How would you tweak this....

Stay in Lucca instead of Pisa. Fly Pisa to Palermo or elsewhere in Sicily (check Skyscanner). Pisa airport is fairly close to Cinque Terre and has flights all over the place. Taking the train to Lucca from Florence, you can stop off in Pisa for a quick peek at the Field of Miracles. Then continue on to Lucca.

I don't do overnight train rides.

Where are you flying back from?

Ok, I have mapped this out in a way that makes sense to me, opting for the Florence/Lucca route. In short, I think this is a crazy itinerary, even if you would change the way you see Italy. What will you see? Won't you just be exhausted the whole time? To me, this is two trips and you just need to decide between Italy/Switzerland or Denmark/Germany/and another place.

If you really want to stick with this itinerary, then you should at least cut out 3-4 places and consider flying between locations.

Day 1 - arrive tired, relaz, spend night in C'hagen
Day 2 - explore C'hagen; spend night
Day 3 - explore C'hagen; spend night
Day 4 - Travel C'hagen to Berlin for 8 hours, check into hotel sleep
Day 5 - explore Berlin; spend night
Day 6 - Travel to Prague for 5 hours, check into hotel; sleep
Day 7 - explore Prague; spend night
Day 8 - travel from Prague to Rothenburg for 6 hours; check into hotel; sleep
Day 9 - travel from Rothenburg to Lucerne for 7 hours; check into hotel; sleep
Day 10 - Switzerland; sleep in SZ
Day 11 - Switzerland; sleep in SZ
Day 12 - Lucerne to Florence for 7 hours; check into hotel; sleep
Day 13 - Florence; spend night
Day 14 - Travel to Lucca for 1 hours; check into hotel; sleep
Day 15 - Lucca; spend night
Day 16 - Go home.

Here's why posters here don't enjoy a string of short stays. It's about a 2-hour train ride from Hamburg to Berlin which doesn't sound like a lot. You leave your Hamburg hotel at 8 a.m., get to your Berlin hotel around 11 or so to drop your luggage. You have a day and a half to see a little of the city, then you spend most of the next day going from your Berlin hotel to your Prague hotel (over 4.5 hour train ride), for one full day in Prague. The next day, you spend getting to Rothenburg (5.5 hours on the train with 2 changes!!). It can easily take half an hour to get to the Berlin train station, then you start looking for tracks and trains. Just an added annoyance, you will be dealing with 4 different currencies.

2-nighters are okay in Italy, when you can get to the train station quickly (in Florence, it should be about a 10-minute walk) , the trips are 1-2 hours, and the stations are relatively small

You can get cheap flights from various cities in Italy to Palermo or Catania. Catania can shut down if Etna starts spewing smoke and ash, so Palermo is a better option.

Kathi,

If you dont mind the 2 night (1 day) stays, then go for it. To me you are missing so much by short changing all of the places you plan on going.

I spent 3 days in most of the places you plan on going and i still could have easily spent more time in each place. Just spending 1.5 days there would have made it worse for me.

good luck and happy trails.

Ok I edited my post to add days, now what do you think?

Thank you to those that replied.

Hi Kathi-I won't comment on the earlier part of the itinerary farther north, but my 2 cents on Sicily: we went there for a week at Christmas 2 years ago, drove a rental car in a counter-clockwise direction, stayed just 1 night everywhere (except for Christmas Eve and Christmas night at the same agritourismo), had a great time and ate well, and just scratched the surface of things to see and do. So you could do a nice, quickie visit in 5 days, but it's a long way to go for just 5 days, and a car is helpful. You can take a train/ferry to Sicily, by the way, but it's a loooonnnng trip -- we flew easyJet from Rome.

Yes, that's much better Kathi :-)

I stopped in Pisa on the way from Florence to the CT, storing my luggage in the train station. In 3-4 hours you can climb the Leaning Tower (depending on the time of year, you may need to make a reservation a few days in advance) and see the rest of the campus - lovely church, exceptionally fine baptistry.

Take a look at the Palermo airport site http://www.palermo-airport.com/airlines.html which shows the airlines flying out of Palermo. It looks like there are flights to Pisa and Genoa - both sound pretty close to the CT. There are others, if you switch your itinerary around.

Hi,

With the itinerary above I would tweak it this way: Go directly from Copenhagen to Berlin. Add the time you reserved for Hamburg to Berlin, which should be at least 5 full days or more. Use one of the days as a day trip to Hamburg, since going by the ICE between the two cities is ca 1:45 hrs. You would have plenty of time for Hamburg, arr. 10:30, dep 18:30 or 19:00 back to Berlin.

On the night train, maybe from Prague to Switzerland is doable..

Thanks to all, I tweaked a few cities and have a better idea regarding the flow of my trip!