First trip to Europe

Get yourself a copy of "Europe Through the Back Door" by Rick Steves. It will tell you just about everything you need to know about traveling in Europe including how to plan a trip. It really is an excellent resource.

Think about August. It's very hot and most Europeans take vacation that month with closure of many restaurants, shops, etc.

Hi, Rachel. I find myself wondering if what you want is a travel agent. The folks on this board are an excellent resource, but asking the board to plan your trip is perhaps a little outside of its scope. The book Frank recommended is great. I would also suggest looking at a map, and plotting out a reasonable path. Then go to a website such as bahn.com to check the travel time between cities on trains. This will help you figure out if what you want is even doable. After doing your part, put together an itinerary and seek comment from the forum.

A couple of recommendations:
1. Fly on an "open jaw" itinerary. Arrive in Europe in one city; depart from another. You can search for tickets by using the "Multi City" function on most airline websites.
2. Staying one night in a place means you arrive, check in your hotel, walk around for a couple of hours, eat dinner, go to bed, and head out the next morning to the next destination, so most of us would discourage 1 night stops. Even with a 2-night stop, you really only have one full day at that destination.

3. You don't have to see everything on your first trip. Plan to come back to Europe. That frees you to narrow your scope, to spend more time encountering Europe while spending less time encountering the inside of trains, and to have a less hurried trip. Two years ago, I spent 3 weeks in Italy alone. Last year, 2.5 weeks in Germany and Austria. This year, 3 weeks in Germany alone. My first trip to Europe was 11 days in Austria split between Salzburg and Innsbruck.

Happy planning!

Hi Rachel,
I would imagine the August travel period is because your son is in school and/or you all have other commitments earlier in the summer.

I’d consider giving London at least one more day...tons of things to see! In terms of resources, guidebooks I look at include Rick Steves, Lonely Planet, Fodors or Frommers, and Insight Guides. A good primer on rail can found from The Man in Seat 61 https://www.seat61.com/

Sounds like a great opportunity. Enjoy planning!

Start in Rome and end in London, or do the reverse.
Then you need to map and link your destinations in the shortest most efficient route. rome2rio.com can help in planning your place to place travel.

Given your stated plan, I would extend the vacation to the maximum number of days possible. As it is you have 5 days that are mostly travel from place to place. Your arrival and departure days are not useful 'touring' days, so in reality you have 14 days for 6 destinations. Many here would find that being 'spread too thin'. However if its what you want and how you travel then go for it.

Previous replies have good thoughts on resources to use.

Hi,

Keep in mind that August could be a broiler as far as the heat is concerned. I've been on several trips in Europe in August., either in the beginning or almost the entire month. Decide on where you want to arrive, Paris, London, etc

1. Fly open-jaw. Plot your destinations and connect the dots. Fly into the eastern-most city and work your way west or vice versa. Do not book flights until you've worked out an itinerary and and are sure about your dates.

2. Do enough research to make a reasonable estimate of how much time you want to spend in each place - what you want to see and do at a minimum.

3. Figure out how to get from "dot" to "dot." Use rome2rio.com as a start. For train schedules, use bahn.com. It's German but it has train schedules for virtually all of Europe.

4. Be realistic about time. A 2 hour train ride takes up nearly 1/2 day - packing, checking out, getting to the train station with time to find and board your train, then getting to your new hotel to drop your luggage. If you're flying, add time at the airport to check luggage, go through security and wait for luggage collection after you land. A mid-day journey effectively uses up an entire day. Moving around takes a physical and mental toll: getting oriented to new places in new languages, different currencies (pound, euro, franc) with different signage (where the heck is the street name?!?!) and figuring out local buses, trams and metros, inevitably getting lost now and then, getting to unfamiliar places on time (museum entry, guided tour). Over 2-3 weeks, you'll need to do laundry, shop for necessities, and maybe just have a relaxing day once a week or so.

After writing all this, it occurs to me that perhaps the best solution for you would be a Rick Steves Best of Europe tour. The 14-day tour starts in Paris. You could go to London, Belgium and then Paris for a couple of days before the tour. Or fly into Paris for 2-3 days before the tour, then fly from Rome to Brussels, then train to London. Among the advantages of the tour - door-to-door transportation, guides, other people to mingle with, and in August the likelihood of other kids on the tour for your son to spend time with. For more independence, the MyWay tour has the same itinerary but without the guided tours and group activities.

Rachel,
I agree with the others who are suggesting fewer places for your 21 days. I will share my experience from my latest trip. We flew from Dublin to London Heathrow and it took the entire day. Even though the flight landed at 2:25 pm, it was almost 7 pm before we arrived at our hotel. I was thinking of meeting a friend for tea and am glad I didn't commit to that as I had no idea how long it would take us to reach the hotel. One reason it took so long was we decided to take the Victoria Coach bus to town. We must have just missed one because we had to wait an hour for the next one and by then, it was rush hour traffic on a Monday afternoon. Things happen. Plus, I will take the Heathrow Express next time, easy and fast to Paddington station! More expensive but a time saver.

Unless you have unlimited funds, this could be a very expensive trip with all of the short stays and transfers! Going to London for only two days is just not worth it, IMO. You could probably afford to stay in Europe longer if your itinerary didn't have you all over the map OR consider taking a Rick Steves Best of Europe guided tour which will get you around to lots of places in a way you cannot do on your own.

After reading "Europe Through the Back Door" (and do that before you buy airline tickets!) perhaps you will refine your plan, but I would skip London if you cannot stay there at least 5 nights.

