Looking for 6-7 day itinerary that is half busy sightseeing and half relaxing

A guidebook is a good tool to start your itinerary research. https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/guidebooks
This website also provides lots of trip planning tools,. Write out your proposed itinerary using nights not days for your planning. A week visit is short so keep your focus narrow so you don’t waste time traveling between towns.

Use other websites to help you narrow down what you want to see, how to travel there, and other hints. Most cities’ websites note sightseeing highlights, what to see. Visitor sites have their own websites for tickets and times. Booking.com helps to find hotels. https://www.booking.com/ Rome2Rio will give you a rough guideline for distance but they are not accurate and don’t book thru them. https://www.rome2rio.com/ I use Google maps app to bookmark places I want to see, recommended hotels and restaurants: it helps to understand distance.

After you narrow down your itinerary, the forum people will graciously help you finalize it. It sounds like you’ve planned trips before so you will have no problems and the planning tools now available are much better than in 2008.

(I’ve spent several months working on my itinerary for Sept 2022, constantly tweaking it. I have yet to run it by the forum since my travel date is so far away and things are constantly changing. Part of the fun of traveling is the planning.)

Enjoy your trip. And Happy Anniversary.

EDIT TO ADD: I'm finding that using my phone's calendar helps manage my time. On my written itinerary, I had a long list of what I wanted to do for each day . But when I listed everything on the calendar, it showed that my timing would be unmanageable, as in no breaks or meals, rushing from place to another not allowing from transport time, "drive by" sightseeing instead of time to enjoy museums, etc.

Going to Europe for only a week, lots of choices.

I have been to all the countries in Western Europe and most in Eastern Europe.
Never had a bad trip there.

First, consider picking a country with a shorter flight, perhaps the UK or Ireland.

London is a great city with lots of history, great museums, etc. Also, you can do some day trips to places outside of the city.
Canterbury, Cambridge, Oxford, Bath, Salisbury, Winchester would be convenient. York is great, but a bit too far unless you stay the night.

You could do a tour of Ireland or even Scotland in a week. Check out tour companies, Gate 1 and Rabbles.

I'm your total opposite, as I would rule out Switzerland/Italian lakes because a week is not nearly enough, but a suggestion did pop into my mind: Ireland! You could spend a few days in Dublin, and then there are many beautiful rural things to choose from (I stayed in Galway and planned hikes north and south of there). I was nervous about the driving, but it was totally fine. The food was way better than I expected as a veggie/exotic food lover, and the people were the nicest I've even encountered.
For the east coast, it's a short hop. You really want to maximize your time, so I would check your local airports options (most airlines have flight maps that make it quick to see where they fly--direct or one plane change is all I could muster for a week).

Munich - Salzburg

Athens then Nauplio if you can go in early June.

Bilbao-San Sebastián or Hondarribia, cooler temperatures in this area of northern Spain.

I think narrowing your focus to Britain is a good idea. Pick one of the countries that holds the most appeal to you. It would be easy to spend a few days in a major city and a few days tootling around the countryside or visiting smaller towns/cities. London is always a magnet for us, and we could easily spend the entire week there. But there are innumerable options for short stays within a few short hours.

We usually only travel in the spring or fall, hoping to avoid some of the crowds but mostly because of the heat, so I can agree with your goal in that regard. The suggestion of the United Kingdom/Ireland is a good one, with plenty of different options. We loved Edinburgh, and made a side trip to see Alnwick Castle (I am a castle fanatic and it was a great one!). London with a side trip to Cornwall would be great too. Limiting your flying time would indeed be an added bonus for a short trip.

A different plan entirely could send you to Scandinavia. We loved Copenhagen, and Stockholm, and Visby (small medieval town on the Swedish island of Gotland). A day spend on a boat tour of the Stockholm archipelago would be a very relaxing break. We arrived on a small cruise ship, but there must be local providers that do tours perhaps with stops to visit and hike on some of the islands. We didn't visit Helsinki, but it has the added bonus of being just a two hour ferry ride from Tallinn, Estonia, which we adored.

Have fun figuring out where you want to celebrate your anniversary. Congratulations!

