Europe anyone?

spip2014

My FI and I are going to Dublin, Rome, Venice & Paris for our honeymoon and I absolutely CANNOT wait! We have book some of the obvious things: Guinness Brewery tour, Vatican, walking ghost tour, Dinner at the Eiffel tower, etc.). Has anyone been and have some out-of-the-box suggestions that we should check out?

majesty318

Here are my Venice tips (C&P'ed from a previous post so I know it will eat the paragraphs).

We got back about a month ago from our honeymoon in Sicily & Venice followed by a Mediterranean cruise. Be prepared - Venice is EXPENSIVE. Our first casual lunch in Venice was almost as expensive as our nicest meal in Sicily! When you start looking for hotels, look into B&B's instead of actual hotels. We stayed here: http://www.venice3c.com/ and it was great (I am very picky and had absolutely zero complaints). It is close to St. Mark's/ transportation but in a little alley so no issues with noise. We did the Doge's Palace Secret Itineraries tour where you get to see some rooms of the palace not open to the general public: http://palazzoducale.visitmuve.it/it/il-museo/percorsi-e-collezioni/itinerari-segreti/ (sorry the page is in Italian). Campo Santa Margherita in the Dorsodoro neighborhood is a fun place to bar hop. There was also a really good gelato place there called Il Doge. We shared a gondola - the current rate is 80 euro during the day and 100 euro at night and we just could not bring ourselves to pay the whole thing. Transportation from the airport into Venice: there are a few options - we were not about to do private water taxi for 110 euro and I didn't want to drag our giant suitcases on the vaporetto (water bus) so we booked the Alilaguna ferry. It was HOT and a rough ride but I still think it was the best of the options. If you book online the tickets are a little cheaper: http://www.alilaguna.it/en Also, the Venice airport is absolutely not equipped to handle the volume it receives so just in case for some reason you end up also flying out of Venice, keep in mind you will not be allowed to check in for your flight until between 2-3 hours beforehand. We came from the cruise so got there 9 AM and were miserable sitting on the floor until 12:30 when we could finally check in for our flight! Let me know if you have any more questions. Despite being there in August/ prime tourist season, we did really enjoy it!

JoanE2012

spip2014 said:

My FI and I are going to Dublin, Rome, Venice & Paris for our honeymoon and I absolutely CANNOT wait! We have book some of the obvious things: Guinness Brewery tour, Vatican, walking ghost tour, Dinner at the Eiffel tower, etc.). Has anyone been and have some out-of-the-box suggestions that we should check out?

That's alot of cities!  How many days will you be going total?  What time of year?

SBmini

That's a lot of cities to hit in one trip. My big concern would be travel. You will lose a lot of time and money hopping from city to city. Probably at least half a day to a full day between locations. So unless you plan on being there for a while, I would suggest you narrow. Maybe Dublin, London and Paris or Rome and Venice.

CMGragain

Those are all very expensive cities!  I hope you have a major big budget.

spip2014

Wow! Thank you so much for the tips! That is really helpful! I'm going to check into all of that today!

spip2014

We will be going Mid-October for two weeks. 

SBmini

We did a lot of travel on our honeymoon, all in Spain, but a lot. Started in Barcelona, then went to Mallorca, Valencia, Granada, Ronda, Sevilla and Madrid. It was a lot of travel. We rented a car and really enjoyed seeing the country slowly on the road, but if I were to do it again, I would cut out a few cities and focus more on the key places. 

You will lose up to a day of travel to each place. Time packing, time to the airport, time at the airport, time on the plane, time getting baggage, time getting to new hotel, etc. So you can cut three days out of you trip just in travel time. Plus maybe another day getting there depending on how you are counting your two weeks. 

Paris needs at least four days on its own to see right. I spent 10 days there and I still missed things. I strongly recommend that you narrow down your itenerary so you can enjoy the cities you are seeing more.  

LondonLisa

I agree with PP- that is a LOT to do in 2 weeks.

Some people love being on the go all the time, and could do what you have planned in 10 days, but it sure won't be relaxing. What type of travellers are you? Are you the kind of people that will get up at 8am everyday for itinerary-filled action just to crash at the hotel at 11pm? Or do you want 1 museum in the morning then sit in a cafe with wine and people-watch all afternoon holiday?

I would suggest doing either Dublin, London, Paris or Italy (not both). You miss the "happy accidents" when travelling, like stumbling on a live Irish music night in a cozy Dublin pub, a string quartet playing in a London museum or an amazing Parisian dinner at a small restaurant you discovered after a long walk in Montmartre because you are running for the hop-on-hop-off bus tour.