Originally Posted by
farbster
I would vote for cutting out 2 of the cities and go just to Paris. The first and last days are mostly lost due to travel and then you lose time traveling from one city to the next. Ten days sounds like a lot of time, but it is really not.
While this is not the FT way of traveling, I think it would lead to a better honeymoon experience.
You could do Rome also, but that might mess up a later Italian vacation.
Just my 2 cents.
Originally Posted by
delmolino
I second the above. Go to Paris, stay there for as long as you can, than choose some places to visit such as: Mt Saint Michel, Strasbourg, Brussels/Brugge, Chartres and the Loire Valley, etc. You could stay the whole period in Paris and would not see everything the city has to offer.
I would not be hopping too much, it is your honeymoon and you would not like to be spending a lot of time with check-ins and check-outs. But I understand that each individual has different travelling styles.
In our Honeymoon last October, we stayed 4 nights in Siena and 5 in Perugia in Italy to explore south Tuscany and Umbria. If I were to choose France and hadn't been in Paris, I woud split between Paris and same place in the countryside.
+1 to both of the above. I'd suggest cutting out at least one of your three cities and preferably two of them. And while all three are great, Paris really is special...the most romantic city my wife and I have ever been to...even putting aside the various tourist stops and the fantastic food, it's just a wonderful town to stroll around, stop for a coffee or glass of wine, people watch at cafes, etc.
If you do want to complement Paris with a second destination, find another place that's a relatively easy car or train ride away. I've read very nice things about Brugge (in Belgium), but haven't been there. Amsterdam and London are also great cities that you can easily get to by train from Paris, but both are also very large cities; perhaps for your second destination (in addition to Paris) you'll want a smaller city or a bucolic place in the countryside.
You can of course try to score both hotel points and airline miles at the same time via cc sign-ups and spending, but it's probably more of a priority to get sufficient airline miles together ASAP, since award flights go more quickly than award rooms. And it would be very nice for the two or you to fly business class (i.e., J in FT lingo) rather than economy (Y) if at all possible. From what I've read, forget about Delta as it is the toughest USA carrier to redeem for award flights on.
In terms of accumulating enough miles to fly J each way, you could accumulate miles on both AA and UA since you can then redeem them to fly AA (or its One World partner airlines) one way and UA (or its Star Alliance partners) the other way.
Overall, though, for this trip, you might see if you can get enough on UA to go both ways. I've read anecdotal reports that UA award availability is somewhat better than AA. Plus if you were to use your AA miles for flights on BA it adds some considerable extra fees you'd have to pay, due to BA award redmeption policies. Plus UA J seats are 180 degrees lie-flat (plus have better in-flight entertainment systems and screens) while AA's are at an angle. The one consideration in favor of AA is that over the past year UA has not been as good at dealing with irregular operations (weather delays, mechanical problems, etc. that can delay or cancel flights), but the chances of those happening to a particular flight are not great. One other factor in favor of UA (or focusing on US) is that US has the best J seats flying transatlantic, of the major USA airlines.
Anyway, with all of that in mind, think partly in terms of which credit cards can get you enough miles for one or both ways on a given airline (or airline alliance). Starwood is good for AA and UA but not very good for UA. Chase Sapphire is good for UA but possible for AA or US. If you have decent credit, you might well be able to each get two AA ccs (with sign-up bonuses) but only one from UA.
Finally, as indicated above, be open to getting business credit cards as well as personal ones. Starwood and AA are pretty lax about defining a business...you basically just have to give them a business name, which literally can be your own. Chase has Ink business cards to complement its Sapphire personal card, but can be a bit more stringent about your having to prove you have some kind of actual business.
Hope this helps!
PS: Very useful links by NICEDUDE66. Good places to start exploring your options.