Help plan a honeymoon!

August 22, 2007 8:41 PM

Help me figure out how to plan this honeymoon...

My fiance and I are getting married July 5 next year, and we wanted to go to London for our honeymoon. However, while we are there we also think it would be awesome to go to as many other countries as possible, within reason. I'd like to have a decent amount of time in any location, and I'd also like to be able to take trains or buses wherever we go, I don't want to fly except for the trip there and back. We'd like to spend a day or two in Brighton as well. If we were only going to go to one other place I think we'd like it to be Scotland, but we also like the idea of going to Paris if possible. We are pretty open on how long it can be, I will have at least 10 days vacation time from work, and there will be weekends in there, so it could potentially be a couple weeks. However, I'd like to keep travel/hotel under $5,000.

So what are some suggestions on the best way to plan this trip? I'm confused how to go about booking a multiple destination trip like this. I am also not sure which country would be the best to fly into, pricewise. I have quite a bit of time to plan this, but I'd rather figure it out sooner rather than later. It's a lot of information for me to try to sort out, so help is greatly appreciated.

posted by Becko to travel & transportation (7 answers total)

This is almost exactly what I'm planning to do with our honeymoon. We have about three weeks, and we're trying to budget out $6000 for all of those things as well, though we're going in October, which is a cheaper season for Europe.

My plan, originally, was to train/drive throughout England, but because EasyJet is SO cheap in advance, it would be easy to country hop and more importantly, it would save on travel time. Where you're spending five hours on BritRail to get from London to Edinburgh, it might only take an hour to fly there.

The Rick Steves guides on Europe, Britain, London, etc., are fabulous and give lots of good places to stay and how to travel cheaply. Also, what I found helpful to start my planning were his guides on what to see based on how long you're going to be in country. If you've got three days, see London. If you've got seven days, see London, Wales, Cotswolds. If you've got twenty days, see London, Cotswolds, Wales, Loch Ness, Edinburgh, etc.

My idea at this point is to schedule out a few specific destinations at various intervals on the trip. For example, I want to schedule a particularly nice first two days when we arrive, two days in the middle to stay at the Witchery in Edinburgh, and then two really nice days at the end before we leave for home. The rest of the time, we'll be flexible on where and how we stay. We're actually planning to be flexible enough to not necessarily secure lodging before we go. (We think it would add to the adventure, and we're both seasoned travelers.)
posted by santojulieta at 8:54 PM on August 22, 2007

The Witchery

Rick Steves itinerary for 22 days in England.

Also, here are some of my del.ic.ious links for my honeymoon planning.
posted by santojulieta at 8:58 PM on August 22, 2007

The del.ic.ious link doesn't work, but thanks so much for the heads up about easyJet, that is going to help planning a lot!
posted by Becko at 9:12 PM on August 22, 2007

I don't know how keen you'd be on "sharing" your honeymoon, but my fiance and I had a great time this January on a Contiki tour. We visited 16 countries and had an absolute blast with our tour group.

The pros are that you get a really varied international experience and you only book one thing and Contiki takes care of the rest. The cons are traveling as a group and some reduced flexibility.

You can e-mail me if you want any more information. I can recommend a particularly wonderful tour manager and even find out what tours she'll be running during your time frame.
posted by chudmonkey at 9:26 PM on August 22, 2007

I'm a big fan of buses, trains, and ferries. I don't remember if I went direct from London, but I definitely took a bus onto a ferry from Dover, across the Channel, and then the bus continued on to Amsterdam. (We could get off the bus once we were on the ferry.)
posted by xo at 10:11 PM on August 22, 2007

Becko, just to make sure that one corporation doesn't get all your honeymoon business, check out this page - it's like Travelocity and Expedia, but with budget carriers in Europe and elsewhere.
posted by mdonley at 10:35 PM on August 22, 2007

http://del.icio.us/kristinstaton/honeymoon

That should help for the delicious links. I hope.
posted by santojulieta at 6:22 AM on August 23, 2007