Help us plan our honeymoon!

Congrats to you and wonderful u can spend a month in one of the most beautiful and romantic regions of the world. Your flight should be in one city out another to allow you to skip along w/o backtracking. As august is peak except for paris , hotels will be tight , expensive as will your airfare. Book all asap u know your route.
i suggest u fly into amsterdam train to brugge, skip brussels, train to paris splurge on your hotel here alittle imo and loire valley, train to alp region, train to germany rhine, berlin, munich all easily done by train. Then either skip prague so you can fly from munich (low cost european airlines fly out of munich area) ck www.whichbudget.com or www.skyscanner.com to scandinavia in the order that u wish.mfly home from scandanavia or of course the reverse depending upon the air you can find . Not sure your budget but you could benefit from a rail pass many to chooe from. See www.raileurope.com for routes.
You could benefitbalot in your planning with a rick steves guidebk, prob best of europe and his scandanavia gbk.
I wish you luck on your booking. I booked my switzerland july vacation in february from west coast.
Establishing at least a daily budget would help responders as well as your likes as a tourist.

Hello BirdsintheTrees. I think a honeymoon should be at a place where the two people can relax and have a feeling of physical and emotional well being. You might like being at such a place the first ten days, and then travel to other countries. I am thinking of Taormina at Sicily. The Belvadere hotel there, it is at the top of a cliff, very high above the blue Mediterranean Sea, a swimming pool is at the hotel's patio (terrace). Many trees and green plants there. Walk to the cable gondola for a ride down to the beach. Taormina has an ancient theatre, botanical gardens, artistic old church, produce market, squares for sipping wine or coffee, etc. The airport is south of Taormina. Airline flights from Paris or several other cities in Europe. Of the cities you mentioned, my favorites are Copenhagen and Stockholm. And the air is not very warm there in August. A few days at each of those cities is sufficient time there, I think. But I could enjoy being at Copenhagen seven days if it includes day trips in Denmark via trains. In Germany, I especially liked the middle Rhine River valley (between Boppard and Bingen). I recommend : read about the Rhine River valley in the travel guide book "Rick Steves' GERMANY". Express trains go from Paris to Koblenz in Germany in approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes. A train goes from Koblenz to St. Goar or Bacharach (at the Rhine river) in a short time. If you want more information or advice from me, send a Private Message to me (at this website).

Birds,

To begin withl, congratulations! What a wonderful way to spend your honeymoon and I can't think of a better place to do that!

A few thoughts on your trip plans (I'm not trying to throw cold water on your plans, but rather add some things that you may not have thought of).....

• You've mentioned 16 different cities or regions to be visited in a 30 day time frame. That works out to an average of just under two days per location, with no allowance for travel times between them. From what I can vaguely remember of honeymoons, they're best enjoyed at a slower pace. Therefore, I'd suggest pruning your list down.
• You might consider listing the locations you want to see in order of priority, from most important to least important. Pick the top eight or so locations and start working with those.
• Once you have a better idea of where you'll be going, the group here will be able to provide lots of information on transportation, etc.
• You didn't mention what kind of budget you were working with, but in addition to being a bit "distant" from your other stops, the Scandinavian countries tend to be expensive.
• I'd suggest choosing locations that are closer to each other, so that you can minimize travel times and maximize touring times.
• As you'll be travelling this August, I'd suggest getting some destinations and dates nailed down fairly quickly. That's peak travel time in Europe, and it's going to be hot and crowded in many places. At this late date, you may have difficulty getting hotel bookings in some places.
• As someone else suggested, using open-jaw flights would be a really good idea. Where are you flying from?

Thanks everyone for your replies so far! (And for the congrats!)

Ken, perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my initial post :) We are not planning to visit all 8 countries/16 cities - the purpose of coming to this forum is to try to get help to narrow down to fewer places, and fast, for the very reasons you mentioned :) If we had a priority order for the places we wanted to visit already, then we would already know when to lop it off. In other words, we are not quite ready to deep dive into the planning - we are trying to narrow down to 4-6 countries and book our flights.

Open-jaw tickets for sure. We will be flying to and from Chicago.

Thanks! Looking forward to any opinions about which locations to choose/eliminate (and why). Thanks again!!

