RJ5929

Sorry, I asked very similar questions 4 years ago about help planning my europe trip. That trip never took off. I'm back to the same: planning west europe trip over 10-12 days in March 2019.
This is my idea so far for family of 4 (2 A + 2 kids under 10)

Fly to LHR with AA off-peak travel with 22,500 miles each and some taxes which are not very high.
Go to Brussels, Zurich, Paris, Milan/Venice, Rome and
Fly back from FCO @ 30,000 AA peak miles and $70 fees, not too bad either. (it's a one-stop flight through PHL)

For all the cities in between LHR and FCO, I thought I will use train, but it seems like train fares for 4 people and mutiple segments will add up quickly may be $250-350 per head.

i want to avoid this. I have enough avios and Amex MR, can these be used for intra-euorpe travel? is train the best option? Since I am traveling for 10 days, I will have 1 or 2 checked bags. Will having checked bags add up lot of baggage fees?

I tried searching for DFW-LHR and FCO-DFW lights using Avios. But he surcharges/fees are high though I use partner flights and I also noticed that using AA miles is cheaper for DFW to LHR (22,500 AA miles compared to 25,000 Avios and lot of fees)

arollins

Train travel is certainly a good option, and tickets can be bought very reasonably, even on 1st class. I bought numerous 1st class tickets that where only just a few EUR more than 2nd class. The thing about air travel is that you need to take in account all the security and check in procedures time. You should get a plan first on where to go, most likely from LHR you should buy air travel to BRU. Train from BRU to Paris, then plane CDG to ZUR, and train from there to Italy. Avios can be used for the LHR-BRU flight.

dukerau

That's WAY too much for 10-12 days. You'll be transiting destinations half the time!

You could easily spend 10-12 days just in London and Paris, but including Brussels would be reasonable, and if you want to stretch further you could tack on Bruges, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, and/or Frankfurt easily. Or you could just stick with Italy and visit Milan, Venice, and Rome (I would recommend Florence as well, and it's en route between Rome and either northern city). Zurich is the oddball geographically in your list. If you really want to visit Zurich (it's not generally regarded as an attractive tourist destination like your other choices), you can certainly find a way, but I would stick to either the London-Paris-Brussels combo or an Italy-centric itinerary for your trip. Save the other half for another trip.

As for intra-Europe travel, there are numerous reasons why trains are preferred over flights:

• Usually cheaper
• Train stations are usually in the city vs airports are on the outskirts, so less transit time
• Less time needed for security, check-in, etc, so less transit time
• You could owe checked bag fees on your intra-Europe flights, adding to cost of air travel
• Most European airlines are much stricter about carry-ons than US airlines. There are weight restrictions (can be very low) as well as size limits that disallow what most of us Americans consider a carry-on bag (the ones that max out the US airline carry-on limits). This can further add to air travel cost in the form of additional checked bag fees.

That said, for longer distances, flights can be worthwhile. For example, if you do want to include Italy with your northern European itinerary, it would be wise to fly from Paris/Brussels to Italy since the train ride would be looooong.

For your transatlantic flights, you'll want to use AA miles (rather than Avios) and fly on AA metal to avoid fuel surcharges (connecting flights within Europe on BA will add some taxes but there's no other option with AA miles). When you're seeing high surcharges (e.g., on FCO-DFW), it's likely because the transatlantic flight is on BA. You'll also save a bit by avoiding departing from the UK, which it sounds like is already part of your plan.

If you have enough Amex MR, another option is to fly on Star Alliance airlines using Aeroplan miles (30k each way) or ANA miles (55k round trip). There are very few non-stop flights to DFW on Star Alliance airlines, though (FRA-DFW is one but Lufthansa will have high fuel surcharges when redeeming Aeroplan/ANA). Using those miles, you'll need to stick with flights on United, Turkish, and Swiss to avoid fuel surcharges.

jbeckett

I agree completely with dukerau - your itinerary is unreasonable and you would be spending half of your time travelling, If I were you, I'd pick two or three cities. If you want to go to Italy, fly to Italy directly and stick to all Italian cities to avoid a lot of travel time and expense. If you don't have to go to Italy, I'd pick London, Paris, and Amsterdam as the three most interesting places if you have not been to Europe before. You can take the train between all of these cities.

