When my husband and I were planning our honeymoon 3 years ago there were so many places on our list. Would we go to Thailand, venture south to Costa Rica, perhaps Alaska even? After back and forth talks and putting my research skills to use for months, we finally decided on a 3 country European adventure! This particular trip really encompassed our personalities more than the others. We always look for adventure when we travel. Can we hike somewhere? Can we walk the local streets and find history right before us? Would we be able to get around easily? Most importantly, how’s the food?! Europe seemed to be the obvious answer when it came down to it. My husband and I will choose backpacking somewhere super culturally rich and exploring any day over a beach location, that’s just how we like to travel.
Days 1-4 EWR ✈ LHR
London is one of my favorite cities in the world that I have ever been to. I was so happy to include it again during my honeymoon planning. We spent 3 full days here and did all of the typical touristy things like visiting Big Ben, seeing the changing of the guards, visiting Buckingham palace, the London Eye and such. We also partook in a lot of the wonderful shopping London has to offer! My favorite bigger department stores there are Liberty and Harrods. As for some of the other wonderful shopping that London has to offer, I would recommend visiting Regent Street, Bond Street, Oxford Street, and Carnaby Street. London was the most expensive country on our trip to Europe. The £ doesn’t convert well from the $ so I would spend wisely here.
Days 4-6 London St. Pancras Station 🚂 Paris Gare du Nord Station
Paris was such a romantic city! We took the train which was only around a 2 hour ride and super convenient to do from the St. Pancras Station. I highly recommend traveling within closer countries using the train as opposed to airplane. Look up the rates early and you can usually score a pretty awesome deal using rail! In Paris, we ate way too many baguettes with cheese and lay gazing at the tour Eiffel for way too long, it was just so mesmerizing! Be sure to catch it at night as every hour on the hour it lights up the city with its glimmering lights! We chose a hotel that was in the outskirts of central Paris, therefore, braving the tube system was a must! One thing I can say about the European tube systems is that they are very user friendly, even for visitors who don’t speak the native language, like us! The Louvre, Versailles and Arc de Triomphe were all on our list of must sees and they definitely don’t disappoint. Only having two days there in our itinerary, we did our best to wake up early and really make the most of each day from sunrise to sunset. The Chanel Boutique on Champs -Élysées was where I laid my eyes on my first Chanel bag, and I ended up going home with it 🙂 More to come about this in a future post!
Days 6-9 Paris Gare du Nord Station 🚂 Amsterdam Centraal
Amsterdam was by far our favorite leg of our honeymoon. The food, the people, the sights, everything was just so unique. This photo of the bicycle was something we saw so often as cycling is the #1 mode of transportation in Amsterdam! Everyone everywhere is riding a bicycle. Here we used the light rail to get around as it is the most convenient way to see all of the downtown areas. The restaurants and hotels are plentiful and the people are overall so lovely and welcoming. It helped a lot that English is spoken widely here, although for Paris we were sure to learn some key words before we went and we were just fine. On our last full day there, we took the bus ride from the center of town to Keukenhof Gardens, the home of more than 7 million tulips! The postcards and paintings are all real, that is truly what the fields look like! Rainbows of tulips lined the streets and the entire garden, it was such a beautiful sight. I highly recommend taking the day trip here and be sure to try a traditional dutch pancake before you leave Amsterdam!
Travel Tips:
- Get an Oyster card and use it to take the tube everywhere, you will save a lot of money this way and get to see a lot more in one day!
- Bring sneakers or other comfortable shoes because to get the most out of your time each day you must be prepared to do tons of walking! I think one day we walked over 16 miles total. This is the best way to really see the cities as well.
- Using rail between countries is convenient and quick, take advantage of this option and see the lovely scenery along the way!
- If you are going to do any high end shopping in any of these cities bring your passport with you! I made this mistake and had to go back to my hotel and back to the store to retrieve my purchase. They need this information on your passport to give you the tax information from your purchase!
- Get a good backpack like this one http://amzn.to/2uRxA2M. We used this literally everywhere and it held bottles of water and some snacks, maps of the city and still had tons of room to store any little purchases we made. I highly recommend it!
- One of the biggest tips I have is to bring converters for your outlets like these http://amzn.to/2vCiQlZ . You will definitely need them for phone chargers, blow dryers, etc. and you don’t want to risk not having them and being left without a power source!
- Pack light! Traveling on trains and lugging around your luggage up and down steps can be a real struggle. Also on the trains, there is limited first come first serve space to store your luggage so keep this in mind!
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