Europe travelers - need your advice

[pantsparty]

Okay, H and I have set our Europe travel dates to December 22 - January 2nd.

I'm trying to decide if we should do 2 or 3 cities.

If it's 2 cities, it would be London and Amsterdam.

If it's 3, it would be London, Bruges, and Amsterdam.

What do you think? I'd like to do 3. That would be about 3 days in each city, and I also like that we'd be in London for Christmas and Amsterdam for New Year's.

As far as inter-city travel, we'd planned on taking the Eurostar to Amsterdam. We're definitely flying in and out of London, so I'm not sure how cost / time effective it would be to fly to each city.

[mrsukyankee]

The only problem I see with the three cities is that you would lose out on seeing much during Christmas as all public transport and most everything is closed. On Boxing Day (26th), some places will be closed as well (though sales will be on). So this means you won't have much "time" in London. I'd go with 2 cities and plan to spend more time in London instead of equally spreading it so you can really see London.

[frlcb]

I think you can see Bruges in less than 3 days so you could add a day somewhere else and spend 2 days in Bruges.

[pantsparty]

H and I talked last night and I think we're just going to do London and Amsterdam. I guess there's not as much in Amsterdam, but he really doesn't want to be rushing from place to place, and I guess I agree! I'd much rather take in the cities and then come back another time

[hz80408]

Amsterdam, especially in Jan, I think you'd be fine with just 3 days there. We spent 3 days there in March so one of our days we went to see the flowers blooming at Keukenhof. I'd check the holiday hours with New Years though for sites like Van Gogh and Anne Frank.

Dec 22-Jan2 is ~12 days; does that include travel time? I think London you'd want 4 or 5 full days in April. We spent 3 days there and could have used more time.

It may work to do London 5 days, travel to Bruges, 2 days there and 3 in Amsterdam. But Amsterdam and London would be great too!

[pantsparty]

Two of those days are travel days (the 22nd and 2nd). Someone on another forum mentioned that we could do a day trip to Bruges. I thought that was a great idea. We're definitely going to spend more time in London, probably the 23-27, and then go to Amsterdam. Travel back to London the 1st, leave the country on the 2nd.

[hz80408]

I think a day trip to Bruges would be smart and easy. I'd do it; but then again I contemplated doing a 4hr train-layover trip in Brussels just so we could get some Belgium beer )

[frlcb]

A day trip to Bruges from which city, London or Amsterdam?

[hz80408]

Oh, I also should add that we flew into Amsterdam and out of London for our trip. It ended up being only $80 more for the flight and we saved on train transportation costs and time. When looking at flights, I'd definitely at least price out multi-city flight.

It looks like maybe you'd want to go to Bruges on your way to Amsterdam as from what I can tell, it's 4 hrs train from Bruges to Amsterdam www.railtime.be/website/ShowRoutes.aspx?l=EN&smc=1&arrid=88&arrl=NL&depid=210&depl=FR&dep=1&st=2012-07-13T10:31:00&stn=0&tt=0&trty=1

www.thalys.com/nl/en/destinations/bruges/thalysconnect/

[pantsparty]

Yup, our route right now is London to Amsterdam. Day before we fly back to the U.S., we'll take the Eurostar back to London. We checked ticket prices flying out of Amsterdam and they were WAY more expensive!

Tentatively we'll book our round-trip flight to London and make the rest of the arrangements as we can. Unfortunately Eurostar is not selling currently for our December dates, but I'm keeping a sharp eye because apparently the inexpensive seats sell out really fast!

[sunshinedaydreams]

I think it's a good call to only do two cities. We just did 4 days in London last month and could have used more. We saw everything we wanted to, but it was cram packed days.

I love Amsterdam, so I could easily spend 3+ days there. Although, I guess I've never been when it's cold out. I like to wander and lounge at cafes quite a bit. Just an FYI - not sure if you're going for the coffee shops or not, but as of Jan 1, they're supposed to not be letting non-Netherlands residents in the coffee shops in Amsterdam. Not sure if it will actually be upheld, but there was a lot of chatter about that when we were there last month.

Another FYI - I'm not sure if you've looked much into a day trip to Brugge, but it would be roughly 4 hours on a train each way. That's 8 hours of train travel. We just did Brussels and Brugge on our trip last month, too, and we had fun, but I'm not sure I'd push myself like that just to get there. There's not a whole ton to do in Belgium in general other than eat and drink, IMO.

[pittpurple]

I agree with sticking with 2 cities. London is huge and there's tons of stuff to see. Particularly with being there over the holidays I think an easier trip is better. Transport between the cities is likely to be super crowded too since it's the holidays so the fewer journeys you have to book, the better. Definitely keep watching the train prices, you'll want to book immediately.

[redheadk]

We loved Amsterdam. We were there in November with friends and did Amsterdam, Cologne, and we were supposed to go to Munich. The weather was unusually bad in Munich (much colder than normal with lots of rain) so we changed our flights to fly out of Amsterdam and went back after Cologne.

Our whole trip was mainly for the boys to drive the Nurburgring (hence going to Cologne), but it was cheapest for us to fly into Amsterdam. We ended up loving it and were really not ready to leave so super happy to go back. We found plenty to do there.

Enjoy your trip!

[dutchgirl678]

We've been to Amsterdam in January once. It was cold as hell but we had a great time. There is so much indoor stuff to do there. We saw the van Gogh museum, Anne Frank museum and did a canal boat tour. And we did a lot of walking around. We also spent some time in The Hague with one day in Scheveningen. Even if you stay in Amsterdam you can easily take the train to see other nearby cities such as Haarlem, The Hague, Delft, Leiden.

[basilosaurus]

I don't think Brugge would be doable as a day trip, but I do think it's worth an overnight stay on the way to Amsterdam. That's one of my favorite towns. Plus, the beer is great

As far as train vs fly, the train from london to amsterdam is about 5 hours, and the flight is 1. That's right about on the edge where I'd choose to fly. I vastly prefer train travel, but I'd have to think hard about this one.

What I'd likely do in your situation: London, train to Brugge, train to Amsterdam, fly back to London night before return flight and just stay near the airport, then it's an easy flight out the next day.

[Deleted]

London, train to Brugge, train to Amsterdam, fly back to London night before return flight and just stay near the airport, then it's an easy flight out the next day.
That's what I would do too.

[pantsparty]

Thanks everyone for the advice! I am super excited about this trip. I thought for sure our first trip to Europe would be Ireland or Rome / Paris, but I think it will be so much fun in those parts around the holidays. Actually, I'm glad we're booking now because the hotels in Amsterdam are out of control! Apparently that is the place to be for New Year's Eve.

Oh, I looked up the "coffee shop" thing. Being dumb as I am, I thought you meant coffee shops like Starbucks and was all, "WHAT?!? How can they do that?!?!" LOL.

[hz80408]

HAHA, that's part of the attraction of Amsterdam, IS the coffee shops.

I'll be interested to see how this implementation of non-citizens banning will go over. One would think it's a major source of income for the city/country from tourists.

Your trip sounds so fun!

[dutchgirl678]

www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/europe/dutch-law-would-stop-sale-of-marijuana-to-tourists.html?pagewanted=all

You should still be able to go to a coffee shop in Amsterdam. Interestingly enough as the article states there is less marijuana use by Dutch people than there is in the US and as such having grown up in the Netherlands it always baffles me that people go to Amsterdam to smoke weed. But to each their own .