We're Booked for London/Paris! Now What?

[ppiew]

To KLondon: we took this tour last August and it was great! As far as the England stuff, we took a train to St Austell the first nite and spent the next day at the Eden Project, then took the train (another 3 hrs) to Penzance. It was a quick ride the next day to Lands End, St Ives and Michels Mount - fantastic Cornish places all! Frankly, I was glad we didn't have a car - roads are narrow and nowhere to park near the sites. Train was super! We did see DLP for 2 days at the end of the tour and that was also great. Two days was sufficient to spend time seeing the parks, and frequently shuttles from the hotels to CDG were also easy to use.

 

[HoyaMom]

There is great insight in this forum - I actually used it to convince DH that ABD London/Paris is the way to go for a special trip with my parents - Thanks! MJGirl, we are booking for June 29, 2007 as well - there are 6 of us (4 adults, 2 children).

 

[MJGirl]

There is great insight in this forum - I actually used it to convince DH that ABD London/Paris is the way to go for a special trip with my parents - Thanks! MJGirl, we are booking for June 29, 2007 as well - there are 6 of us (4 adults, 2 children).

Great! Looking forward to meeting you. It will be my daughter (16)and I (??) How old are the children? I can't wait! Only 5 months 3 weeks and 5 days to go (but who's counting).

 

[KLondon]

A very belated 'thanks' to all of you for posting on this thread. I've been offline last few weeks - well, New Year's at DisneyWorld and 2 weeks of recovery - so I'm just getting caught up!

 

[nbodyhome]

My biggest problem in learning a little French right now is that I speak a good deal of Spanish. I keep finding myself lapsing into the Spanish: un, deux, trois, quatro, cinco, seis..... Oops. That ought to really confuse some poor person at the post office!

Au Revoir

Julie

I am glad I don't know any other languages, I've been working on my French for a couple of years almost now (not that it's great, but it gets me by!) I am heading back to London/Paris by myself, not on ABD in April for 9 days. I'd not drive in England, definitely (we have taken 1 day tours to Stonehenge, Bath, Portsmouth, etc.)

If you do learn a little French, you'll find that a LOT of Parisians actually do speak very good English. At least good compared with my French. We stayed in a non-touristy part of Paris last trip (it is where I'm staying in April), and I'd heard that fewer people in that neighborhood spoke English. Not so! The laundromat owner knew English, the lovely Italian restaurant we enjoyed, the owner there knew quite a bit (and had English menus!), a girl who worked at the Boulangerie was half American, half French. It was pretty amazing, there always seemed to be around who spoke English (the only bad thing, I didn't get to use as much of my French!) The Monoprix cashier didn't know English, but the woman behind me did - so she was able to translate. And this was in a residential neighborhood. "Merci, S'il Vous Plait, and Bon Jour" are all important phrases.

 

[KLondon]

... I'd not drive in England, definitely (we have taken 1 day tours to Stonehenge, Bath, Portsmouth, etc.)...

Interesting that you say that - we're struggling around this very issue! Can you tell me a bit about how you arranged these kinds of tours?

We'll be doing the ABD London/Paris trip in July, and we're planning to arrive in London a few days early to see a bit of Southern England. My first thought was to rent a car and drive a bit, but I remembered a previous experience (some 25 years ago) with driving in England and now I'm thinking rail or bus trips would be the way to go (especially with kids!).

Any suggestions?

 

[ppiew]

We took a City Bus tour to Stonehenge and to Windsor castle. It was great! We took the train to Bath, I think we changed trains at Reading but I could be wrong. There are also numerous Blue Badge guides that do private driving trips and they are so knowledgeable.

 

[nbodyhome]

Interesting that you say that - we're struggling around this very issue! Can you tell me a bit about how you arranged these kinds of tours?

We'll be doing the ABD London/Paris trip in July, and we're planning to arrive in London a few days early to see a bit of Southern England. My first thought was to rent a car and drive a bit, but I remembered a previous experience (some 25 years ago) with driving in England and now I'm thinking rail or bus trips would be the way to go (especially with kids!).

Any suggestions?

First, it depends on where you want to go. You can book many itineraries on Expedia, but I went through Astral Travels to get the inner circle tour. There are many companies that do tours, Astral is one I've used several times (if you see the Stonehenge Tour Company, that is Astral Travels as well). Of course, there is rail as well. I do enjoy the tours - they are great for seeing a number of things (and then I am sure I'll go back to see some places myself without a tour sometime).

We have Stonehenge and Bath photos on the website, but Portsmouth was last year (and I've not put those up).

Denise