Looking at booking a 2 week trip, roughly between the last month of August to mid September or so, would be about 15-17 full days between flights to and from the US.
Choice 1: Fly into Amsterdam, spend about 9-11 nights visiting different cities. I've been to Amsterdam a couple of times and have only ventured outside the city to visit Keukenhof. It's been about 10 years since I've been.
Then either fly or take Eurostar to London and then take the train to Brighton or Canterbury. The goal is to explore the SE coast, visit Dover though I understand the iconic cliffs you want to see are more to the west, at Seven Sisters.
Then probably hire a car to drive west (or east depending on whether I head towards Canterbury or Brighton first). I've seen suggestions for smaller towns in the region, such as Rye, Hastings and Folkestone.
I would like to avoid renting a car because parking is suppose to be difficult in these places but most train journeys between Canterbury and Brighton involve going back to London and then back down south so they're over 3 hours in Google Maps.
Choice 2: Fly into Stockholm, then visit Helsinki, maybe Talinn if there's time, then Berlin and then finish in Copenhagen. I've thought about adding or substituting Warsaw for one of these places as well.
These are mostly new places to me. I visited Stockholm and Berlin briefly, a long time ago. Otherwise haven't been to these places.
Weather wise, all these places seem to have relatively low average rainfall. That matters more to me than temperatures.
Other factor is that airfares right now are much cheaper to Amsterdam-London than Stockholm-Copenhagen, which would be the open-jaw tickets I'd take. Also nicer is that AMS and LHR are direct flights to SFO, whereas Stockholm and Copenhagen are not direct flights unless I fly SAS, which is probably unlikely.
Any strong preferences for either set of destinations?
Main draws are scenery and walkability. I'm no longer much for museums, unless there's something unique that I likely haven't seen in European museums.