This is very exciting - my brother has had a paper accepted at a conference in Scotland in July, and he decided not to waste a trip to Europe only going to Stirling ;) so he invited me to come along and we're going to Paris, London, Stirling (although I'm going to go to Edinburgh and so on while he's conferencing - I don't know if the William Wallace statue will divert me for four days lol :D ), Florence and Rome. Anyway, we've both been making lists of stuff we want to go see and do, but I was hoping more knowledgeable people - people who've travelled these places previously or live there - can give me some ideas about things we definitely should not miss! We'll be in each city for about 3 days, and we won't have a car so 'take a car out and enjoy Tuscany' ideas won't really be feasible ;) . Also any advice from previous experience about hotels, restaurants, public transport and so on would be appreciated too! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Why don't you come overhere ? We'll have a beer or two. :D

Paris?

Go to the Rodin museum.
The catacombs.
Sacre Coeur.
Notre Dame (climb the tower).
Boat tour on the Seine.
Take the train to the Château de Versaille.
Of course The Louvre and Musee d'Orsay.
Eat baguettes.
Look at all the fountains!

Mark

Paris- Speak in a german accent- The service was better in '42. My friends and I did this once, and the results were,...interesting.

I have nothing but good things to say about our trip to Paris. There is so much to see and we had not one single problem with any of the French people. The only obnoxious people we met were other tourists.

It was an unforgettable vacation, next will be London within the next few years.

Mark

A beer you say, Johnny? Most unexpected advice! [img]tongue.gif[/img] ;) Yeah of course there's heaps of other places we'd both love to go to - Amsterdam, and we were trying to squeeze in Vienna, but I only have 3 weeks at the most because of uni and the amount of time I can take off due to my scholarship, so it's really just a 'bandaid' type tour ;) .

Thanks for all those ideas, Mark! We were thinking of a boat tour. Were you able to speak French when you were there? Neither of us do very well at all; we're buying phrase books and so on and we're really going to try but I can see us being pretty hopeless at it - will it be a problem do you think?

I think Holland is one of the best to visit in Europe so be sure to visit Johnny in his shack lol free beer for anyone there lol :D

Rome is the place where you can spend 3 weeks without having visited everything you:
You HAVE to see;
- Forum Romanum
- Collosseum
- Trevi Fountain
- Piazza Navona
- The Pillar of Traian (sp?)
- Circus Maximus
- Museo Capitolino (Museum looking out over the Forum Romanum)

There's lots more; just buy a city map with guided tours on it, and that will take you along the highlights in Rome. The cool parts however, are most of the times things that ARE NOT among the highlights.
When I was visiting my aunt in Rome, she dumped me in a museum in EUR (the district of Rome built by Mussolini) which was a GREAT museum. I'm not that fond of museums, but I liked that one a lot.

[ 03-31-2004, 01:56 AM: Message edited by: Link ]

Since you are going to Edinburgh you could go visit some haunted castles like Edinburgh Castle etc. It could give you whole new experience. ;)

Yeah, Rome is great. It's also the easist city to sneak onto the Metro line. Just walk on confidently like you've paid your fare already. Most of the ticket-attendant guys don't get paid enough to actually chase people up ;)

Oh, and be sure to check out the Vatican. Nowhere else on Earth can you see Christs' teachings warped and perverted to such an extreme degree [img]smile.gif[/img]