With 21 nights (best to plan a trip by counting the number of nights you will sleep there) on your own, maybe something like this:

London - 5 nights

Paris - 5 nights

Amsterdam - 4 nights

Bruges, Belgium - 3 nights

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, right in the alps - 4 nights and fly home from Zurich.

Skip Roma because it is a long trip there from Switzerland, and it will be hotter than Hades. If you want to touch Italy, you might pick a place in Northern Italy like Lake Como then fly out of Milano. But Italy alone is a 3 to 4-week trip. Maybe save it for a year when you can go in cooler weather.

I remain puzzled that would-be travellers coming to this board (and others like it) don't look at its planning resources first. Reading the destinations section of Rick Steves' Europe will answer some of your questions and help you pose more specific queries, drawing more useful answers. Please -- ask away. But I hope this is a polite suggestion to improve your knowledge, and therefore your trip.
As to the age differences in the group, the teenager can be active on the Internet in advance, and the older adults will benefit from his advice. He will come back a young adult.

Laurel's itinerary looks pretty good. Experienced travelers know 1) long stays are better and 2) they will be back in Europe. Every day traveling between stops is a lost day. Yes, you see some stuff, but it is out the window. It's not what you are spending a vast pile of coin for. 3-4 days in a place (any big city on Laurel's list) gives you the chance to get to know the place, do the big sights, and do some small, more quirky ones as well. Every newbie traveler starts with a crazy itinerary like your original one. But one day in a place is just getting to the hotel. So, work with Laurel's itinerary.

In addition, as another poster notes, there is a ton of information on this website that you have not looked at. Go to
watch-read-listen -> Rick's Travel Writing -> (Pick-country) -> Itinerary. Here Rick lists 3, 4, 5, 6 day itineraries in each country. This is very helpful, and many people do not know about it. Look at this info for France, Belgium, Great Britain.

Hate to be Debbie Downer, but it appears you are trying to do way too much in too short a period of time. Strongly suggest you go back and reread item # 4 in Chani's post. It is amazing the amount of time that is just lost relocating. Lay out a rough draft with fewer destinations and we will be better able to advise about specifics.

I agree with all the above. Don't underestimate the wasted time checking in and out of hotels, transit to the train station, time getting lost, and the worst which is the time you spend not doing anything because you have a train to catch later. Cutting back on places also gives you fewer opportunities for things to go wrong. Less opportunities for a hotel reservation to be lost, a train strike, or another delay.

I am not a tour advocate most of the time, but I would look into the RS tours. The Best of Europe one is well-designed, and it will take the burden off you for planning and executing such a big trip. You could add a few nights at the end, putting your travel skills to work.

If you decide to do this trip on your own, try to cut back a little on the number of places.

I would leave out Belgium and Luxembourg and add Rome-fly home from Rome. Fly into London.

The number one piece of advice is really, really, really try not to schedule too much in one go to Europe. Europe is much bigger than people think.... just in terms of the density of things to see and places to visit on the continent.

I personally don't like to spend time on even more long trains and plane rides during my trips... as It takes too much time just to get there (if you are coming from overseas). The reality is that England, Paris, the alps, and Rome are all long distances so you'll find yourself on a number of long train journeys if you go this route... particularly to Rome which is pretty far away.

Also, I personally wouldn't bother with Belgium.... it's pleasant enough but nothing to write home about. I always prefer to stay longer in fewer destinations so I can really take it in and feel like I'm really living there for a short time.. instead of constantly hotel and city hopping.

But that's just me..

I have to agree with others who have posted- you are trying to cram too much into this one trip. If you share some of your interests, or explain why you have picked the above destinations, some of the more experienced travelers here might be able to make some more relevant recommendations for you. Without more info, here's what I'd suggest:
Consider hitting 'the big 3' and spend one week each in Rome, Paris and London and do 1 or 2 day trips from each

Consider focusing on one region or country- ex. you could easily spend 21 days exploring the UK- 5+ days in London, with some day trips; 5-7+ days in Scotland in 1 or 2 stops with days trips; 4-5+ days in Wales in one or 2 stops, possibly 3-5 days exploring Ireland. Using trains in the UK is easy (Ireland is harder because they don't have an extensive rail network).

You could plan similarly for either Paris or Italy (I'm just not familiar with travel there.

There are endless ways to structure this. But don't try to do too many places. If someone told you they had 21 days to 'see the USA' and wanted to experience New York, Savannah, Ga. , at least a week in Miami, Atlanta Ga , the Appalachian and Rocky Mountain Ranges, San Francisco and possibly Los Angles, Portland Oregon for 1 day and maybe Washington DC and New Orleans, you'd tell them to narrow their focus. Europe looks 'smaller' on a map than the US, but it really is large. Travel takes LOTS of time- as Chani explained. So limit the number of stops and consider lots more day trips from a central base.

I would bump the trip out to 24 nights and consider something like this (all by train) ...

London for 3 nts
Belgium (Ghent) for 3 nts
Paris for 6 nts
Strasbourg for 2 nts
Swiss Alps (Lauterbrunnen) for 4 nts
Lake Como for 2 nts
Rome for 4 nts

For 21 days, I might do something like this:

London (5)
Bruges (2)
Paris (5)
Strasbourg (2)
Lucerne (2)
Rome (5)

In general, I would aim for more days in fewer places, rather than fewer days in more places.

The slower pace tends to be more enjoyable.