Where to Travel in Europe & Why: 5 Trips

Even a short visit to Europe will enrich you through experiences of diverse countries, languages, cultures and history, architecture and cuisine. On your first trip to Europe, you will have so many options it will be easy to get overwhelmed. Where will you begin? And when? Can you go? Should you go? Can you afford to go? Can you afford not to?

Start with these five trips as you venture into the magical world across the sea. Change the order, if you wish. But give yourself at least these five rich, transformative experiences. Make Trip #1: Fabled France first. Or begin with another trip of your choice. Just begin somewhere. Plan to take your first of these trips next year. Then take another trip each year (or one every two years) from that point on.

Can You & Should You?

Yes, you most definitely CAN go and, yes, you SHOULD go. Use the guidebook Your Great Trip to France, or the guide associated with another of the trips if you chose to travel in a different order, to know exactly how to plan and arrange and prepare for and make your trip.

Can You Afford to Go? Can You Afford Not to?

CAN afford to take these trips? Yes! Consult a Great Trip Guide to discover the combination of saving and priority shifting that will open the doors to your perpetual travel adventures. No magic involved… No pie in the sky… Just some practical considerations and decisions. Can you cannot “afford NOT to”? The answer to that question is a definite “NO!”

Why Travel?

These are the trips of a lifetime that will become part of you and will change forever how you see life and the world. By making these trips, you will bring home stories and treasures, as well as changes in how you live your life from day to day. You will shift to eating lunch on your front porch, using the tablecloth you brought home from market day in Tremezzo on Lake Como. Many days you will cook Italian style, which is amazingly light other than the pasta… Sea bass in a lemon butter sauce… Fresh spinach lightly sautéed in olive oil… Possibly finished off with a small lemon sorbet. All just the way you loved it when you were sitting at a lake-side restaurant in Bellagio. You will follow the lead of all those other couples you sat beside in French cafes, taking time out of our busy work days to talk together and laugh together, and to look out across your terrace gardens (or potted plants). You will turn on music first thing every morning.

Once your perspectives and views have been broadened by travel, there is no going back…nor would you want to.  You will Ignite Your Passion for Travel…

FIRST… FABLED FRANCE

In France you will visit the Loire Châteaux, Mont St Michel, the Normandy Coast and Paris, City of Lights. You will travel around France by train. Train travel in France is its own adventure and part of the pleasure.

On this unforgettable trip, you will fly into Paris and take a train to the charming medieval village of Amboise in the Eastern Loire Valley, your first home base, and your jumping off point for visiting the Loire Châteaux. On day trips, you will travel by train to Blois and Chenonceau, then Tours in the Western Loire Valley.

Then you will travel by train to Pontorson, the small railway stop town near Mont St. Michel. Here you will stay on the Mont like the monks of old, with the water surrounding you at high tide, then receding entirely at low tide— racing in and out at the speed of a galloping horse.

Next, you will take another train to the small town of Bayeux, your home-base for exploring the tales and memories of the conquests and liberations that have taken place from and to this precipitous coastline… from William the Conqueror in the 11th century to the Allied troops in the 20th.

Then on to Paris for five glorious days (and nights!) on the left bank, where you will travel the Seine by BateauBus (“Boat Bus”) to visit the art and architecture, cathedrals and gardens, markets and cafés. 

INCOMPARABLE CAPITALS:
LONDON, PARIS & AMSTERDAM

On this trip, you will divide your time among three of the most extraordinary cities in the world, each entirely distinct from the other. In London you will stay in a flat or hotel near Covent Garden, and learn “your neighborhood.”

This will put you within a short walk of the Theater District (and the discount ticket booth at Leicester Square). So you will be able to take in two (or, better yet, three) superb London theater performances, with at least one of them performed at the rebuilt Globe Theater that harkens back to Shakespeare’s days. At Covent Garden, you will delight in the ongoing troops of open-air performers— mimes and musicians, acrobats and jugglers— as well as the shops and stalls with every conceivable offering of craft and art, adornment and style. There will be time to explore the priceless collections of art in the museums, some of it created by British artists, but much of it “taken” from countries and cultures around the world as a so-called right of Empire. You will stand in awe before the magnificent Cathedrals of Westminster and St. Paul’s, then sit inside to soak in the peace, and possibly take in an organ performance.

From London, you will travel by Eurostar to Paris, where you will immerse yourself for five days (and nights) in the delights and senses, art and architecture, gardens and music of this remarkable city.

Last you will move on to Amsterdam, a feast of canals and canal houses, art and history, museums and music, outdoor cafés and markets… and of small neighboring towns with familiar names like Delft and Gouda. Your time in Amsterdam will fly by in a mirage of sights and sounds, stories and experiences, and priceless encounters with the affable Dutch. 

DAZZLING SOUTH OF FRANCE:
COTE D’AZUR & THE FRENCH ALPS

After landing in Paris, you will hop aboard the TGV (“Train a Grande Vitesse”—“train of great speed”), where you will doze away your jetlag in comfort while you traverse France at 200 mph in a little over three hours. But then, when the sparkling azure waters of the Mediterranean first burst into sight, you will snap into focus, and your train will slow to hug the coastline on its way to Nice. After three nights in Nice, you will move on by train to the small coastal town of Cassis, with its immaculate white stone market square, and its boat rides out to see the Calanques—towering limestone cliffs, rising straight up out of the Mediterranean Sea to heights of up to 1,854 feet.

Leaving Cassis you will make your way back along the coast to Provence and the walled city of Avignon, second city of the Popes, with its “Pope’s Palace” and Cathedral, its bridge of childhood song, and its pedestrian streets and square, surrounded by cafés and restaurants and lined with trees. Then north until you reach the French Alps, where you will stay in lovely Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, site of the first Winter Olympics in 1924 (elevation 3,320 – 15,780 feet). Then on to Annecy, cupping one end of a stunning glacial lake, with its own backdrop of mountains, where you will walk the narrow cobbled streets of Old Town and travel by boat or by bicycle to other small towns bordering the lake.