In my early twenties, I considered moving to London for 2 years as part of the UK’s Youth Mobility program. My day job profession originated in the UK, so it would be possible to transfer to the UK branch of the company I work for. But the timing was just never right and when I did the sums of how much it would cost and the lifestyle trade off, I was never quite sold on the idea. I do think the expat life is over-glamorized. So instead when the opportunity arose to negotiate some unpaid leave from my day job, I decided to take a month off to visit London and Paris.
Paris and London Itinerary
I like to be a little ‘extra’ with my itineraries so I included:
- Best photo spots
- Best viewpoints over the cities
- Entry fees
- Opening hours
- Some of my own photos for inspiration if you want to replicate them
- Choose which activities you want to do each day, or follow my itinerary if you’re a traveller who wants to pack as much as they can into each day
- The itinerary in structured into morning, afternoon and evening
- Attractions you should pre-book are noted in the itinerary
- Walking routes for some of the attractions (If you want to make your own, see my tutorial in this post)
- Tips & things that are good to know before going to Paris and London (e.g. instructions on how to use their public transport)
- Restaurants list
I spend a lot of time planning detailed itineraries so I hope you find it helpful!
Click here to download a copy of the itinerary. If you’d like a copy you can edit to add and remove things that suit your personal tastes, there is an editable version in my shop (click here).
Note: Prices of things (e.g. metro and entry fees to attractions) in this itinerary were as of January – April 2023 when I planned the itinerary. Prices for some things may have increased slightly since then).
The context behind this itinerary
If you’ve seen my other itineraries that I’ve previously posted on the blog you’ll notice a few things are different about this itinerary:
- Only visited 2 cities, spending a long time in each place (10 days in Paris, 20 days in London). I normally don’t spend more than 5 days in one place and usually visit 5 or more countries on a month long trip
- Zero internal flights – once I landed, all transport was via train or bus
- The main reason for the above is that the point of this itinerary was for me to try out slow travel, it was my first time doing an overseas solo trip, and I wanted more of a ‘live like a local’ feel to see if I did, in fact, want to do an expat stint in London
- More day trips than time spent in the cities. I had been to both London and Paris before and while planning the itinerary I had in my mind, ‘if I were to live here, what places would I take day trips to on a weekend?’ This included a lot of places that would never make it onto a first timer’s itinerary
What I liked about this itinerary
- Lots of day trips – The point of this itinerary was for me to do less touristy day trips than what I would typically see on a ‘pack it in and see the highlights’ type of itinerary that I normally do. I wanted to see what slow travel was like if I wanted to take a few months off of work and explore more of Europe (or temporarily move to Europe at some point in the future)
Mont Saint Michel – the longest day trip from Paris – but worth the long bus ride!
- I skipped the London Eye – I had it in my mind that on this trip I would go up the London Eye, but to save money by pre-booking tickets – you risk the weather. It takes about 30 minutes for the eye to complete a rotation, and this would be with other random people I don’t know in an small confined space (awkward). If you don’t pre-book you’ll have to wait 30 minutes (or more if it takes multiple rotations for a pod to become available). I spent longer than I intended taking photos of Big Ben (the scaffolding was uncovered this time!) and I was glad I was able to take my time and not rush to join a pre-booked timeslot. I ended up skipping the London Eye altogether and I’m glad I did because it would’ve taken a large chunk of time out of my itinerary and this is something I want to do with other people.
- If I I had any pre-booked activities, I booked these for first thing in the morning (the first available timeslot when the attraction opened), so there was no waiting around / ‘dead’ time in the itinerary
- I tried to plan it so that it wasn’t say 5 days straight of day trips out of the city. I did a mix of local things in the city and day trips
- There were train delays almost every day in both Paris and London. I was glad I booked the earliest trains for all of my day trips
- In Paris I stayed in the Latin Quarter, a few blocks away from where I stayed the first time I visited Paris. I absolutely love this area of Paris! So many restaurants, winding cobblestone streets, crepe and gelato shops, as well as nice places to sit and have a snack or take a rest and people watch (e.g. seats near the Pantheon, Luxembourg Gardens, the square in front of Notre Dame)
My favorite part of Paris – the Latin Quarter
- In London I stayed in the neighbourhood of Bayswater (I’ll be doing a separate post about why I chose to stay in this borough), at a serviced apartment. It was great to have a kitchenette where I could heat up leftover takeaways, as it’s otherwise exhausting finding a place to have dinner at every night. Eating out alone felt awkward and it was sometimes hard to find a restaurant with an available table unless I went super early or super late.
