Help! Itinerary Disagreement. :-)

I think you already know the answer.....
I would not even think if attempting your plan, let alone your husband’s.

You need to sit down together and narrow your focus. Each of you pick the top 3 things that are important to you and start from there.

Yours are both a recipe for disaster. Your husband's plan is crazy and impossible. Yours is just ill-advised.

Stop, and start your planning over with a clean sheet of paper.

Start by being honest with yourself. How many full days do you have on the ground in Europe, not including the day you arrive nor the day you depart, no matter what time the flights are? That's how much usable time you have.

If your "two weeks" includes travel days, then you really have something more like 11 or 12 days maximum. With that much time, I'd pick 3 or maybe 4 places (not countries, places - like cities). You need to account for the fact that every time you pick up and move, you will consume most of a day. Since this is your first trip to Europe, you will not be efficient at any of the mundane tasks that we all have to perform daily.

You simply don't have time to do all of the UK and Ireland - never mind Paris and Germany. You're going to have to pick.

Time to roll up your sleeves and get real about this. Better to realize that now than as you're slogging across Britain, not seeing anything, just trying to figure out how to keep to your impossible schedule.

Sorry, I know that's not what you want to hear.

Edited to add: Of course, if you can add more days to your trip, then you would have more options for expanding the itinerary...

My Hubbs believes we can add in Paris, and Germany. Do you think this is possible?

You need to contact the producers of "The Amazing Race"; they seem to be good at that sort of travel planning

. I thought this was very aggressive.

Very true

England + Scotland or England + Wales is do-able. Anything more is crazy. My wife and I did two weeks in England alone in 2013 on our second trip there together, and we did not even make it to York or the southeast of the country (which we had visited in 2000).

Hi,

If you had another 4-5 weeks to the original two, then I would say add Paris and Germany, depending on how far the geographic extent you want to cover in Germany is, ...all over or only one region?

You can do the British Isles in the two weeks, that's all.

If your husbaand is committed to the idea of the continent, I suggest London + Paris. Easily connected by train. Then add a day-trip to a smaller city/town outside at least one of those cities.

Here's the reason why it's not a good idea. Travel takes time . . . more time than you expect. First, you will probably have an evening flight to the UK. If you are lucky to live close to an airport that has non-stop flights to London, you'll have a flight of 6.5-10.5 hours, depending on where you fly from. On an 8 hour flight you'll be lucky to get 4-5 hours sleep, between take-off, drinks and meal service and landing. You'll arrive sleep-deprived and jetlagged in the morning local time. Then you'll need at least a couple of hours to get through the airport and to your hotel to drop your luggage. Most people are pretty zonked and don't get much out of their arrival day, trying to adjust to a completely new environment and get oriented, figure out how to use local transportation, find street signs, money, and just try to stay awake all day so they can get a decent night's sleep. Most flights back to the US leave in the morning or early afternoon, so that day is a "lost day." Even with an afternoon flight, you'll probably need to be at the airport 3 hours before departure, plus another hour to get to the airport, so even a 4 pm flight only really gives you time to pack, have breakfast and perhaps a stroll before heading home.

Every time you change locations, you'll use about 1/2 day door-to-door. You have to pack, check out, get to the train statiot, taking into account local traffic and allowing enough time to find and board your train - get tickets in advance, lines can be long at ticket windows. Then you have to get to your new hotel to drop your luggage before starting your sightseeing - and getting oriented to new surroundings. So a 3-4 hour train ride uses up 1/2 day. Flying takes longer because airports are usually farther away than train stations and you need more time for check-in and security procedures, especially if you need to check luggage - and flights within Europe often have stricter weight and size carry-on limits than transatlantic flights. You need to check train schedules to get an idea of how many trains there are a day to your chosen cities and how long the journeys are. Compare with flights.

The best method to figure out how many destinations you can include is to count nights, not days. If you have 14 nights in Europe, you have 13 days. For every X nights in a city, you have X-1 days. If you spend 3 nights in a city, you have 2 days to enjoy it. With 14 nights, most of us would say 4 cities is just about right, especially since London has so much to see and that's wiithout any day trips.

Lastly, can you fly open-jaw - into one city and out of another? For instance, into Dublin and out of London. If you need to fly round-trip, then you'll lose the better part of a day just returning to your starting point.

Also, note that my response was all about cities and using public transportation. You talked about countries and what sounds more like a road trip. Driving presents a whole slew of other issues and is rarely the best way choice, especially if you are planning to visit cities rather than countryside and villages.

With 2 weeks, I would attempt either England and Scotland or England and Wales or even better, just England or Scotland unless you want the trip to be a blur. If you opt for England and Scotland, fly open jaw into London and home from Edinburgh unless you want to waste a precious day back tracking.

Assume the day you land plus 5 full days thereafter for London with one possible day trip, then say 2 nights in York and the remainder in Scotland.

