re: Travel Question- London and Paris

For our first Europe trip, I found it beneficial to meet with a travel agent. Now, I'm not a travel-agent-frequenting kind of person because I enjoy planning everything and being in control of it all. But, like you, I found planning a bit overwhelming at first and meeting with her helped me narrow down what I really wanted to do/see. In the end, I still planned it myself and didn't go thru the agent (which maybe is a bad thing to do but her estimate was 24K and we did it ourselves for 14. She put us on all kinds of group and private tours even though I told her that wasn't our preference), but the experience was valuable to me. We did two weeks, family of five.

I'm sure you are checking tripadvisor and the like?
Another thing I like to do is check out any hotels I am considering on google street view to get an idea of what kind of neighborhood it is in before I book.

Good luck!