- Paris and London are ideal for solo travellers (except for the high price tag of accommodation)
If you do this itinerary in May like I did, you’ll need to wait until about 10pm to get a photo of the Eiffel tower like this one (the sun doesn’t set until 9pm)
What I would change about this itinerary
- Switch Amiens for Provins (which was my original plan, until there was a strike on the train line to Provins). I could have switched the day but it would’ve meant forfeiting the cost of train tickets to Rouen. Spoiler: Rouen wasn’t that great (although it did rain most of the day which is always annoying)
Amiens
- Remove the free day from London and add this to Paris, or do a day trip to Cardiff in Wales on the free day instead
- Add in Cardiff, Wales. Since most of the day trips required 1.5 – 2 hours each way, I was concerned all of those trains would be tiring and they were, but the places I visited were worth it! Cardiff seemed a bit far for a day trip but after I did York as a day trip from London (which is about 2hrs each way), I wished I had added it in
- Skip a few of the days in the itinerary where I did walking routes from A Lady in London’s blog. E.g. Clerkenwell was boring and not worth the time
- Do not have a spare / free day – this is the first time I’ve ever deliberately planned a ‘choose your own adventure’ free day in an itinerary and… I didn’t like it. I want a packed itinerary where I know exactly what I’m doing each day and more importantly, I’m excited about each day in the itinerary. I think by being too flexible and having too many ‘I’m not super excited about this’ options to choose from, dampened the trip. I don’t think I needed 3 full weeks in London. If Edinburgh wasn’t so expensive for solo travelers, I would’ve removed a few days from London and added them to Edinburgh instead
- Because I had flexibility in what I was doing each day, I wasted a bit of time re-planning things on the fly trying to time perfect weather for perfect photos of certain things. Normally I don’t have any flexibility in my itinerary and I just get on with it regardless of the weather. Re-planning logistics trying to have the ‘perfect’ photos wasted a bit of time I could’ve spent doing more sightseeing
- In an effort to save money (and my paranoia about train ticket selling out and getting stranded at one of the places I was going to for a day trip), I pre-booked all of my day trip train tickets before leaving from the trip. Some of the day trips I could’ve left the place an hour or 2 early e.g. I think Brighton and Bristol can each be done in 3/4 of a day, they don’t need the entire day (unless you want a train departing mid-morning, not around 7am or 8am like most of my day trips did)
The famous Brighton pier
Tips if you want to do an itinerary like this
In it’s entirety, this is not a first timer’s itinerary. You’ll notice the London itinerary doesn’t include well known attractions like Windsor Castle, Warner Bros Studios (Harry Potter Studio Tour) and the Cotswold’s. That’s because I visited these on my first visit to London (and I definitely recommend doing these first time around).
You’ll also notice I didn’t include entry into the Louvre as part of my Paris itinerary. I have no appreciation for that type of art and wasn’t about to just add something to the itinerary because everyone else is doing it. The Louvre is huge and would take up half to an entire day of the itinerary.
Pre-book the train tickets of the places you know you definitely want to visit. I use Go Omio and Trainline to book tickets when I visit Europe. Some of the UK train tickets were cheaper on Transport for Wales. It’s much cheaper to book long distances train tickets in advance, than buy them on the day.
Sky garden viewpoint – tickets go on sale the Monday three weeks before. So if you want to go on say, a Wednesday in 3 weeks time DO NOT make the mistake I did and wait until the Wednesday 3 weeks before. The tickets will be all gone by then, you need to book them on the MONDAY that is 3 weeks before. I didn’t think the website was very clear on this and I missed out on going ☹ The Rooftop Garden 120 Fenchurch viewpoint nearby is ok, but the view is a bit obstructed.
If you want to visit the Shard without paying the expensive price tag for the viewpoint, go to the bar and buy a drink instead – then you’ll get the view for free.
View from the top of the Shard
I found these day trips to be a bit overrated
I’ll be doing detailed posts on each of my day trips, but a quick summary:
Paris
- I visited 5 chateau’s. I wouldn’t normally do so many ‘same same’ attractions and I didn’t get bored of them, but I do think when time is limited just 1 day trip to Chateau’s instead of 3 day trips to Chateau’s would have been enough.