Horsewoofie's suggestions are all good. It's too bad you're limited to a week, a very short time in Europe for all the flying you have to do. This forum works best with specific questions instead of general ideas, but I have a few anyway:

• Ireland -- Dublin and then a few days elsewhere with a car (if you can handle left-side driving). Dingle would be a nice rural base but a long way by car or bus from Dublin. Galway's a bigger city but easier to reach from Dublin. Maybe you could fly home from Shannon.
• Netherlands -- Amsterdam and a few days in a place like Leiden or Bruges (in Belgium). Really no need to drive, and AMS would work coming and going.
• England -- London and a smaller place like Salisbury or a Cotswold town or even Bath. See above re driving.

If you're looking for a larger geographic reach, try to fly "open jaw" so you don't lose time backtracking.

I’ve taken three one week trips to Europe. One week in Paris to celebrate birthdays, one week in Germany to visit family, and one week in Ireland because it was as much time as my husband could get off work after an earlier trip to Europe a few months prior.

I suggest Ireland. We actually saw a lot with 7 nights on the ground. We flew into Dublin and drove from the airport to Kilkenny. Normally I don’t advise driving upon arrival, and an hour is the maximum time I will drive. It was my first time driving on the left and I rented automatic to make it easier. We went to the castle in Kilkenny that day and walked around. The next day we drove to Dingle, stopping at the Rock of Cashel on the way. Two nights in Dingle. I loved it there and plan to go back next year. We then drove north and stopped at the Cliffs of Moher on the way to Galway. One night there. We drove back to the airport in Dublin, returned the car and spent three nights there. I felt that with our limited time we saw quite a bit without feeling like we were racing our way through Ireland. A car would be absolutely necessary to do a trip like this in that period of time.

To see the lakes region in IT and spend time in the alps in CH (Switzerland) here’s an idea...
Fly into Milan or Zurich and out the other. Your city to explore should be Milan and you can take a day trip to Varenna (1h 15m by train) and take Rick Steve’s self-guided walking tour before hopping on a 15-minute ferry ride to Bellagio to browse there before having lunch / dinner there. I would spend a minimum of two days and nights in IT if arriving in IT. If you fly out of Milan, spend three nights.
To get between Milan and CH, take a 3h 15m train from Milano Centrale to the Swiss alps Interlaken Ost station (transfer in Spiez). You can travel further into the alps if you want where you can spend a minimum of three nights. To get between the Swiss alps and Zurich, it’ll take 2h and require a transfer in Bern where you can leave your luggage and explore the town before moving on to Zurich if flying home from there.
Rick Steve’s has a Milan & the Italian Lakes District book and a CH guide that you can also download from his app.

A week is a very short trip by the time you fly there and come back. Definitely book a multi-city flight where you begin and end at different cities to save time. We have been at Salzburg & Vienna multiple times, along with staying at smaller towns, such as St. Wolfgang, etc. You may want to begin in Munich, but that’s tight for only a week itinerary.

My first thought was Austria. You can be as active as you want in the gorgeous mountains or relax at a lake town, and end at Vienna.

That country tends to be less crowded and less hot than several other options.

As some have said a week is not a lot of time to cover a few countries. Consider London with a few day trips, possibly Windsor, Canterbury, Oxford, towns easily reached by train. Of course there is also a weeks worth of places and things to see in London. It will be more of a vacation if you limit your itinerary.

Thank you so much for the ideas and suggestions - exactly what I was looking for. I'll try to narrow down our country of choice now and then work on a detailed itinerary. I know a week just isn't long enough, but the season of life we are in with kids and jobs can only give us that and I'm willing to try and make it work. London seems to be a good option. I've never looked at it closely, but will give it some serious consideration this go round.... Thanks again!

For a week, I would fly in and out of Amsterdam. It is cooler weather at that time year than many suggestions further south. You could easily do a small loop through Brussels,Ghant, Antwerp or even Cologne. The Hague, Delft, Rotterdam is another loop. Rent some bikes and ride the canals/dikes and many bike paths. There are some great day trips out of Amsterdam up to Hoorn and an outdoor village. We stay in Haarlem for the relax, small town feeling after a day in Amsterdam. Airport is easy to use and public transit is great.

Hello wst. I think all of the suggestions that you received in replies here are good. But, you said you desire to go to Switzerland. So, I suggest go to Switzerland. Switzerland does not have summer heat at the mountains. Fly to the airport of Zurich. Go the mountains that are south of Interlaken (beside the Lauterbrunnen Valley). And go to Lake Brienze .