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Honeymoon in Europe

Backslide

Backslide

RASCClicious
Joined
Dec 15, 2003
Messages
3,993
Location
Colorado Springs
So, I'm getting married again in July 2011. Julie and I are planning a trip to Europe for our honeymoon. We are wanting to stay for 6-8 days and visit 1-3 countries. We are looking at Dublin Ireland or Edinburgh Scotland for our 1st stop for 2 days. Next we wanted to visit London England for 2-3 days with a final stop in Paris France, or Barcelona Spain for the remainder. This is of course just a rough idea and not set in stone, we are also considering one or two countries to spend a little more time exploring with a budget of 8000.00

The thing is that I don't know where to start! We found a few package deals but are unsure if they are really "deals". So what I'm asking is if any of you world travelers here at CP have any advice or could possibly point us in the right direction. :thumbs:




Jason
 
Yeah I travel the world. Dublin is a fun city. The Jameson and Guinness museum tours is worth it. Even some of the tours offered is fun. Like the Coastal tour. I did the Literary Pub Crawl and it was a blast to learn about Irish Writers. Edinburgh is a fantastic city to visit. Especially if you can hit the Military Tattoo. The Hollyrook Palace is beautiful and the Jewels in the Edinburgh Castle is neat. The Crown, Scepter and the Sword in the vaults at the Edinburgh Castle. They offer some fun tours like the Ghost Tour on foot. The Whisky Museum up near the Castle is worth visiting if you like Scotch. The Train station isn't far from the Scotland Museum of Art. There is a nice metal structure you can climb to the top. Its across the street from the train station. Plenty of other things to do and Pub food is pretty damn good there like it is in Dublin.

Now for London. What can I say other than its pretty expensive. Plenty to do there as well. I tend to spend as little time as possible here. Now the Tower of London is awesome. Most of the places will be swamped due to the fact it will be Summer there. So be prepared to learn how to queue. :laugh: You have plenty of time to research before going. Like the Modern Tate Museum for one. Shakespeare Globe is a fun experience if you like Plays. If you time it right, you can catch a Shakespeare play since they do others as well like the Golden Ass. No idea if they are still doing this one in the summer. They have a website so you can see their schedule. Plenty of things to do in London and I can't forget the first Hard Rock Cafe. Small place but it did have great food when I went back in 2002. Things have changed since my last stop in 2008.

Now I can't speak for Paris. Never been there and I do want to visit. But its not a high priority of countries I want to see. I've heard some stories about France from some people I know that have been there. My oldest niece went to Spain last year and said its a must stop for me. I've been wanting to see Spain as well. Especially Barcelona. If I lived in Europe, I'd have seen every country by now.

As for a deal. You could check British Airways. They have offered some wonderful package deals. But since you are traveling in the Summer, the tickets WILL be expensive. The price you pay for going over there during traveling season.

I will add. If you want to visit a city, then Prague will fit the bill. I'd skip Paris and put Prague in. :thumbs:

Another thing about the UK. I forget the name of the bus line that will take you all over the UK. I took a day trip to Cardiff, Wales at the time for like $20.
 
I would love the idea of Prague :love: Julie loves the idea of Paris as it's the "city of love". Throw out all your ideas, as we have plenty of time to plan.
 
If you are considering Scandinavia, I would highly recommend the west coast of Norway. Easily one of the most beautiful spots in Europe.
 
My wife is from western Norway. (Bergen) If you and your finance decide you want to go to Norway, drop me a pm and I will give you some tips.
 
I highly recommend Berlin, Kraków, and Prague. Both Vienna and Budapest could be pretty easily added to the itinerary.

-Mark
 
There are so many good options in Europe. I agree with lots of the advice given above.

As to Paris: I have spent a decent amount of time there and while it is not even close to my favorite city, for honeymoon purposes it has to rank way up on the list of great destinations. Notre Dame, the Louvre, Luxembourg Garden, the Seine River walk area, Bertillon ice cream on the Ile Saint-Louis, Sacre Couer, Arc de Triumphe, and that tower thingy that they have there. All of those can be visited easily in a relatively short amount of time (unless you decide to spend lots of time at the Louvre). There are lots of other good sites that are not as mainstream too. The food is absolutely outstanding. The wine is absolutely outstanding (and I am not much of a wine drinker). The shopping will make her happy too.

There are lots of great cities in Europe but Paris really is built for the honeymoon. I asked my wife her thoughts and she immediately said Paris but also Brugges, Belgium. Brugges, Belgium is incredibly well preserved and sort of looks like something out of a story book. Lots to do there too. It's not terribly far by train from Paris and it's amazing to see. When I go back to that part of Europe, Brugges will be back on my list (fantastic beers there too).

I also added Amsterdam to my itinerary when my wife and I went to Europe after we got married. It's not all prostitutes and marijuana. But those are added benefits! ;)
 
Congrats, brother. Try to find out what your fiance wants and do that. :)

But I have heard that Paris in the Spring is nice.
 
Paris is nice. Staying at a nice hotel near one of the main train stations works well, that way you'll be near a metro stop, and close to one of the stations, in case you take the train from the UK to Paris. It's a fairly easy city to navigate. But the people there are hit or miss as to whether or not they'll be nice to tourists. The people out in the rest of France are much nicer. Annecy, France is a beautiful place to visit, but that's much closer to Geneva.