- Skip Chateau de Chantilly. I’m glad this was the first chateau I went to because it was a bit underwhelming, especially the grounds surrounding the Chateau
- Rouen – I see why this is a stop that’s typically just a few hours in nothern France river cruise itineraries, it only takes about half a day to see the highlights
Chateau de Chambord
London
- Stonehenge – not much to see other than the circle of rocks. It’s fenced around it so hard to get a good photo from a distance e.g. from a nearby field as this appears to be private property or the view of Stonehenge is obstructed. I think Stonehenge is overrated
- Norwich – cute village but it’s not ‘touristy’ so keep that in mind. I got a few weird / amused looks from locals when I was taking photos of the village.
- Leeds Castle / Canterbury / Dover day trip from London – this just didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor for me. When I booked it there wasn’t an option to skip the guided tour of Canterbury Cathedral. The tour director did long winded commentary that took up half the free time in Canterbury. The tour guide wouldn’t tell us what time to meet back at the bus until the end of that guided tour, so you couldn’t just ditch the group and meet back up at the bus later. I would’ve loved more time to explore Canterbury on my own. I contemplated doing this myself via the train, but wanted to see Dover. Well the stop in Dover turned out to be only 30 minutes where all you had time to do was walk along the beach.
Leeds Castle
These day trips are worth the hype
- York – the only day trip where I felt I could do with a few more hours. It’s a long train trip (up to 2.5 hours each way from London but so worth it). Ended up being one of my favorite day trips of the itinerary!
- Chateau’s – when you go to Paris, definitely add in 1 day to visit some Chateau’s. 2 in one day is ideal, 3 if you like to travel at a fast pace. Most of these are only accessible via road so either hire a car or join an organized bus tour. If you only have a few days in Paris, you must dedicate 1 full day to visiting Versailles!
- Mont Saint Michel – some people thought I was crazy for doing Mont Saint Michel as a day trip from Paris but it was great! The bus was a double decker and the tour wasn’t at capacity so I had an empty seat beside me. The seats were comfy so you could nod off on the bus ride there and back. If you want a sit down lunch, or to walk out on the sand at low tide to get a shot from a distance then you might need more time. But I found the 4 hours at Mont Saint Michel was sufficient.
York
Would I go back to the UK and France?
France is a huge country and vastly different from the north to the south. 6 months after taking this trip I went back to Europe for another holiday and did Colmar and Strasbourg as part of my Rhine itinerary. I really enjoyed both and have my eye on visiting Lyon and Nice as part of a future Europe trip.
This was my second time visiting the UK and there isn’t anything left on my England to do list. I’m not interested in visiting cities like Manchester or Liverpool (I prefer ‘cute’ villages with half timber frame houses) but I do want to go to Scotland at some point.
I think 7 days in London (including day trips) is the ideal amount of time for a first timer, with 2 weeks the ideal amount of time if you prefer to travel at a slower pace.
Overall this trip confirmed a few things for me:
- I usually go on all my holidays with my mum. I much prefer to travel with my Mum, rather than solo
- I don’t like to stay in one place for too long when I’m traveling
- I’d rather go to a mix of expensive and cheap places (this trip cost almost double the price of another month long Europe & Dubai trip I did later in the same year which was half solo and half with other people)
- Tourist attractions are busy for a reason – there’s lots of unique things to see and experience! Going off the ‘beaten path’ is ok every once in a while, but if you have limited time off from work, stick to the main tourist attractions. I don’t think I’m missing much by skipping lesser known destinations
But most importantly: Australia will always be my home. I love visiting Europe but I don’t want to move there, and slow travel is not for me.
Click here to download a copy of the itinerary to PDF. If you’d like a completely editable version to use in Word or Google Docs, it’s available in my shop.
Click here to buy an editable version of the itinerary
Make your own itinerary using my itinerary template
More itineraries from some of my past trips
- USA itinerary: west coast cities and national parks of Utah and Arizona (3 weeks)
- Detailed Japan Itinerary (11 Days in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka during cherry blossom season)
- How I Planned a 6 week European Holiday (Plus download my detailed Itinerary)
More travel planning
- 115 Things to Google before your next vacation
- Travel Planning: How to choose a hotel (my step by step process)
- Visit a City versus Google My Maps: which is better for visually planning your travel itinerary
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