Hello BirdsintheTrees. If you do not wish to go to places that are likely to have hot weather in August, I recommend : Fly to Zurich. Be at the Alps mountains in Switzerland. After Switzerland, go to two or three of these countries : Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden. And fly from one of those countries toward your home. Belgium and the Netherlands have history. All of the countries that I mentioned in this reply have beauty and good food. Food in restaurants is expensive in Switzerland and Copenhagen. I think being at Prague in the month August would not be enjoyable. Very big crowds of people (travelers) are at Prague in August. In the summer months a person can not see the bridge because of very very very many people there. The Jewish cemetery looks like a circus or carnival. In the big church : very many people, including tour groups, many people talking. A person who is a resident in Europe said : at Prague in the Summer, you might not see Czech people. You would see people from the U.S.A. and from Great Britain and several other countries. Berlin is a big city, filled with motor vehicles that emit pollution into the air, noise from cars and trucks and motorcycles. Crowds of people using public transportation. Large buildings that are not beautiful. I think being at the cities Stockholm and Copenhagen is more pleasant. And both Stockholm and Copenhagen are visually atmospheric, with good museums and palaces. And at both of those cities you could ride in boats on water. In Stockholm a person can walk across the central part of the city to the old medieval part of the city. Copenhagen has the street for pedestrians only, and quick transportation to Rosenborg palace and the national royal Treasury.

Hi Birds....congrats and best wishes. As to the honeymoon, what a great time. If it were my time, money and experience, this is what I would do. Fly into Amsterdam and plan to spend a week split between there and Bruges. Then off to Paris for 5-7 days and then to the Loire for another 5-7 days. I've done all those, they aren't a nightmare to plan and they offer some different European experiences. From the Loire I am thinking the most 'different' thing would be to head for Switzerland for a week in the mountains. (just to note: I have been in Switzerland and loved it but it was NOT a mountain-exploring focus).

Whatever you do should be great...try to mix mind-blowing cities, slightly smaller cities and some areas outside of cities so that you get a wide variety of European experiences. For the same reason I would suggest some travel by train and some travel by car and some stays in hotels and others in B&B's....try everything!

go to Amazon & buy RICK STEVES, EUROPE THROUGH THE BACK DOOR 2015. Wish we had known about this book before we went to Europe for the 1st time. Some parts you will not need to read, but other parts, you will highlight A LOT. It is SO helpful & covers every topic you can think of - money, transportation, ATMs, how/who to tip, the 'not to miss' places in each country, packing. We are re-reading this book AGAIN as we plan for Italy in October. It may be available on this website too, but we got ours on Amazon. Happy Planning!!! and Congratulations!!

Birds,

"Ken, perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my initial post :) We are not planning to visit all 8 countries/16 cities - the purpose of coming to this forum is to try to get help to narrow down to fewer places, and fast, for the very reasons you mentioned :) "

It's difficult to suggest an Itinerary for others without knowing which cities might be most desirable, especially for something like a honeymoon. I can make suggestions based on logistics, but my suggestions may not be at the top of your "must see" list or as suitable for such a special occasion. Therefore it helps somewhat if the people taking the trip do some pruning based on their preferences.

I could certainly offer a suggested Itinerary, but it will take me a short time to work it out.

It makes sense to place these options on a map and lop off the furthest points. Beyond that usual logic, budget flights (see www.skyscanner.com) do simplify some longer legs, such as:

Paris - train to Bruges - train to Amsterdam - fly to Copenhagen

Paris - train to Switzerland - fly to Prague - train to Berlin

Faster trains to and from Paris (Thalys or TGV) encourage advance reservations. If using a Eurail Select Pass for 4 neighboring countries rail (from $380 per person), for instance, seat reservations between Paris and either Bruge/Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne, or Switzerland are expensive, as well as limited; those to Munich are normal price, but also limited. I would not be leaning toward a rail pass for this trip, but you can't really do the math until more plans are firmed up. Rick’s Train Travel Time & cost Map gives you an overview of faster train travel times in hours, as well as regular (full-price) 2nd-class fares. Point-to-point tickets offer advance discounts, and have already been on sale for a month or two for August travel in France.

In August many Europeans are on vacation and headed to the same places, so I suggest the following order for planning:

• List the cities you can fly non-stop from ORD. Check fares for open-jaw (multi-destination option) flights. This may help you limit some options
• Now, using the German train site, and rome2rio for flights, play around with the intermediate destinations on a more-or-less straight line
• It's time to look for accommodations, Paris is usually very easy to get rooms in August, but for small towns in Germany and Switzerland you're likely to be competing with all those Europeans I mentioned. If you book flights before you have your itinerary pretty well in hand, you can run into big headaches trying to make it work.

General ideas, based on the listed countries: From Paris, you could go to Strasbourg by high-speed train and spend a few days in Alsace (just as charming as Burgundy and generally pleasant weather in August), then by train through Germany and either north to Copenhagen or east to Prague. My guidebook says "avoid the Loire Valley in peak season" - yep, late July and August. If you skip "another French region" you could go north through Belgium and the Netherlands, through a bit of Germany and into Denmark or east through more of Germany and possibly as far as Prague.