Just to clarify, I guess I’m torn between spending several days in one place (London or France) and really soaking up the culture versus hopping around and seeing more things in less time. Thoughts?

10 days is pretty short. Are you leaving from North America? Does that include your flight days? If so, you really only have 7 1/2 days. Day 1 is an overnight flight, arriving (jet-lagged, sleep-deprived and potentially culture-shocked) on day 2. Day 10 will be entirely taken up with your flight home — most flights back to North American leave fairly early in the AM. The wedding is going to shoot at least another day and it’s possible that a good part of day 9 will be spent getting to your departure city for the flight home.

I would concentrate on Paris and London, taking Eurostar between. Take a day trip from one or the other (or both) if you have extra time. If you have 10 full days, then I’d think about a third destination — perhaps Amsterdam, Brugges or somewhere in France.

An open jaw flight (into Paris, out of London) will help some, but I wouldn’t pay a lot of extra money for it as Eurostar covers Paris/London in a couple of hours.

I concur with Oldlady.
I actually once took a ten day trip that was pretty much just Paris and London.
I wish we’d done the Eurostar, we flew instead. The trip was mostly just those cities; we did take one day trip out of Paris to Fontainebleau.

Funny, I was assuming ten days in Europe. I was thinking you’d burn two or three days in Tours for wedding-related stuff, leaving you seven or eight days elsewhere. Clarify for us a little, but I imagine we all still think you should focus on London and Paris. There’s no way I’d try to do London, Paris, and Rome in seven or eight days, and many people here wouldn’t try all three in ten.

Thanks for all the advice to far. We’re flexible, so maybe we’ll plan on ten days in Europe, not including travel. Originally I was thinking just London and Paris, but then I started reading about people talking about spending one night here, a couple nights somewhere else, etc and was worried I’d be missing out.

You’ll miss lots of time on trains and in train stations.

Paris and London with a day trip from each or a single overnight trip somewhere else will be a comfortable 10 days. If the 10 days doesn’t include the wedding then you could add one more city (Amsterdam?), smaller city (Bruges?) or “region” (overnight to Normandy if you’re interested in WWII) There are thousands of possibilities that won’t involved spending all your time in transit. Or, you could spend some extra time around Tours.

Start looking for your airline tickets (and don’t overlook open jaws) and then work it out….. We’ll give advice any time, any possible bargain for your flight won’t wait for long.

I’m going on a 10 night trip a month from now actually with my gf. We wanted to see as much as possible in the little time we had. Here’s our trip
London- 2nights
brussels- 1night (would prefer bruges, but prefer the extra time for amsterdam)
Amsterdam 2 nights
Paris 4 nights

It is a lot of moving around, but in the end she’s going to get to see a ton of cool places.

huh? Check train schedules, you’re talking a 1/2 hour difference between Bruges/Amsterdam and Brussels/Amsterdam on the fastest trains. If you prefer Bruges, then stay there.