Thank you, everyone, for your help! Even for the sometimes rough answers, which are a good dose of reality. Chani, that was extremely helpful putting it in practical terms. That was wonderful!! We will sit down and go through the list once again to truly narrow it down. We have both dreamed about this for so long, we are truly desperate to soak it all in. I suppose it will still be there on the return trip. :-)

You've gotten many great responses, especially Chani's (I'll have to remember to link to this thread when anyone else asks a similar question!)

I'll just add that if you're judging how much you can see in a short time by looking at an organized tour, from Rick Steves or anyone else, remember that a tour can move much faster than you can on your own. They know the way, and you are being led. With a tour, you don't have to find your way on your own from your hotel to the museum, then find a place to eat lunch, then figure out what you want to see next and find your way there. The tour guide and bus driver do all that for you. So if you really do want to squeeze in as many destinations as possible in a short time, an escorted tour is a good way to do it.

I also want to emphasize the point about thinking of cities or specific places, not countries. For instance, trying to see London, Edinburgh, and Dublin in two weeks is quite reasonable, and you could easily add a place or two. Trying to see "England, Scotland, and Ireland" in that time is not.

Do investigate transit links between places BEFORE getting attached to the idea of combining them. A common problem is that people plan a trip before doing this, then get stuck. The website Rome2Rio is a great start for this. You should never take it as the last word, and always need to check prices and times directly with the airline, bus company, etc. But it's great for identifying problems. https://www.rome2rio.com/

Similarly, don't book flights until you've figured out your itinerary. Lots of people, for instance, book round trip to London, then realize they want to see England and Scotland. They then have to use a day getting back to London for their flight back home, instead of saving time by flying home from Edinburgh or Glasgow. These kind of flights (say, into London and out of Glasgow) are called "open jaw." To find them, use the "multi city" or "multiple destinations" option on airfare webites, rather than "one way" or "round trip." Even if it "costs more" (which it may or may not), you save a lot of time and money not having to backtrack - and on a short trip, time is everything.

I know the temptation is to see as much as possible, but the faster you move the less you will remember later. If you really want to soak it in you will go at a reasonable pace and plan to return another time to go to places you don't have time for now. Europe isn't going anywhere.

My husband and I have the same challenge every time we plan a trip. One practical way to really understand the differences is to make it tangible on a map. Rick Steve’s has reallly good planning maps:
https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/travel-maps.

For our recent trip to Italy, we made a list of all the places we wanted to go and then on the map marked the routes, travel distances. It became super clear on the logistics, that we we needed to focus on Northen Italy and save Southern Italy for another trip. Seeing something on a map helps us visualize our travel options.

Have a great trip.
Sandy

Perhaps Rick Steves Europe in 14 days might be the answer. His tours are wonderful.

I agree with acraven. London and Paris would be doable, maybe a day trip to Windsor or Cambridge or even York on one of the London days.

As others have said above, there is no reasonable way to even cover the UK in 2 weeks, much less Ireland. Adding on Germany and Paris would leave you with only memories of trains stations and airports. I did a 14 day trip covering Manchester, Liverpool and London and that was a good variety in the UK, plus the train from Manchester to Liverpool is only 45 minutes, so that doesn't really count as a travel day.

A couple of years ago, two of my friends did a 14 day whirlwind tour of London, Paris, and Amsterdam and were exhausted, plus bad planning on the hotel end to save Pounds and Euros meant they spent far more time going places rather than experiencing places.

Yours is very common mistake what first timers to Europe do. On the map everything in Europe looks close. And trains are much faster than here. But once you get there you find that you planned too much which would be either impossible to do or certainly not enjoyable. I can clearly see that all the advices you got are coming from people who have been to Europe several or many times.

My suggestion is to double the trip to 4 weeks, rather than cut expectations so severely, even if it means some vacation days without pay.

I would dislike a one week in London, one week in Paris, with some daytrips thrown in type of trip so don’t do that unless you are sure you’ll like it.

Lots of people, for instance, book round trip to London, then realize they want to see England and Scotland. They then have to use a day getting back to London for their flight back home, instead of saving time by flying home from Edinburgh or Glasgow

This bears repeating since it is key to seeing parts of both Scotland and England in less than 2 weeks. Although starting in Scotland is less hectic than starting in London.

The more you study your travel options, the more you will see that you need more time to savor where you visit.

We have been to Britain several times and Ireland twice. Last October we did a 4 week drive tour of Wales and England and didn't even spend any time in London.

With 2 weeks I suggest sticking to England and either Scotland or Wales.

Here is my review of our out travels:
28 days in Britain and Celebrity Eclipse home
https://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=599139

Everyone is right about your and your husband's plans.

About 5 years ago, we spent a week in Paris (on our own) and 6 days in London, where we stayed with friends.

