Minnesota to the UK, To France, To Italy in 35 days.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

If this is your first time planning a trip, you might want to read Rick Steves 'Europe Through The Back Door.' It will explain the nuts and bolts of traveling through Europe.

As for where to go, you have to figure that out. Watch some travel videos. Rick Steves videos can be watched for free. I would suggest a combination of cities and smaller towns for contrast. With you and the kids, you may want to consider apartments. It will give you more space than small European hotel rooms and you can utilize the kitchen as you wish. Also, most come with a washer or a washer/dryer. That will help for packing lightly. It will be important to not lug too much around with you. Each person should be able to handle their own bag. No one will be helping to get on and off trains, etc. I use VRBO, Homeaway and Airbnb for apartments.

Summer is the busiest season, so you should figure this out soon and start booking. Use a map to help figure out the order of your destinations. Fly into one place (London?) and home from another (Rome?) to avoid backtracking. Look for the multi city or similar tab for booking. Do not do two one-way tickets. I would suggest starting in England, as it will be an easier introduction to Europe. Be sure to get places to stay with AC. Especially in France and Italy!

I hope you and your girls have a wonderful trip!

I'm sorry for the loss of your husband. I take it this will be your first trip to Europe.

First, check out some guidebooks from your pubic library for the countries you mentioned. Some, like the DK series, have lots of color pictures as well as information. Others include the Fodor and Frommer series, Lonely Planet, and the Rick Steves guides. Read about the places you want to visit, logistics of getting there and around, and lodging options (which of course are much broader than just those listed). You may want to invest in the latest versions of the guides that seem most useful to you; those in the library may be a few years old and things do change. Also, buy or borrow Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door. If you have a Kindle, it's on sale for $1.99 right now, a great bargain. Full of information on the practicalities of getting to Europe, getting around, staying in cities, and experiencing Europe as more than just a museum or food fest.

With 35 days you can choose cities or sights in all three countries, keeping in mind that you won't be able to see "everything" but hoping that you can see more on future trips. Try to fly "open jaw," for example from Minneapolis to Rome and returning from London to Minneapolis, or vice versa, so you don't spend time and money backtracking. You may want to start with Italy and finish with UK simply because of weather, Italy gets hot in summer and earlier may be a little cooler. Or, depending on your language skills, you may want to start with UK where they speak (more or less) your language. But don't feel constrained, with a few French and Italian phrases you should be able to function.

If I were planning a monthlong trip I'd try to spend about five days in each of six places, to minimize packing/unpacking and travel time. Consider that every time you move takes at least half a day, or maybe a whole day. Several days, or even a week, in a city give you a chance to know it better, feel comfortable getting around, see what you want to see, and take some down-time that even your high-energy daughters may appreciate.

It's good that your daughters are old enough and open enough to new experiences. The more you can involve them in planning the trip, the likelier you all are to enjoy it. This means compromises. One strategy is to give each person a day to plan in each place you visit. Another might be to split up for a morning or afternoon or evening once in awhile, letting the girls (together) do something they want while you do something you want (a nap, perhaps?).

I could go on, but Europe Through the Back Door says it better. When you have a more focused idea of where you want to go and how, you can get a lot of help on this forum from some very experienced, kind, and helpful people. But it'll be your trip, not theirs, so put your own choices first. For a July trip it's definitely time to start planning, which for many of us is half the fun. Good luck and happy travels.

Yes, what Andrea said!

You will no doubt get the advice to read Rick's "Europe Through The Back Door" as a general guide. The internet is a bottomless pit of information as well. Virtually anything can be Googled. If you are sitting there one night thinking; "I wonder what it costs to take the Eurostar train from London to Paris?" Just Google it and you will get your answer. In short, travel planning is fairly easy when you take it one step at a time, but can be very very intimidating if you see it all at once and have never done it before.

