Possible Trip

Anyone have any suggestions for a London-Amsterdam-Cologne-Munich trip?

Timeframe would be to leave on a Friday and to return on the following Sunday.

|||

9 days?

would not be enough for London alone, probably just enough for Amsterdam or Munich. You won%26#39;t remember much beyond trains and planes and %26quot;I%26#39;ve been there%26quot; pcitures.

But if you insist - I would say 3 days in London, EasyJet from London to Amsterdam, 2 days in Amsterdam, train to Cologne, one night in Cologne and the following day, night train to Munich, 2 days in Munich and EasyJet Munich to London.

Technically possible. Experience-wise probably a nightmare.

|||

As altamiro stated, very rushed. While you will be able to see a little in each city, you are also passing by great sights in between. I once spent a week in Luxemburg because I wanted to actually see all of one European country, and I almost succeeded. In your time frame, visiting London and Amsterdam or Cologne and Munich (and some things in between) will enable you to actually see some of these places and not spend a good share of your time just traveling and seeing little.

|||

I just wanted to support the view that your schedule is too much for 9 days. London alone keeps you busy forever and takes longer than just a visit to Westminster, the Tower and Buckingham Palace to really get an idea of what the city is like (I assure you: It%26#39;s fantastic!). I would recommend at least 5 days to explore the city. From London you can fly almost anywhere for very little money. So, pick the town you would like to see most and stay there for the rest of your trip and take a day trip into the surrounding area if you really get bored. But that%26#39;s just my opinion.

|||

I will go a different direction than those expressed above. If you were considering the direct 777 AA flight from Raleigh [RDU] to Gatwick or the US Airways flight from Charlotte [CLT] to Gatwick, I would just take advantage of a cheap ticket and not even stop in London. Yes, London deserves 4-5 days minimum but because of the daily direct flights you could do just London as a separate trip nearly anytime. You would also get a better airfare if you traveled mid-week and not Friday and Sunday.

You could arrive at Gatwick and take the Gatwick Express train to Victoria station. From there it would be a taxi ride to Waterloo station, the Eurostar train to Brussels [Bruxelles] and then the Thalys fast train to Amsterdam Central station. You could rest on the train, catch up on your sleep and arrive in Amsterdam within 6 hours after leaving London Waterloo station.

I am not knowledgeable about the amount of time to allocate for Amsterdam and Köln [Cologne] but 3-days would be my recommendation for Münich.

You have probably already researched fight options and schedules. I have found the OAG to be very helpful. You might look at:

http://timetables.oag.com/rdu/

http://timetables.oag.com/clt/

There are no direct flights to Amsterdam from Raleigh or Charlotte. As an alternative to returning to London for the flight to the US, there is a flight to Raleigh from Münich on US Airways direct to Philadelphia connecting with US Airways to Raleigh. A possible return flight to Charlotte from Münich could be Lufthansa to Frankfurt connecting with US Airways to Charlotte.

|||

I like MarkK_Hanau%26#39;s suggestion, a visit to London coupled with a trip elsewhere by discount airlines. For me the elsewhere would be Salzburg, Austria. This delightful small city (one of my favorite places in Europe)has plenty to see, and the surrounding Alps are magnificent. Staying in the old town area under the fortress is wonderful. However, I don%26#39;t know about discount flights to there.

If you use discount flights be aware that you are then at fault for missed connections, not the airlines, because they will be on a separate ticket from your trans-Atlantic flight. Therefore, to be on the safe side, if using London as your arrival/departure point to the US, stay there at least a day before taking your next flight from there. That may save you from having your ticket become invalid if you miss a scheduled flight because of a cancelation or delay caused by bad weather, etc.

|||

Thanks for all of your opinions! I lived in Munich/Cologne for three months each and just wanted to see what other people thought of my idea.

My wife has never been to Europe, so I want to try to expose her to as much as possible. We definitely want to spend at least two days in Cologne and two in Munich, so maybe cutting out Amsterdam would be a good idea.

I had not even thought about EasyJet instead of the Eurostar, which looks like it%26#39;s a lot cheaper. This also eliminates travel time, giving us more time to sight-see.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated!

|||

-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-

TripAdvisor staff removed this post either because the author requested it, or because it did not meet TripAdvisor's forum guidelines.

To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html

We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.

Removed on: 4:58 pm, March 28, 2006