Rocker going to Europe

Hello everyone from GPG, there is some time that I'm away from the forum, the main reason is that it is blocked at my work, and at home or I'm not in front of the computer, or I'm playing Rfactor, GP4 or PES2008.

I'm writing to ask you some tips. I'm going to Portugal than Spain than France next month. I will travel from October 8th (arriving at Lisboa at October 9th) and I fly back from Paris on October 23rd.

I will go with my parents and my sister, so we have to share some time, some older people tour and some younger people tour. A lot of good food and wine (for me and my father).

My father just decided about it and we brought the tickets, we weren't planning it, so we are doing it now.

We are thinking about this tour:

08 - Travel

Lisboa

09 - Arriving at Lisboa - Belem and Coimbra University (my sister needs to go there, at the Lisboa campus)
10 - Bus Tour - Historic Downtown - Fado at night
11 – Sintra (or Cintra??) and old castle
12 - Trip to Evora going back to Lisboa or going to Badajoz

Madri

13 - Trip to Madri in the morning (bus, train or plane)
14 - Bus Tour and a fine dinner at night
15 - Trip to Toledo or more city tour.

Valencia

16 - Trip to Valencia (bus, train or plane) in the morning - City tour and rest

Barcelona

17 - Small tour at Valencia in the morning and trip to Barcelona in the afternoon (bus, train or plane)
18 - Bus tour or other city tour - Fine dinner and maybe some soccer (I need to see when the games are)
19 - Trip to Paris at afternoon or night (bus, train or plane)

Paris

20 - Bus Tour and Eiffel Tower
21 - Louvre Museum and maybe another tour
22 - Castles - Notre Dame Catedral
23 - Plane back to Brazil (early morning)

We have to decide about our transportation, we don’t know if we should rent a car or go by train or bus or plane (maybe part of the trip by car and other by plane or train). It depends most on how much it will be. Of course we want to drive a little (or maybe all the time, we like to drive), but it costs too much to rent a car at Lisboa and left it at Paris).

I f you have any advices you can give me, I would be really grateful. What do you think about our planning, should we do something else?

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Rocker

My tip for Madrid:

- the main street, La Gran Via is a nice place, walk around!
- Xanadu shopping mall some 30 minutes away has indoor snowboarding as well as a sweet go-karting track (10 Euros, 10 minutes)
- Don't eat at the brazilian steakhouse there, it sucks!
- Santiago Bernabéu stadium is a great place to visit :D
- You can use the public transportation system there, it's nice.

In Paris, the Louvre is MASSIVE. 1 day would be enough to check out one small section of it if you devote your whole day to it.

In Paris, don't forget to visit Sacre Coeur! Nice cathedral or someting like it, but more interesting is the market overthere with lots of painters, other artists and lots of interesting things to buy or see.

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Felipe Massa, World Champion 15:34:11pm- 15:34:21pm.

Sapo Wrote:
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> In Paris, don't forget to visit Sacre Coeur! Nice
> cathedral or someting like it, but more
> interesting is the market overthere with lots of
> painters, other artists and lots of interesting
> things to buy or see.


Indeed, the Sacre Cour is so nice. I had gone to see it in 06 and its was so wonderful. Glad to see you're going to Lisbon :D, I had a wonderful time there when i went last year after 10 years. Hope its the same for you

Oh and It's Sintra .

Ok ill try to help travel wise:

I'd recommend going form lisbon to madrid by plane. Use a website that searches cheap european flights like www.skyscanner.net and look for lisbon-madrid. It should be under €100 each. You can drive but its quite a long drive and the scenery isnt really that great, unless you go along a coastal road and if you do that you have to reckon on an over-night stay somewhere on the coast.

From Madrid to Valencia to Barcelona might be an idea to choose a hire car. Dropping off hire cars in the same country is usually much much cheaper than picking one up in one country and dropping off in another (like Barcelona - paris). Other than that, i think there's frequent and fast train routes connecting Madrid with both Valencia and Barcelona

These days barcelona -> paris is probably also cheapest and easiest to go via cheap european flights. Train would take a while, maybe up to 10 hours because there is no fast service between France and Spain.

one note of caution - most cheap european flights have quite strict luggage restrictions, make sure to check when you book online. Easyjet for example allow 20kg per person but ryanair allows only 15kg. For both airlines you will be prompted to pay extra to be allowed to take any luggage onto the flight when you book online.


Tourism wise, your plan looks good. Out of those cities I found Barcelona and Paris by far the most interesting, particularly culturally. There is surprisingly little in Madrid itself, so you are right to take a day trip somewhere like toledo. If you have time on one of your days in Paris I would certainly recommend going to see Versailles - any guide book will tell you how to get there but just for a rough guide its about 30mins on an RER from the centre of paris (part Metro, part normal train) and then a 5 minute walk but its spectacular. Depends what you want from the trip really - if you like to cram in as much as possible or just relax and let things happen. either way, get a good guide book for the cities and enjoy it!

No Vaderland? I feel offended.

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REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS

Hey, thanks to all help!! You guys are great!!

I'll look at the flights, thanks for the tip about luggage restriction.

I will update my plan tonight and post it here for you to see.

Sorry Vader, but no Vaderland this time, I'm travelling with my parents and the stuff I wanted to do there would make my father scared :P uahuahuahu

I will pay attention this time, 'cause I want to wacth Lemans next year (maybe 2010 if my money fails for 2009, but the plann is for 2009). Than I can do other things I can't do this time.

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Rocker

I'm in Madri today, in two days I'm going to Valencia and on the other day Barcelone, if you guys are near here tell me, we can met.

I'm on a cybercafe 'cause the wireless in the hotel is too expensive, I will post pictures from Lisboa when I get a wireless conection to my notebook.

See you!!

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Rocker

You must go to Vaderland, there you will see major hotness!

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