We are planning almost an imposible trip, I'll appreciate if you bring us back to reality or say GO!
I know this will be an exhausting trip but we want to take the risk.
LONDON 2 days, Paris 2 day, Brussels 1 day, Amsterdam 1 day, Berlin 1 day, Prague 2 day, Vienna 1 day, Venice 1 day, Florence 1 day, Rome 3 days.
We already check train schedules and it's hard but not imposible, in most cases travel times are short. Do we need to cut something out? what would you do?
I didn't answer this question when it first showed up, because I thought the original poster wasn't serious, that it was a gag. Or if it was serious, that the poster was just looking for an argument, instead of asking for advice that they would seriously consider, if the answer wasn't what they wanted to hear. I wonder whether the original poster responds to any of our efforts to answer the question he asked?With itinerary questions, occasionally I'm tempted to reply: Oh yes, I think you should do your trip exactly as you propose.
I would cut a whole bunch out. How much fun do you think this trip will be? Berlin - 1 day? Are you crazy? This is one of the great cities of Europe. Vienna too. Actually all of them are great cities. Pick out 4 cities at the maximum and go from there. London, Paris, Berlin, & Rome would be the only ones I would try and visit on such a short schedule. This leaves 3 days for each city and a little less than one day travel in between each one.
To cut down distances, you might want to try and visit only those places that are sort of near each other. So another plan would be Paris, Amsterdam, and then perhaps Brugge or Normandy to keep it close by. Or go the other direction, Rome, Venice, Florence, and some place else.
I also thought it was a prank, or some kind of dare to see if it could be done. It's just plain nuts! Logistically it might be possible to pull it off, but why would anybody want to even try?
Can you do it? Yep. Should you? Not at all
You'll get back and all of those cities will blend into one, harried, tiring, foggy, fuzzy memory.
As has been suggested pick one area and do 4 maybe 5 cities--say Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, London--or--Paris, night train to Rome, Florence, Venice
10 cities in 15 days means 1.5 days per city, not including transportation time. By the time you throw in eating and sleeping, you will have time for no more than one or two sites at each destination. Travel costs too much to go to waste all your time on the run.
In fifteen days, I would pick one country.
You could do Rome 5 nights, Florence 3 nights and Venice 3 nights and have a few nights left for some Tuscan towns.
You could do England fairly well in 15 days.
For France, you could do Paris 5 nights and spend the rest of the time touring one of the major regions.
You could cover Bavaria and Austria reasonably well in 15 days.
Trying to do everything will result in accomplishing almost nothing.
We all try to do too much until we learn that we can't do it or we realize that it is far too tiring to cover that much ground in such a short time.
Plan your itinerary by listing it on paper and studying it. Write out the time required for each activity (travel, sleeping, eating, seeing sights and you will see that it is impractical to plan too much.
Read and consider all the advice provided above.
Not only can this be done....I can help you cut it down to 10 days. (You'll need the last 5 to recuperate when you get home.)
Here's how....land in London, take the hop-on, hop-off bus, do one circuit to see everything but don't get off. Take a late train to Paris. Get up early, take the same sightseeing bus in Paris (don't get off), take the train to Brussels, get up the next morning do the same. Follow the same plan in every city and you can do it in 10 days. True, you'll see everything from either a train or a bus, but you will "see" everything.
Make sense? No? Neither does yours.
Even a highlights trip is less than this. My suggestions:
1) Spend 15 days in one country/region as Brad said
2) Use open jaw and pick 3-4 cities without backtracking: London, paris, Rome, Florience/Venice
3) Plan on going back.
When other travellers warn against such tours where you're in a different city pretty much every day the possibility of exhaustion is not really the number one reason. The main reason is that you cannot do justice to the sites you're visiting. These are all incredible cities on your list. Each of them could easily require a week to truly experience them. Spending just a day or so there won't give you any more feel for them than if you'd read a coffee table book about them - maybe even less of a feel ...
