Final, Rough Itinerary!

You dont say how many nights in each place. It should be at lease 2, and more like 4 or 5 in the main locations (London, Paris, Rome, ...). You loose about ½ day on each change of location. Once you have decided how many nights in each place you can add it up and se if it is more than 80.
I would recommend:
1) Skip Zürich, spend the time in the Alps. If you can, stay somewhere near Interlaken but further into the Alps.
2) Why is Paris at the end?. You could do London - Paris - Bruges at the beginning, and then fly back from Portugal.
3) I count 23 places listed. That may still be too many for 80 days, you may have to drop one or two more.

Isn´t it better to start in the warmer areas as to my opinion that April and May (bit of June?) has compaired to March the better weather for visiting the “colder” areas? I see you want to visit only cities, not beaches I guess. Just a question that comes to my mind.

art,

i just have a questions for you. No need to answer, but are you planning on doing overnighters in each place or maybe on some, stay in a "central" place and do day trips?

happy trails.

Sounds exhausting and seems too rushed. I would cut that itinerary of locations in half.

Come back another time to do the other half. I think you would enjoy your trip much more.

I also suspect that you could save enough money to pay for most of another trip if you cut the locations in half

It's a lot but with 80 days it's certainly doable, especially since some of your stops would probably only be for 1-2 nights - Dresden, CK, Bratislava, Bruges, I don't know about your places in Spain/Portugal. Definitely a lot of 'moving around' and that takes up a lot of time.

For Germany I think your outlier is Heidelberg and, while it's lovely and interesting, for this itinerary you could pass it up as it's not on a logical route between Amsterdam and Berlin. For Switzerland I would substitute Luzern for Interlaken and just go from there to Zurich airport when you fly to Barcelona.

The rest looks okay as long as you plan to spend at least 3 full days (preferably 4) in each of the biggies - London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Budapest, Barcelona.

Sounds like a wonderful trip to me. Enjoy!

Hi,

This looks like a great trip for 80 days, reminds me of my first one for 84 days.

Yes, the itinerary can do with some tweaking, such as the suggestion above on Switzerland. I would suggest doing Bratislava as a day trip from Vienna or skip it. With that rail Pass you have the night train option, ie, doing the Dresden-Heidelberg route on the CNL night train, if you don't mind arriving at 0500. Starting in May that early arrival wouldn't matter anyway since it's already day light at 0500. The absolute cheapest way for that leg is to reserve a seat (it's mandatory even with a Pass) on the sleeperette (Ruhesessel). Greater chance of that option selling out if you plan this for a Sat. night.

Instead of getting off so early you can ride to the the terminus at Offenburg, still early enough to backtrack to Heidelberg, arrive in the morning, leaves you with all day for Heidelberg. How are going to Prague? Train from Heidelberg to Frankfurt, the the DB bus to Prague? No problem if you don't mind zig zag traveling, ( I do a lot too. ) Or, rearrange the list of cities in Central Europe.

@Chris F

a. Yeah, I'm only interested in going to Zurich because it's a bigger airport to fly out of. But I guess you're right - I never considered just taking a train to Zurich solely for the flight to Barcelona, ah, silly me. Also, I don't plan on spending my Switzerland stay in Interlakken, but instead a town shortly outside called Gimmelwald high in the Alps!
b. My flight home is from Paris, hence the strange backtracking.
c. If I don't end up hitting Portugal, it may just have to be another trip for me which is no big deal! A lot of this will be played out by ear.

@Ray

I plan on doing a few day trips, but basically all of the things listed above are trips on their own. Some of the day trips I am hoping to do: Lisse (for tulip flower festival) from Amsterdam, Naples from Rome, Cinque Terre from Florence, etc. If you have any recommendations as to what to shorten to a day trip and what maybe to cut out, I'd be open to suggestions!

After compiling what everyone has been suggesting, I think I'll end up cutting out Heidelberg as it truly is out of the way. Also, my visit to Zurich won't even be a full day, as I'll just train from Interlakken to Zurich solely for the flight to Barcelona. So, that's 2 cities cut out. If at the end of it all, I don't have time to visit Portugal then there's always time for another trip!

Thanks for everyone's help thus far! Continue to share your wisdom and insight if you feel you have something valuable to add!