Train pricing is like flight pricing - it varies from one train to the next and tends to get more expensive the closer it is to the date of travel. So you can save money by booking early and picking the cheaper dates/times. Book on the train operator site (like www.sncf.com or www.ns.nl), not on a site that caters to Americans.

ajeleonard

thunderlounge

Definitely this. Pick 2 or 3 places, and stick around long enough to actually be able to enjoy them.

JDiver

Fly to London, select downtown hotel near Tube station. Enjoy London three days. Take Eurostar to Brussels or Amsterdam or Paris. Spend three days in either. Train to the next and fly back home. Next year, select Italy for travel . . or maybe Amsterdam, Kinderdijk, Hague. Or Brussels, Brugge, Antwerp. Etc.

Better, spend half your time in London and vicinity (e,g. day trips to Greenwich or Windsor, etc.), half your time in and around Paris. You’ll see, learn, enjoy and relax more, particularly with kids in tow. Research will reveal there’s more than you can see in five days (really four, what with traveling, etc.) in each location.

The more you move around, the less you’ll see, the less girl kids will lezrn but the more you’ll spend.

Do not use US site such as RailEurope to buy rail tickets - they do not sell the lowest fare tranches at all. See https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/euro...ail-travel-654 and The Man in Seat 61. Tickets can be bought at the Eurostar, SNCF etc. sites, or at www.loco2.com.

RJ5929

thanks.

RJ5929

so, I get what you all are saying. it's too much in too little time. I'm not going to make such trips every yr, definitely not with total 4 people.

so i'm considering adding two more days may be 14 days and bringing down cities.

Fly to LHR with AA off-peak travel with 22,500 miles each and $5 taxes - stay there 3 days
Train to Amsterdam & Hague - stay 3 days
Train to Brussels - stay 2 days
Train to Paris - stay 3 days
Train to ZRH - stay 2 days
Last Day - Fly back from ZRH @ 30,000 AA peak miles and $60 fees, not too bad either. (it's a one-stop flight through PHL)

that's a total of 14 days including last day travel (first day travel is DFW-LHR, overnight flight). May be I will cut Hague out, once I start researching hotels and get more info on these places.

Why so much in less time?
I am stingy with my miles and want to get the most of it in one trip and we (me and wife) are always quick with sight seeing, move on quickly with a bucket list.
2 years ago, this trips would have costed me 160,000 miles, this time it is 210,000 miles. so on next trip it may be much more.

RJ5929

how good are SPG points for Europe hotels?

I don't have much now, But recently, was told by a friend, through a time-share offer, that he would get 40,000 points and in a month increased to 120,000 points, he will be billed $99 per month to his Amex SPG card for 17 months. so total of 120,000 points for $1,700 which seems like good deal to me when you know you are going to use it. he will also have access to three properties which he canuse as time-share for a week every yr.

all the details are not relevant here to my question, but I have access to those points if need be.

UAPremExecflyer

You continue to either miss or ignore all the advice folks are giving you!
You've gone from seven cities in 10-12 days to five+ cities in 13-ish. No real change.
Your apparent rationale is to cram in as many cities/locales as you can without any clear objective in terms of priorities of what to see and do ... and what each city has to offer.
You are completely underestimating the amount of packing and unpacking ... and moving from one hotel to train statin to hotel ... this is not a recipe for an enjoyable time.
I'm exhausted just thinking about it. And your kids will not thank you for all this racing around.
It's your vacation ... you can do what you like ... but you come asking for advice and then proceed to go in the opposite direction.
You're following in the (not so exalted) footsteps of many of your fellow Americans (here on FT) when going to Europe ... checking boxes by wanting to do as many cities/locales as possible in the shortest period of time ...

jbeckett

Well, your idea of a vacation is certainly not my cup of tea, but it is better than the original itinerary (assuming your kids like trains and airplanes). It is a typical American first time in Europe tour. Think about what you want to do in each city before you finalize the cities. And I'd say that Zurich is not a great tourist destination. If it were me I'd spend the last five days in Paris - a day for the Louvre, a day for Versailles, a day for Notre Dame de Paris and Ste. Chappelle and walking around, a day for Musee D'Orsay and the Pompidou centre, and this doesn't even get to the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, Chartres, …

However, I don't have kids and I'm sure that what you want to do in each city is different than what interests me, so do your own research and enjoy yourself while you are there. Remember that it is a vacation, not a check list.

dukerau

The 40,000 SPG points aren't "increasing" to 120,000 in a month, they're being force-converted to 120,000 Marriott points when the programs merge in August. Is $1,700 for 120,000 Marriott points a good price? No. And if the $1,700 also buys the "right" to pay ongoing annual maintenance fees on a time share in exchange for a week at one of just 3 properties (with no easy way out of the deal), your friend should run fast.