With 5 weeks or so, you can see a bit of all three countries. But I would suggest you consider limiting yourself to the UK and France and using that experience as "training" for Italy and other locations on another trip in the future. Both the UK and France are among the easiest countries for a novice to plan and visit. Italy is a little more intimidating (though not at all hard for experienced travelers).

The first question to face is how you plan on getting around. Will you consider driving? Will you only use trains? That decision essentially determines where you will be able to go outside of the big cities. Driving is generally easy, but driving on the left in the UK can be intimidating. Taking trains in England and driving in France (outside of Paris) could be a reasonable compromise.

Once that decision is made, you can decide how much time to devote to both London and Paris, and where you want to go (and how much time to spend) elsewhere. I like to balance trips between urban and rural when possible and both countries offer very "quaint" rural/small town experiences. As a group of three, you will probably be able to find singe hotel rooms or B&B rooms (most in Europe are for 2). But if you are willing to stay in any one place for a week, an apartment rental is a nice option and can save lots of money (if that is a concern).

Once the logistics of movement are settled, the locations to visit and the duration of each visit settled, you can start searching for and contacting lodgings. Almost everything is done online now and emailing is easy (and English is generally fine even in France).

For a first trip with the children, I would want to keep things relatively simple and slow paced. I would fly into London and stay a week there, then spend a week visiting points in the southern half of England reachable by train - maybe 3-4 locations for a couple days each. Then take the Eurostar to Paris and spend a week there. Then I would take the train to your next favorite location in France and rent a car there for two weeks of rural France - either going from place to place every couple of days or staying in one region in an apartment for a week at a time and taking little day trips by car. Return the rental car in a location that has train service to Paris for the flight home. But that's just a very vague version of one of a million possibilities. Once you start to narrow things down, it get less intimidating.

Trying to visit all three countries is doable, but you would likely wind up seeing a lot of the big three cities (London, Paris, Rome) and very little of the rest of each country. If you eat up city experiences and have an aversion to anything rural, quiet or quaint, that might work well enough, but my previous advice stands; save Italy (which is great) for your 2nd, more experienced trip to Europe.

Send me a private message for more specific travel questions (click on my name to send a message). I live in Minneapolis and have taken my family of five on trips to Europe (and Australia/NZ) six times - this summer in Ireland and Scotland will be number seven.

Travel is wonderful. Your children will love it. It's an amazing gift to give them, and yourself.

You can also make a list of the "things" that made you pick those three countries.
ie...
You want to see:

1. Buckingham Palace
2. Hadrian's Wall
3. You are a HUGE Beatles fan
4. the David
5. the Colosseum
6. Sistine Chapel
7. French Wine
8. see the Mona Lisa
9. WWII buff

You get the point - get the location of these things and that will give a jumping off place. You can then add, subtract places & figure out the logistics

I am sorry for your loss. The most important thing is to have the trip that you and your daughters want. If you want Italy, go!

I would do a mix of hotels or B&Bs with apartments, if it's all apartments where is your vacation from preparing meals, keeping house, etc? In the big cities (Rome, Paris, London) I think apartments are a great idea. i find I need more of a "homey feeling" in the bigger, more hectic cities.

Excellent idea to involve the girls in planning - maybe there are places they've read about or studied that are important to them.

Look at a map and start choosing cities, then think of how much you want to see/do in each place. then find the best transportation links (bahn.de is great for finding schedules for all of Europe, but only sells tickets for trips that have a stop in Germany).

Lonely Planet, Michelin and other guide series (in addition to the RS guides) are good for different perspectives. As you plan, google images of various cities to keep inspired. Learn some useful phrases for France and Italy with your daughters.

This website has info on packing, what luggage to take, and useful stuff in the Travel Store. In terms of clothing, a week's worth of outfits should do it, plus what you wear on the plane.

Make sure your apartments have washers and plan on a bit of hotel sink washing as well (I take little woolite packets for this).