A better approach might be to group places and only pick one group per trip. For instance, you could do the south (Italy only or Italy + Switzerland/Austria) OR Central/Eastern Europe (Berlin, Prague) OR the West (Benelux, France) Or London/Paris with some daytrips to the countryside.
No, it's insane!
If you want to do a trip like that, you should consider a cruise. Cruise are great for hitting one city each day. There is a couple of other consideration that you may not have thought about. When we change locations, we plan on losing at least half day and sometimes more. It takes time to check in and out of hotels, find the railroad station and the train, find the new hotel, get oriented to the new city, etc. The logistics of moving is time consuming. And your travel times are not short.
And the finally question is -- Why do you want this type of travel plan? What are your travel objectives? Are you only interested in boasting that you have been to these cities? You certainly not going to see anything other than the outsides of some old buildings.
Although I agree that a schedule like this is madness, realistically, what is the difference between seeing 10 things in one city vs one thing in 10 cities; you still see 10 things. Of course, with the latter, if you want to come back then you have to do it all over again seeing a 2nd thing in the same 10 cities. Or maybe after the 10 cities trip, you omit some cities as not interesting and come back to see some of the cities in more detail.
The biggest problem is that you spend so much of your time and money traveling between cities that you probably decide Europe isn't worth the time and expense and never come back. Another problem is that you are constantly packing and unpacking.
However, there is an offering of the Bahn called 7-Tage-Nacht (7 days night), where you use the night train network to travel between cities at night and sightsee during the day. A typical trip would start in Cologne, then go to Copenhagen, Munich, Paris, Hamburg, Brussels, Berlin, and end up back in Cologne. You could do it straight through in a week, or, if you arranged it at the time of booking, spend one or more nights in cities before moving on.
Sound perfect for someone who can sleep on trains and wants a sampler of Europe. The package costs a little as €280 for 7 nights in a couchette-6 or as little as €455 in a 2/3 person compartment.
Erick,
While this trip might be technically feasible, a schedule like this is ludicrous! You've allowed at least one day for sightseeing in each town, but no allowance for travel times or "unexpected delays". The rail trip from Amsterdam to Berlin is at least 6H17M on a direct train. That's pretty much a full travel day!
My suggestion would be to provide the group here with a list of the four or five cities that you most want to see, as that will be a much more practical starting point for planning.
Also, keep in mind that one of your travel days will be "lost" in flight times and time zone changes. Travel from your location will probably be a long flight. Finally, remember Rick's advice and "assume you will return".
Cheers!
There's a number of these currently circulating on the Helpline.
But hey, what do you think of this trip I'm planning? I land in Dublin, grab a quick Guiness at Temple Bar, fly out the same day to London, spend the night, take the Eurostar to Paris the next day, drink a champagne on the Champs Elysee, take Thalys to Amsterdam, stay the night, take a train to Berlin the next day and spend the night, then on to Prague for a night... I'm sorry. I can't continue this charade, I get tired even thinking about it.
Erick,
I would be able to do it, but depending on what you want to see in each of those cities. If you want to see museums, it's too much. Plus you have to change the order. Start in West and end in East, so you dn't go back and forth.
I would do it in the following order: London,Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague (1 day only or not at all),Venice, Florence, Rome.
I would also try to fly. Many European small air line companies offer very good deals if you book in advance. Check out skyscanner.com for rates and routes.
Some people want to travel to many cities/countries, even if it is a short time, to impress other people that they have been to all these places! That is so wrong. Being in each city for only a few hours is crazy! I have a close friend that did that, and now he seems to regret doing that. Put in your time and money to stay in one place longer, and to really get to know an area.
I'm with Jo, that Berlin is a GREAT city, and deserves so much more time than one day. I spent a full week in Berlin, and would have loved to stay even longer. Berlin has to be one of my very favorite places where I've traveled so far. I hope you will think this over.
Oh, and only two days in Paris??
