Indecision

My parents and my middle brother and Joshua are still trying to decide where we should go later this year, and when.

They are thinking of London in the first two weeks of September. However, London's scorecard is impacted negatively (in my parents' eyes, at least) by the fact that the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum will not have opened their respective seasons until later in the month. Further, there is nothing my parents want to see at the National Theatre during this period, and the September West End offerings are pretty thin and will not pick up until November.

However, Buckingham Palace IS open during this period, as is the Palace Of Westminster, and these venues are open to the public for only a few weeks each year. Consequently, there are advantages and disadvantages in going to London in September.

My parents and my brother and Josh have talked about spending one week in London and one week in Paris, but I am not especially keen on that idea (nor is my brother), since traveling between the two cities on the Eurostar, twice, effectively kills one whole day of sightseeing.

They have also talked about taking two separate journeys, one in October in the week that includes Columbus Day, and one in November in the week that includes Veterans Day, but my brother and I are lobbying against this idea, since that would involve two sets of roundtrip trans-Atlantic flights and two sets of roundtrip airfares, which we would like to avoid. I hope that this idea is off the table.

They have also talked about spending two weeks in Copenhagen in October, a new city they have added to their list of prospects. I would be happy to go to Copenhagen if everyone wants to go there, but I fear that we might find it difficult to find enough interesting things to do in the evening in Copenhagen--the opera and ballet offerings in Copenhagen in October are not particularly stimulating. I also wonder whether we should delay Copenhagen for another time, given that Copenhagen has many similarities with Hamburg, the destination of last year's trip.

I suspect that everyone will settle upon something soon.