Back from long vacation in Europe. We decided to arrange the whole trip ourselves and not use any tour companies or agents. Generally these tours have time limitations and you need to reach at certain location to get into the bus, with kids I think that is quite a commitment and I was sure we were going to miss the bus every day.

But arranging everything on our own was also not easy. First problem was looking for hotel room which could accommodate five and we could not. Hotel rooms in Europe are very small and because of the fire code we had to book two rooms. Now the next challenge starts where you would like both rooms to be interconnected. You can do the same by calling each hotel in advance and requesting them for the same.

You need to plan the trip well in advance as most of the hotels specially international brands will sell off quickly and if you go out of the central location then you need to worry about proper connectivity through metros and underground tubes. Taxis are not only very expensive but will also chew up most of your time because of the traffic conditions in major cities like London and Paris. Suggestion is to download maps well before in advance and plan. Or take a bite for staying in central location.

I had never experienced Eurostar earlier so we decided to use Eurostar from London to Paris and booked our tickets online directly from Eurostar site, their service was quite good and they did deliver tickets through courier. Another place we visited was Leicester to meet our family friends and when I was trying to book tickets from USA, it was showing around $540 for first class tickets one way, when we shared this with our friends, they could get the same tickets for around GBP78 which is around $130.  That was a huge difference. According to them the way it works is that UK rail system has deals on different days and months. They also have deals for families. And then on top of it what time of the day you buy tickets e.g. first day we bought a family pass around 9AM and we paid GBP28 but next day for the same pass we got it for GBP19 because we bought those tickets after 10AM. So if you have someone abroad who can help you, you might be able to save some money there.

By the way Eurostar no more starts from Waterloo, now it starts from St. Pancras International station. So when you buy tickets online you need to be careful.

 If you are visiting Paris then you need to know the following: Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. Hotel De Ville needs pre-reservation. And if you are visiting on their National Day which is July 14th then you will enjoy concerts and some good shows but will miss going on top of Eiffel tower as Eiffel tower gets closed for the fireworks show. Also we could not visit Normandy because of the train timings; if you are planning to visit Normandy then you need to start your day around 8AM and if possible pre-book your train tickets.

If you are going to amusement parks like LEGOLAND etc. they get closed at 6PM unlike in USA where parks generally get closed by 9 or 10PM.

Visiting Europe is like getting buried in history and you always learn something new. We visited Windsor Palace as well, the palace which is still being used by the royal family so while observing and appreciating the collection of Royals I found a place where dress, turban, sword, shoes and treasure which included a big head of tiger made of real gold was kept. That was a gift from East India Company to Royal family when they had defeated and killed Tipu Sultan in 1799 in India. Killing someone, presenting the dress as proof and then making it a part of drawing room was quite disturbing.

Yes, last thing; do not forget to create a list of few words (Daily usage vegetarian, chicken etc) in each local language that will become handy as other than UK, people in Europe are still catching up with English.