcelona needs 3+ nights - watch out for pick pockets. A buddy was hit 3 times in 2 days, once in a private dining area in the back of a restaurant. Spending 4 hrs in the central police station filing theft reports is NOT priceless.
We found BCN was mostly about Gaudí and there is a bunch of that to be seen. If you do the church, buy tickets online in advance - that lets you jump to the beginning of the line at opening. The apartment bldg he designed was very interesting too. Outside the core tourist areas, we found eating late didn't happen. Stayed in a hotel on the north side and all the restaurants closed before 10p.

On trains ... they are fun for 1 trip. Did an overnight train from Florence to Vienna - between the locked windows, heater on high, required locked cabin door and conductor yelling at us in German every 2 hours to see tickets and passports, we didn't get ANY sleep. Never again. Take the plane.

I've never been to Paris - would expect to need at least 5 nights there and probably a month would be better.

Look for festivals in the locations you are traveling. Those would be worth altering plans to attend. Even a bad festival is pretty great.

I did the British Museum in about 4 hrs the morning of my flight from LHR and only regret having missed more about the Rosetta stone, but not much else.

If your kids like airplanes, there are lots of aircraft museums worth visiting. The Science Museum in London has the largest engine display I've seen anywhere. There's an RAF Museum just off a tube station NW London - and Greenwich Naval Observatory is amazing, especially if you like clocks/time-keeping.

Anyway, I would add a night to what you have planned already and maybe 2 for Venice, since they are talking about limiting annual visitor counts now.

OTOH, what do I know. We all have different ideas about vacationing.

LondonElite

You're trying to cram way too much in. Stick to your must haves (though I agree about Florence) otherwise your memory of this trip will be the transport between cities.

JBord

lol...right!

I routinely do 3 stops in Europe in 7-9 days. But I've never done it with two children to entertain. What I'm reading is that the OP and spouse have been to many of the places before, and this is about getting to the things the kids will be interested in vs. long tours, fancy dinners with lots of wine, and the like. The one thing I know from taking my niece on vacation is that kids get bored quickly!

I think it can be done in 20 days without going crazy. But I completely agree with the comments here that the OP should try to minimize travel days and length of travel. I think 4 stops is very reasonable, but trying to cram in BCN with this itinerary seems silly.

Althekillr

thanks for the great feedback guys, I will think and replan accordingly.
might do the day trip to bruges and spend two nights in brussels

I agree with the staying in one place and not rushing it our original plan years ago was when the kids got older to just visit one city every year and spend a few weeks there, put the kids in a language school and absorb a different environment.

my kid is named after the city of siena otherwise we would probably skip Italy all together since we have been there before.

the downside of this trip is for us parents are visiting cities, we have already been to (except Belgium), and wanted to throw something different in there.

per your advice,I think we may skip Barcelona and do rome since its much closer.

revised itinerary looks like

London 4 nights
brussels 2 nights (day trip to bruges/westvletern)
paris 4 nights
venice 3 nights
Florence 3 nights (day trip to sienna)
rome 4 nights

and also considering doing this trip in reverse, so flying to rome the day we land in London, so travel day back is not a beast.

thanks again for all the advice.

Koby

You can drop Westvleteren from your list. There is nothing to visit there.

Ghentleman

Indeed. If you want to visit a brewery, check Halve Maan, in the center of Brugges

Althekillr

thanks, for the recommendation on halve man
I assume all the Trappist are nothing to visit?

was thinking about doing westy, grabbing some at the café across and take a look, and visit de dolle at the same time.

and while in brussels drie fonteinen and cantillon.

deniah

minimize venice, focus on sienna (lovely) and florence