Two good we sites are the maninseat61.com for train travel everywhere, and RoninRome.com for easy traveling in Italy.

I hope I see you in Italy this summer!

What are some of your priorities? Art, history, the countryside, etc? Look up lists of different things to see in countries you're seeing. With UK, France and Italy - you could do something like 1 week in London, 1 week Paris, 1 week in another part of France, then 1 week in Florence or another Tuscan city and 1 week Rome. In all of these locations you can plan day trips to other areas. This is a more relaxed plan - you could speed things up and visit more locations (for example - if you spent 2 weeks in Italy - 3 days Venice, 4 days Florence, 3 days Cinque Terre, 4 days Rome - something like that).

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For a trip like that, you'll want an open-jaw flight. Fly into London and out of Rome, or the opposite if you want to travel north instead of south. I think basing yourself in certain areas and taking day trips from there will minimize your travel in between cities - it will make it a little easier and more relaxing for your trip. For traveling between places - trains will work! (You can fly between some places, but trains are often convenient and cheaper). With these long stays you can look for apartments to rent so that you can cook your own food (or prepare picnic lunches and such) when you feel like it. For packing, it doesn't have to be much different than packing for a short trip. Maybe bring a little more toiletries and such - but if you run out you can buy more. You'll do laundry (some apartments may have have washers, otherwise you can handwash. very few have dryers - but hanging the items outside to dry works well) and may end up wearing some of the same things repeatedly but that's okay!

I forgot to add, in planning, use nights instead of days as your timeframe. Many days in some cities will be partial days, so counting nights is easier (for many travelers) to allocate.

So sorry for loss of your husband and their father. If you want to do these three countries, go for it. As suggested, get a good tour book, I like R Steves ETBD but there are certainly others. For summer travel as someone said, start in Italy and work to France then to England last. You can allow ten days to each country. Once you have decided this or something similar is what you want to do, book open jaw tickets, say into Rome and home from London. Now you have it narrowed to these three locations. Then get a tour book specific to each country and each city. Then lodging, etc. You keep narrowing things down so it is something you can handle. Great your daughters are so easy going as this would make things so much easier. Once you have decided on destinations, come back to this site for each specific country for advice. There are so many great people here willing to share their knowledge. This should be a great bonding experience for the three of you in just the planning alone. Good luck.

As I said in my previous post (and as others have said as well), you certainly CAN fulfill your stated desire and see some portion of all three countries within a 5-week time frame. After all, many people enquire about seeing even more in less time than you have.
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My suggestion to limit yourself to just France and the UK was based on your comment; "I have a need to travel", which suggests to me that you would like to travel more than once. Your final comment about not knowing where to begin also suggests to me that you might find the process daunting and might benefit (assuming you elect not to go with a package tour) from starting the travel process with an "easier" trip. Easier does not mean boring. There is more than enough to see in all three countries to merit spending five weeks in each of them. In fact, we have spent four weeks in the UK on one trip, five weeks in France (four on one trip and one on another) and four full weeks in Italy on another trip. Our children loved each of those trips, and they look forward with great anticipation to the prospect of each new trip we are able to take - each to a new area, with its own somewhat unique flavor.
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If you were not certain of being able to return to Europe within a couple of years, I would say go for it - see the big three cities and whatever else you can fit in in between. But if your goal is to make travel a regular part of you life from now on, it seems less necessary to consume the "big three" with your first bite, so to speak. Certainly, a person savvy at planning and knowing how to efficiently piece things together could assemble a quite nice trip involving all three countries that included a wide variety of experiences over the course of five weeks, but that you be a rather complex undertaking involving lots of stops, and with less than four months remaining to do it.
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It's just something to consider. I don't want to limit your dreams. If anything, I would like to widen them. No matter what you choose, you and your children will love it.

