London to Berlin to Copenhagen, first time to Europe

After subtracting the approximate cost of flights/accommodations from our budget, we will have $1,400 left between the two of us for three weeks of food and sightseeing. Does this seem realistic?
Absolutely NOT -- double it at least. London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. $3500 probably would be a better number it not $4000.

-Is this a good time of the year to visit each of these cities?
Sure, it will begin to cool and crowds will be slightly smaller

-Will this be enough/too much time for each of these cities?
Sure -- maybe a little long for Copenhagen

We would like to try to spend some time outside of these cities as well, so any recommendations for day trips or places to spend a few days would be great.
Hit the TI in each city and see what might be available for local day trips. Adds to you costs.

Hi,

Where are you staying in London and Berlin? A B&B in Kings Cross could cost 120 GBP, in Berlin double in a small hotel or Pension would be 65 to 85 Euro. For London and Berlin weather wise the first three weeks in Sept are good....don't know about Copenhagen...not interested.

My suggestion is that you two should stay in hostels in both London and Berlin, some very good ones in both cities This greatly reduces your expenses. Berlin is a lot cheaper than London, you just have know where to go and stay.

Your budget will be very tight for food and sightseeing even if you never set foot outside those three cities. It would mean a lot of meals put together in grocery stores and street food (nothing wrong with that, but do try to eat some fruit and veggies!). It will really cramp your style when it comes to pay-to-enter sightseeing attractions. London Walks offers very good walking tours that are considered reasonably priced, but they are £10 each and would break your budget. London does have a lot of great museums that have no fixed entry fee but request donations, but to my knowledge you won't have many such opportunities in Berlin and Copenhagen. Berlin is otherwise a lot less expensive than the other two cities.

English trains can be very expensive if tickets are not bought far in advance, and the city itself has endless points of interest, so I'd suggest sticking to nearby attractions to keep the transportation cost in check. For instance, Kew Gardens--but the entry fee may be substantial. Or you can look for places reachable by bus, which will usually be less expensive than traveling by train.

You'll save money on Underground fares with an Oyster card, but if you're traveling around the city a lot you may still spend the daily limit (£8--over $10) on many days. As you can see, that will be a large chunk of your daily budget. Berlin's public transportation may be a bit cheaper, but it is a sprawling city, and you'll need to use it a lot.

One thing to research very carefully is the public-transportation options to and from all those airports. If you do not do that, those costs will eat you alive.

One week is perhaps a bit too much for Copenhagen itself, but you could also include some day trips from there. The most popular day trips are Roskilde and it's cathedral and viking ship museum, Hillerød and Frederiksborg Castle, Helsingør and Kronborg Castle. The latter two could be combined with a stop in Humlebæk to see the Louisiana modern art museum.
You can plan all public transport in Denmark using www.rejseplanen.dk.
The Copenhagen Card https://copenhagencard.com/ gets you free entrance to a lot of sights, but more crucially free public transport if you do any of the day trips out of the city.
I agree that your budget is a bit tight, but you can save money by staying in hostels and self cater.

The good news is that Berlin is cheap, the bad news is that London and Copenhagen are not.

That said, street food markets are very popular in London, and provide excellent value for exciting food. Do some google searches to see what's open in what neighborhoods on various days.

Keep in mind, attractions in London are either free or very expensive. Be selective. I consider the London Tower a must do, but we skipped Westminster Abbey on our first trip because the combined cost of doing both for 2 was around $80! The amazing museums are largely free - use this.

If you plan on doing museums in Berlin, you might want to get a pass - there are a few different options available. Same for transit. Research your options, don't waste money paying for individual tickets.

Copenhagen is the real problem. It's expensive. A tiny hot dog is like, $7. And it's the last part of your trip! Can you reroute to far cheaper Amsterdam? There's also not that much to do in Copenhagen, so a week without much money, I think I'd be quite bored.

On the plus side, September is the most wonderful month to travel in Europe in my opinion.

If you can't increase your budget, can you change your itinerary? Because you could do quite well in parts of Spain and Greece, and really well in the Balkans and Hungary for this budget. It's a little more "advanced" travel but you'd be fine with only English and a flexible attitude.

By my math, your budget works out to $33 per day per person for food and sightseeing. That's not a lot, but it's doable. You might have better luck on a forum geared toward younger, budget-minded travelers - the crowd here tends to skew older and more affluent. But you're hardly the first college students to travel in Europe on a budget. It can be done.

I can offer a few tips from my first trip to the UK as a penny-pinching grad student:

• Get ready to walk. London is a big, spread-out city. The Tube can get you around quickly and efficiently, but it's not cheap. You can save a lot of money by planning your days so that you visit sights that are close together at the same time, and then walking from place to place.
  
• Restaurants - even cheap ones - are probably more expensive than you can afford. Fortunately, there are plenty of other options for food. (Think about it - there are millions of people in London, and they're not all rich. But they all have to eat.) Be creative: Look at supermarkets, corner stores, South Asian snack stands, greengrocers, street markets, and so on. I think my first dinner in London was a samosa and a banana. Gourmet, it was not. But it did what it needed to.
• Don't pay admission for anything. As mentioned above, London has many world-class museums that are free to enter. They're more than enough to keep you busy for a week or even longer. Save the expensive attractions for a future trip when you have more money. The Tower of London almost certainly isn't going anywhere.
• Apart from museums and "sights," let the city itself be your tourist attraction. The differences between Europe and America can be fascinating for a first-time visitor, and it doesn't cost a penny to walk around and just observe things.
• If you want to take any trips outside of London, be guided by where you can get to cheaply. Intercity train tickets can be extremely expensive, but you can get some good deals when you buy in advance. Go to http://nationalrail.co.uk and enter some sample trips and see what you find. In addition to trains, also consider coaches (buses). Megabus has one-pound fares for select intercity trips. National Express used to do the same, but it looks like their minimum fare these days is five pounds. There may be other discount coach companies out there that I'm not aware of.

Copenhagen is rather expensive, how about these three cities...London, Berlin, and Vienna, if you want to focus on three capitals. My first time over had these 3 capitals as part of the itinerary, ie it was unthinkable/inconceivable not to go (west) Berlin on the first trip to Europe in 1971.

I thinking that we are being played a bit. At the end of April it was Amsterdam to Paris with a couple of stops in between for their three weeks. Actually a sensible schedule. Now, two months later a completely different schedule with long distance travel and no money. Who knows where they are going or when. Probably just dreaming.

What, because people aren't allowed to change their minds?

I don't think people come up with budgets and itineraries just to troll people on a message board. If so, that's the most boring troll ever.

When I lived and traveled around Europe as a college student for a year, I ate in restaurants 5 times in that year. The rest of the time, I bought cans of tuna and bread and whatever free food I could get my hands on. I didn't starve and I saw pretty much everything.