Köln (Cologne) Germany is a lot of fun as well. Some great museums, an amazing cathedral, some of the best beer I've ever had, great restaurants, culture, etc.
 
If you have a purely romantic trip in mind, then go to the island of Santorini. Maybe a little Greek island tour?

-Mark
 
A few years ago, we took a train trip from Amsterdam to Zermatt, Switzerland. Part of the train trip was along the Rhine. I always thought I would like to take one of the eight day cruises that visits some of the castles along the Rhine.

Have fun and post pics!
 
punk_lawyer said:
There are lots of great cities in Europe but Paris really is built for the honeymoon. I asked my wife her thoughts and she immediately said Paris but also Brugges, Belgium. Brugges, Belgium is incredibly well preserved and sort of looks like something out of a story book. Lots to do there too. It's not terribly far by train from Paris and it's amazing to see. When I go back to that part of Europe, Brugges will be back on my list (fantastic beers there too).
Click to expand...

x2 on Brugges. After almost 3 years of living in the UK and traveling all over Europe, this was easily our favorite city to visit. Absolutely stunning city.
 
mjolnir01 said:
punk_lawyer said:
There are lots of great cities in Europe but Paris really is built for the honeymoon. I asked my wife her thoughts and she immediately said Paris but also Brugges, Belgium. Brugges, Belgium is incredibly well preserved and sort of looks like something out of a story book. Lots to do there too. It's not terribly far by train from Paris and it's amazing to see. When I go back to that part of Europe, Brugges will be back on my list (fantastic beers there too).
Click to expand...

x2 on Brugges. After almost 3 years of living in the UK and traveling all over Europe, this was easily our favorite city to visit. Absolutely stunning city.
Click to expand...

interesting, i'll have to look more into Brugges. :thumbs:
 
Ok guys, after much consideration my future wife and I decided on 2 countries! We are going to France (Paris) for 4 days and Italy (Rome) 3 days. July 25 - August 1st. I have already booked our tickets but have yet to pick a hotel! Julie has spent A LOT of time on Trip Advisor trying to pick a place to stay. I would like to ask my fellow CP'ers for any suggestions on where to stay in both cities for ~$250.00 or under per night.


Planning this trip has been a heck of a lot more fun than I expected it to be. At first we were looking into package deals due to the ease of it. After a few good weeks of looking around we decided that it would be fun and easy to just plan it ourselves.
This is both our 1st time going to Europe and we wanted the best bang for the buck (site seeing wise) that's the leading factor on why we chose France and Italy.

In France we would like to do the following

Visit the Louvre
Visit Notre Dame Cathedral
Eiffel Tower (of course)
Arc de Triomphe
Musee d'Orsay
the Luxembourg Gardens
The Catacombs <- now this sounds like a blast!
La Casa Del Habano :love:
a lot of good eating
possible visit to the Norman coast/ or a tour of the Burgundy region

In Rome we would love to do the following.

La Casa Del Habano
Colosseum
Pantheon
Trevi Fountain
the Vatican
St. Peter's Basilica
Sistine Chapel
Catacombs of St. Callixtus

What do you guys think so far? any tips and advice would be highly appreciated.
 
Good luck with those choices. Tourism season + attractions = time sink :laugh:

So plan to spend a lot of time in queues. Take bottled water with you was well. Only place you should get in pretty fast is the cigar shops and possibly eating places. Depending on how fancy they are.
 
Mr Peat said:
Good luck with those choices. Tourism season + attractions = time sink :laugh:

So plan to spend a lot of time in queues. Take bottled water with you was well. Only place you should get in pretty fast is the cigar shops and possibly eating places. Depending on how fancy they are.
Click to expand...


We are planning on taking advantage of the "skip the line" features available on some tours. :) Hope that will help with a bit of the mess.
 
in Rome look into the City Card, it will get you around the lines, and in July/Aug, they can be up to 4 hours long for one main attraction. Roma Pass
Try hitting up the Vatican around 3pm, we used one of the tour guides that were trying to gather a crowd out in front of the "City" Mike from Ohio, great tour and cost about 30 euro I think.

Both Cities offer hop on / hop off bus tours for pretty cheep, they will get you to all the main attractions, and then you stay as long as you want and catch the next bus. Pretty easy way to get around town.

Hope this helps

Tim
 
Just came back from Paris. I'd second the hop on hop off bus tour. It will get you to all the major sites. You can do the loop in ~2 hrs. then decide where to hop on and hop off. One of them (the red bus) includes a 2nd day automatically when you buy the first. Sounds like you wouldn't use it, but you will wait in lines and you probably won't see as much as you want to ... so you may actually find the 2nd day useful. We rented an apartment for the 5 days we were there. It was a little more than 250/night but it was nice to have a kitchen and separate room for the kids.

We took a day trip to Versailles (inexpensive to get there and less than an hour by train). The Palace is awesome and the grounds in spring would be amazing.

I would recommend hitting one of the TABAC shops. Many (maybe all) have cuban cigars at a reasonable price (compared to London ... which is the other city we visited on this trip). You can sit down in the outdoor seating of any of the cafe's and have a drink and smoke a cigar. Spent 3 evenings with my wife this way. It was a great way to spend the evening.
 
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