Italy and Greece?

First step is read guidebooks and look at travel DVDs. The Rick Steves series gives good overviews. Only you can decide what you want to see. Second, you need to consider travel distances and time. Secondary transportation can take a big bite of your budget. Paris and London would be easy to do. London and Athens more difficult. A &5000 budget if it includes transportation could be tight for two weeks with the current weak dollar. Depending on time of year, your transportation could take 2000 of that. Lodging, food, fees, local transportation another 200 or more per day so your are right at your budget. Personally I think you should focus on one area with the thoughts returning at another time. That would help to hold down your local transportation costs. You could easily spend two weeks in and around the Greek Isles with maybe a quick hit in Turkey. London, Paris, Amsterdam makes for a nice triangle. Rome, Florence, Milan and a duck into Switzerland say Zurich/Lucern might work.

This board is very good at answering specific question but not so good with where should I do in Europe. You have to do your basic homework first.

Thanks Frank. We've looked at a lot of different places. I am really interested in what would make a good combined trip. I don't know much about regional travel overseas, so I was hoping to get some good tips on that.

For instance, I thought Athens and Rome might be good because we want to see both of those. I didn't know if that was easy to travel with flights.

You need to look at a map. Athens and Rome are not in the same region. It is roughly a two hour flight -- similar as flying from Denver to Chicago. Last October we paid about 200E for a one way flight from Athens to Rome on Aegean Air. Plus another 50/75 E getting to and from both airports and it begins to eat into your tight budget. That is why I was suggesting a triangle or staying in an area when trains are easily used. Trains drop you in the middle of the city so that it is easy to walk to your hotel or at most a short cab ride. Or just go to Athens and spend time island hopping. That is the Greece that you will want to see anyway.

You can definitely do a trip to Europe for 5K, you will just have to be careful how you spend your money.

Italy and Greece are great, but not terribly convenient to combine. I would recommend maybe Greece and Turkey. Contrary to some people on this board, I love Athens and find it fascinating, though two days is really enough.

I would do Athens, choose two islands, then start in Kusadasi for Ephesus, and finish in Istanbul- easily one of the most fascinating cities I have ever been to, a perfect synthases of east and west.

PM me is you want more specific information.

I always recommend to my friends that they try England as their first trip abroad. They do speak a similar language and that takes care of one stress. You mentioned London and Paris-have you thought about using London as a base and doing day trips to other parts of southern England? You could even take a two day trip on the train to Paris near the end of the trip when you are feeling more comfortable about traveling abroad.

$ 5000 is not that much because just for two round trip tickets Kansas City - Athens you could easily spend $ 2000 if not more. London is very expensive, Paris and Italy closely follow. Greece is cheaper and Turkey even more. Also it depends when you are going to be there. At first you really wanted to do Greece. How about Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, Samos. Then to Turkey (you can actually see it from Samos {I know it sounds like Sarah P. but this is for real}) Kusadasi, Ephesus, Istanbul as it was already suggested at this forum. Two weeks sound right for it.

Stella,

As you're "first timers", my first suggestion would be to have a look at the Guidebook Europe Through The Back Door. That will provide lots of useful information to help both in travelling and with planning.

Given such a short time frame, you'll need to be somewhat selective and plan carefully! Which place to choose will depend largely on which is most important to both of you.

As others have mentioned, two days or so is usually good for Athens. Spending some time in the Greek Islands (Santorini?) would be a nice addition but that's going to add travel time. Given the geography, Greece is not as easy to travel as other places that have high speed rail lines. Spending at least half a day to get to Athens (if travelling from Rome) is probably not the most efficient use of travel time.

Italy is also a great choice, and you could easily spend two weeks exploring there. I'd suggest limiting your trip to Rome and the north of Italy this time. If you have a PBS TV station in your area that shows Rick's shows, those may give you some ideas on places you might like to visit. Tuscany is always one of the more popular locations.

As someone else mentioned, London and Paris would be another good choice for a two week trip, but London especially tends to be a bit on the "pricey" side. Using open jaw flights would be best, so that you don't have to return to London for the flight home.

I'd probably start by making a list of the places you most want to see, arranged from "most important" to "least important". That will give you a starting point for your planning.

Good luck!

Thank you all so much! I have a lot to consider and will definitely use your suggestions.

You can combine a bit of Italy and a bit of Greece and not feel that you're going to different parts of the world. You need to think about doing it the slow way though. Go to Athens. Do some nice day trips out of the city to Delphi, Mycenae, Corinth. And then you can go from Athens to Corfu on public transportation by taking a bus and a ferry. (It used to be a combo ticket.) Stop over in Corfu to get a bit of the island feel. Then take the ferry to Brindisi and take the train to Rome. Fly home from Rome. It was overnight ferry from Patras to Corfu and it took pretty much all day to get from Corfu to Rome, but what great travels! Pam

If the 2 weeks includes travel to and from Europe, that leaves you 12 days. If you are traveling by plane between countries by plane, by the time you cab/train to the airport, get there 2 hours early, take the flight then get to your hotel, you've just killed another day. That leaves 11.

I would do either Greece OR Italy. The other countries will be there when it's time for your next trip. You'll find that even with 12 days, you're going to have to make hard itinerary choices. Either one, you'll have a fabulous time, but since Greece was your first pick why not just go with it? Greece is an easy place to travel--tourism is their #1 industry and they get so many english speaking tourists that everyone in the tourist industry will speak english. But if you're not entirely sure about which country watch travel dvds or look at books to figure out which one is calling to you more.

London is just so expensive, I'd skip it. Unless you end up flying British Air and you have to change in London anyway, and they let you have a free 2 or 3 day stopover there. Then it makes a bit of sense to take advantage of that. London and Paris would make a wonderful 2 week trip, but more expensive than Greece or Italy.

How exciting! To start, I read RS articles for First Timers and Best/Worst of Europe, then bought maps and guidebooks to narrow the playing field. We use Easyjet which has very low fares and use local trains and buses. The Eurail Time/Cost map helps. Milan was our home base. The Tourist Information booths in train stations help. You might like an eastern Mediterranean cruise for 10 nights from Italy to Greece - which is affordable.

We recently returned from a Costa cruise of the Mediterranean that included a few days in northern Italy then a 10 day cruise. It fit nicely into our budget. We looked into the other name brand lines but they were too expensive so all said we did it for about your budget.

Okay, we decided on Italy! We are now trying to narrow down that country.