Of course you should read guidebooks, look at videos and you and your daughters should determine what is of interest to you.
That said, here is what I would do.
Fly to London, spend 10-14 days. London is expensive, but easiest for 1st time to Europe, and it's also pretty fantastic! Lots to see and do. Either rent an apt. or a central hotel.
The museums, shopping, theaters, etc are outstanding -- won't be able to see them all. From London I would plan a couple of day trips to one or all of these: Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, Bath

Take Eurostar to Paris. Arriving at the Gare du Nord in Paris for the first time is an amazing experience!
I'd definitely try to rent an apartment in Paris, as others have said, you can make some food, wash your clothes, and have more room. And you should think about finding a place soon! Again, it should be in the center of Paris to eliminate a lot of travel into the center of town, which is where you will be spending most of your time (great though the metro is).
I would spend your remaining time In France, and save Italy for another trip, and focus solely on it. I think it will be too hot and crowded in the summer, and perhaps a bit too hectic after London and Paris.

In Paris the food, shopping, sights, cafe culture, art and architecture could keep me fascinated for weeks -- and I'm sure this will be the case with you and your daughters. But you will have time to do some side trips, I recommend one or more of the following: Tour of Loire Castles (I took a 2-day Grayline tour that was fantastic), Chartres Cathedral and town, easy 45 minute train ride from Paris, Mt. St. Michel, (again take a tour), Giverney.

I'm sorry for the circumstances that make this trip possible for you and your family, but I hope it will be a wonderful first time to Europe and you will go back many times, and love it as much as I do.

I am sorry for you loss. I have traveled with my daughter(although she was 21 on our first trip to Europe) and only wish I would have been able to do it sooner. Have any of you been to Europe yet? With kids of that age I would definitely do all 3 countries. They will have lots of opportunity to return, but if they don't, you will have given them a wonderful taste of 3 completely different countries, cultures, foods. etc. I would do a mix of city/countryside in all three countries to give it a nice balance of chaotic city and downtime to spend just hanging out with your girls... enjoying every moment and making some wonderful memories for them. Since regretting not taking my daughter sooner, I have not made that mistake with my grandkids and taken several of them to Europe as often as I can possibly manage it. I also make sure they each have a journal to document the trip and write down all the memories in a 'fill in the blank' trip log that I made up for them. Traveling Europe is always such intense living one tends to forget what they did yesterday, let alone years later. All the kids really love their journals now...even though I had to remind them on many occasions to write in it. Have a wonderful time.

You have gotten a lot of great advice here. I too always feel overwhelmed at the beginning of planning so I empathize. You certainly can do it all yourself - but you might want to consider starting off with one of the RS tours in Italy. In late June there is a 9-day Heart of Italy tour and I think also a Rome Venice Florence tour that's a bit longer. As others have said Italy is not as easy for many first time travelers so you could let the professionals take care of that part. Then fly to Paris or London and plan the rest of the trip as you wish. By signing up for a tour you have access to the RS travel experts and on the trip you will gain confidence in your ability to explore new places on your own.

Of course you can also plan it all yourself with the help of the folks on this forum who are amazingly knowledgeable and helpful. I just wanted to suggest a slightly different approach. However you choose to do it, have a wonderful trip!

I agree with Kathleen. Start in Italy with an RS tour, then do the rest on your own.

I'd suggest purchasing a map of Europe (RS or other), posting it on a wall, and as you and your daughters start your preliminary plan, start marking up your map with sticky notes, markers, thumbtacks etc. The logistics to get from point A to B to C and or where to establish a "home base" for a week, will start to fall into place. On google maps, you can often use directions for either driving distance and time, or public transportation travel time estimates.

Have you considered a RS tour? You can always add to the beginning or end of a tour. It might be nice to have time for just you and your girls, but you may also enjoy socializing with a group of adults, too. There may even be other kids your girls ages. Just a thought..... A month long trip can be a lot of togetherness, which can great and also difficult at times. Maybe a tour in the middle will change it up a bit and also cut back on all the planning you will have to do.