Advice for which European Cities to Visit

Have I misunderstood you, 24 cities in 14 days!!!!!?????

My calculations are that you spent no more then 2 days ( maybe 2.5) in any one city on your first visit. You missed alot in any of the cities you visited in your first trip, o I think your sightseeing is alot more rushed then I can relate to, I hope someone who likes whirlwind travel can help you. I just returned from 6 days in Paris, and I have been there many many times, and I still had too little time and saw sights I have missed on previous trips!

I apologize for the confusion. I listed multiple cities because I wanted to take multiple trips. I still hope to narrow down the list to a more manageable number. I spent 2-3 days in each of the cities on my trip and I loved it. I got to do every single thing I planned beforehand! It's not easy to take off vacation from work so unfortunately this will have to be the way I travel for now. Slow travel sounds fun too, but it's not the best option for me right now.

Factoring in the loss of your travel days on the front and back ends of a 14 day trip, you are looking at only about 1 to 2 days in each place if you are hoping to hit 6 cities.

Like there's more to Ireland than just 2 days in Dublin. Some of the better experiences and tourist sites you would have a chance to see in Ireland would actually be in places outside of Dublin. Maybe better use of the 14 days would be to really get to know a single country by traveling around within that country to see other parts of it besides a main city - or else narrow it down to 2 or 3 countries that are close together with a select few stops throughout the trip and flying open jaw into one country and out of another.

For instance, in 14 days you could fly into Shannon Airport in Ireland, spend a couple nights around Dingle/Ring of Kerry, work your way up towards Galway and see things like Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, Aran Islands, Connemara, move on to Northern Ireland and see Derry/Belfast/Antrim Coast and Giant's Causeway, head down to Dublin and spend your final days there.

Or fly into Amsterdam and base yourself there for a bit so you can tour the city and take some day trips to other places in the Netherlands (Utrecht, The Hague, Rotterdam, countryside during tulip season or to see some of the windmills), head over to adjacent Belgium and see places like Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and then fly home from Brussels.

I get you are trying to compile these 24 cities into just 4 trips and you aren't traveling to relax, but you're missing a lot of what really makes some of these countries fascinating if you are trying to cram 5 countries into 14 days that aren't even remotely close to each other (example: your proposed "More Western" trip above). Even flying some of the cheap European carriers between these 5 countries is still going to suck up some of your limited time, as is checking in and out of hotels or hostels. But to each his own - if you like to have the experience of one single good day of sightseeing under your belt before heading off to the next airport or train station so you can check off one more place on your To Do list, go for it.

I remember when we used to rent cars in Europe and drive as fast and far as possible in two weeks. We now realize that many of those trips ended up being a blur as we missed so much by not traveling "slower." Most of the truly great European cities are worthy of at least 4 nights to be seen properly.
Now, we're traveling in regions--and we try to travel from the start to the finish of our two week visits pretty much in a straight line. For example, 2 years ago, we visited London and flew into Pisa on Easyjet. Then we visited Florence, a Tuscany agriturismo and hill towns, Orvieto and Rome staying 20 minutes south in a B&B. Last year, we hit Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and Prague. We're after places that have efficient travel from point A to point B.
Next week, we're flying into Copenhagen for 3 days before getting on a 9 day Baltic Cruise. Then we're flying to Oslo and taking the Norway in a Nutshell train and fast ferry trip through the fjords to Bergen, Norway. It's going to be an easy and efficient trip.
I also like visiting 2-3 cities in a region, and then using a budget European air carrier to go to a completely different place or city on the way home.
Your list of future travel cities is long. It's really up to you to package these itineraries into cities you can efficiently travel to while giving those cities enough time to see the tourist sights properly.

Given your detailed brief above I see the following four trips emerge.
Unfortunately a fair amount of flying would be involved.

Krakow (2nts) - Vienna (3nts) - Bratislava (1nt) - Budapest (3nts) - Ljubljana (2nts) - Venice (3nts)
Istanbul (4nts) - Athens (3nts) - Dubrovnik (3nts) - Split (2nts) - Zadar (2nts)
Madrid (4nts) - Amsterdam (3nts) - Edinburgh (4nts) - Dublin (3nts)
Copenhagen (3nts) - Oslo (3nts) - Stockholm (3nts) - Tallinn (2nts) - Helsinki (3nts)

Wow! Looks like a list I would have made some years back, but my interests changed over time.

A couple of years ago, I visited Warsaw, Kraków, Vienna, Trieste (you can substitute a Venezia), Split and Dubrovnik in 24 days. I think that's not far off your pace. This summer I spent 24 days only in Germany.

Like you, I like cities, so public transportation works well for me.

I would suggest that you think more regionally; it looks like a fairly random list to me right now. For example, since I am interested in religious art and architecture, Inspend a fair amount of time in smaller cities close together that have some things in common (Firenze and Tuscany/Umbria, for example).

This is a wild goose chase but, hey, I’ll bite.

1 Depart (Saturday)
2 Arrive Warsaw
3 Warsaw
4 Warsaw to Krakow
5 Krakow
6 Krakow
7 Krakow to Zakopane to Štrbské Pleso
8 Day tripping from Štrbské Pleso
9 Štrbské Pleso Bratislava to Vienna
10 Vienna
11 Vienna
12 Vienna to Budapest
13 Budapest
14 Budapest
15 Budapest
16 Home (Sunday)

1 Depart US
2 Arrive Cluj-Napoca
3 Cluj-Napoca
4 Cluj-Napoca to Sibu
5 Sibu to Sighisoara
6 Sighisoara to Brasov
7 Brasov to Pele to Bucharest
8 Bucharest
9 Bucharest to Varna
10 Varna
11 Varna to Veliko Tarnovo
12 Veliko Tarnovo to Plovdiv
13 Plovdiv
14 Provdiv to Sofia
15 Sofia
16 Sofia to home

Hi,

I suggest on your next trip visiting 5 cities instead of six within the span of 14 days. Doing a trip to these cities effectively presupposes you'll go by train (day and night train), taking the ferry, (ferry connections go from Sweden to Poland, Sweden to Finland, Norway to Germany, Germany to Finland), and one discount airline flight....depending, maybe.

The five cities are: Krakow, Stockholm, Helsinki, Vienna, and Warsaw. Plan and time it correctly you can do a two day visit, stay in the train station area, pay the hotel upon arrival or, at least, not at check out, take morning trains at 0700 or 0800, forget the partying at night, plan exactly when to turn in, getting out of the hotel, do all the necessary preparations the night before, packing, organising, etc