:D!

The problem here is you mixed one city (Zurich) which is not best accessed by train from the others in a whirlwind itinerary. These trains take 1-2 hours apart from that last one which takes 5 hours and I guess might cost proportionately more (although the Eurostar can be very expensive on mon/sat mornings and fri/sun evenings)

Is there any way you could fly home from Paris or Amsterdam instead? It would make more sense to do the first 4 cities together (+/- Rotterdam/The Hague - you could do one night there on the way between Brussels and Amsterdam)

You get one checked bag free with Avios tickets on BA short haul and it would make sense to use Avios if you wanted to do London followed by Switzerland and Italy, but unless you have a specific reason to fly London-Paris/Brussels it is usually silly to do so.

dukerau

Your new itinerary is certainly an improvement over the original, but I still see the Zurich stop as being forced to fit. I'd drop the two days there and add one each to London and Paris. We all understand wanting to get the most out of your vacation, but we just disagree on what that means. Perhaps you're an exception and a whirlwind trip is ideal for you. I've never met someone who has traveled a lot and would choose such an itinerary. I did a whirlwind trip like you're talking about for Spring break when I was studying in Europe. Athens, Santorini, Rome, Venice, Ljubjana, Dubrovnik, and Split in 12 days. I was young, and it was fun, but I've since gone back to several of these places and realized how much I missed by spending only a day or two in each and spending half the time in transit. I can't imagine doing that with 2 kids!

Have you thought through day-to-day logistics? Let's say you have 14 days, not including initial departure day.

Day 0: Evening flight US-Europe, land in morning
Day 1: Avoid jet lag by keeping yourself busy in London
Day 2: Day trip to Stonehenge
Day 3: London
Day 4: Early morning, 4-5hr train to Amsterdam, arrive mid-afternoon. Check into hotel and spend evening exploring Amsterdam
Day 5: Amsterdam
Day 6: Day trip to The Hague
Day 7: 2hr train to Brussels, arrive midday. Afternoon in Brussels
Day 8: Brussels
Day 9: 2hr train to Paris, arrive midday, afternoon in Paris
Day 10: Paris
Day 11: Day trip to Versailles
Day 12: Spend half day getting to CDG, flight to ZRH, getting into Zurich city center
Day 13: Zurich
Day 14: Eat breakfast, head to airport for mid-morning flight back to US

I lay this out to show that so much transiting leaves you with much less time than you intend in each place. I included day trips to Versailles and Stonehenge since most people want to see those, and I assume if you're bucket list-oriented you certainly would. What started as 2-3 days in each place actually is: 3 days in London (1 jetlagged) with 1 day dedicated to Stonhenge, 1.25 days in Amsterdam, 1 day in The Hague, 1.5 days in Brussels, 2.5 days in Paris with 1 day dedicated to Versailles, and 1.5 days in Zurich. And I didn't even deduct time needed to pack/unpack each time you move locales. Many people traveling with kids view any transit day as blown. Check out of hotel, get to train station, 2 hr train Brussels-Amsterdam, get to hotel, unpack and get settled in hotel, walk around for a bit, find some dinner, and the day's done. I'm assuming that isn't you based on what you're sketching out, but if it is, deduct all the partial days. Regardless, I would recommend something more like this:

Day 0: Evening flight US-Europe, land in morning
Day 1: Avoid jet lag by keeping yourself busy in London
Day 2: London
Day 3: Day trip to Stonehenge
Day 4: London
Day 5: 2hr train to Paris, afternoon in Paris
Day 6: Paris
Day 7: Day trip to Versailles
Day 8: Paris
Day 9: 2hr train to Brussels, afternoon in Brussels
Day 10: Brussels
Day 11: 2hr train to Amsterdam, arrive midday, afternoon in Amsterdam
Day 12: Amsterdam
Day 13: Day trip to The Hague
Day 14: Eat breakfast, head to airport for mid-morning flight back to US

Some people would still consider this rushed. For my tastes, it's about right.