In and near Paris, we missed Versailles, Giverny, and the Rodin Museum ... sights we had considered ... because we were so busy with everything else we enjoyed (restaurants, Musee d'Orsay, the Louvre, Musee de l' Orangerie, Notre Dame, Luxembourg Gardens, Musee Pompidou, Montmartre, Eiffel Tower and more).

In London, we missed Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the National Portrait Gallery, and much more, because we were so busy with the British Museum, Sir John Soame's House, a day trip with our friends to Oxford, watching a bit of some criminal trials at The Old Bailey (which was absolutely fascinating ...a contemporary "Witness for the Prosecution"), the Tate Modern, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Hyde Park, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and more.

To put it another way, less is more ... and more is less. Travel less. See more.

Can’t offer any help on the England/Ireland/Scotland question, but would like add my agreement to what the one poster said about familiarizing yourself with transportation modes and schedules.

Recently returned from a first time trip to Europe. Spent months analyzing train and bus routes, schedules, rates, you name it. Same with Metro in different cities. No matter how much you prepare, you have to get to the train station, find your track or platform, be on time, get on the right train or bus. Not as easy as it sounds, but part of the adventure. Loved every minute of it.

Spend way more time than you thin necessary for this part of your trip. It won’t be enough (at least for a first timer like me), but at least you will be prepared.

When I first started reading your itinerary I thought the same thing as Mary from Reno. She suggested Rick's 14 day Best of Europe. I'd agree with that or the 14 day Best of England (includes 2 nights in Wales) or if you have more time/money to spare....the 21 Best of Europe. On ANY of these tours you get a taste of what's there so on your next trip you can focus on things that interested you. The guides teach you travel skills as well so if you are in a city that has public transport they'll show you how to use it. Very handy for someone like me who has never lived where public transit was available.

Or, laughing, like many of us...get hooked on Rick's tours and not be able to stop taking them!

I do agree with others that if you do this on your own, cut way down. Start with Rick's guidebooks - if you don't want to purchase them they may be available at your local library.

Maybe get your hands on Rick Steves' book on Britain -- there's a suggested itinerary for self-guided touring that will show what you might be able to see in two weeks. Since you have until next June, also look at Europe Through the Back Door for "how to travel" tips -- BOTH of you should read it and decide on your priority destinations. And see the trip planning section of this website.

Ummm, I did a self-planned trip to England and Scotland in 2016. It was a total of 6 weeks. It was all by train, bus and ferry except for a flight from Kirkwall (Orkneys) to Aberdeen. I did what's normally not recommended, RT from Seattle to London. But I made a big loop with very specific reasons for each stop.

No matter how long the trip, you will have to be equally specific about your reasons for going each place. Those reasons don't have to make any sense to anyone but you.

Keep in mind that the planning will be an iterative process and priority decisions will have to be made. Also keep in mind that British weather is variable. Depending on where you are from, you may be surprised at how cold, rainy, windy and sunny it could be all in the same day in June.

I'm linking you to the Explore Europe section of this website. From there you can learn about some of your potential destinations and maybe get started on your decision-making.

And I'm linking you to the RS tours for England and Scotland. As others have said, taking one of his tours might be ideal for your short trip time and newbie European traveler status. I've done that the past 2 years (Village Italy and Best of Scandinavia) and it worked out well for me, even though I've planned most of my trips myself in the past.

You've gotten great advice. Good luck with the planning.

You're right, and the sooner your husband figures that out, the better. ;-)

I think what's often missing in the minds of first timers (second timers, third timers...) is exactly how much time is consumed by travel, driving, train rides, getting to stations, making connections, missing connections, checking into lodging, checking out of lodging, finding a place to eat, eating, deciding what to do, deciding how to get there, getting lost, etc.

Maybe you could sit down and run through an itinerary and include somewhat realistic times to all these activities each day (then add at least 25 percent more). I think when you do that, your husband will agree that Paris and Germany need to be part of a later trip.

Another thought is would your husband rather scrap the British Isles in favor of Paris and Germany? If so, that's an entirely different question.

I tend to agree with acraven and cala Do Paris and London that way you both get a taste of England and France. Take a day trip out of the city proper in one of the cities - or each city.

As you've said, you'll just have to go back. Which not a bad thing at all.

Or, as Brad suggested, to make peace perhaps do Paris, Alsace/Black Forest, Munich this trip and Great Britain the next trip.

Glad you are taking a relook at the itinerary. I want to reiterate what someone else noted about thinking about your travel in nights rather than days. It makes planning easier. I think someone else also alluded to it as well, but also take out a June calendar or create one with by hand, bookend your travel days with times of arrival and departure (and as was noted, consider open jaw/multi city flights to avoid backtracking) and then write in where you will be spending your nights while abroad. I find it more helpful then a list, and you'll be surprised at how quickly two weeks fills up!

Well I am an aggressive traveler. You may want to decide England or Scotland or Ireland, I'm with your husband don't miss Paris. We stayed in 6th arrondissement at a small hotel only blocks from famous garden. I wish we had gone there earlier in our life.