Multi Country/City trip in Europe in Sept 2025

It seems that you want to cover a very large area. How long is your planned trip?

almost 17-18 days.

nkns.2074,
You list 10 cities in 17-18 days. That is about 1 1/2 days per city, and intercity travel time isn't accounted for. Do you mean that these are possibilities and need help choosing among them?

Apply Rick's formula for trip planning. List the places you want to visit. Then list what you want to see and do in each of those places to determine how many nights you will need to spend in each place. Next add in travel time between places, including time between the last hotel and the next one. This will give you the total number of days and nights needed. Now adjust for the total amount of time you have available. This may require omitting activities in some places and/or omitting some places entirely. Or, if you can, adding extra days to your vacation. As it is, I think your itinerary is too ambitious for the time available.

Nice choice of destinations.

Figure on average, 3 nights per city. That is you arrive mid-day on day one, spend the night, go sightseeing the next day then spend second night, then sightseeing the third day and spend night 3, then you are off to the next city the following day. So you have 2.5 days (more or less in each city …. On average). Some of the stops will do better with 4 nights and there might be one or two you feel good about with 2 nights. 10 cities x average/3 nights each = 30 nights. Ooops!!!

I see that you have 3 trip options with your list without adding more nights. Logistics and getting from point A to point B work well with:

TRIP A: pretty much uses up all of your time after we toss in a few smaller stops along the way.

• Zurich
• Lucienne
• Munich (Oktoberfest)
• Salzburg

TRIP B: also pretty much uses up all of your time after we toss in a few smaller stops along the way.

• Salzburg
• Vienna
• Budapest
• Prague
  

TRIP C: Zagreb is one of those places that is difficult to reach so its best done with the Balkan states. I would add Montenegro to your list and then it would use your time well. But you mentioned Octoberfest, not really the best time of the year for the Balkans. You miss out on the interaction with the water.

• Zagreb
• Spit
• Dubrovnik
• Montenegro

Also look at costs for each trip. You will see that one of them will be substantially more expensive than the others.

nkns.2074
What CJean said.

Lots of great Recs. Thank you everyone very much. Any recs for hotels and rental car from Zurich? What if we return rental car to different city? Zurich, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest, Split and Dubrovnik? We are limiting # of cities. Some cities we will do day and half and others more.

If you pick it up in Lucerne and drop it off in Dubrovnik, i would suspect the drop off fee to be between 500 and 1000 euro.

Dropping a rental car in any place outside the country you picked up from will result in a heavy surcharge like Mr E mentioned. And some rentals companies dont allow you to take their cars into certain countries. Is there some reason why you are driving everywhere instead of taking trains, especially when crossing borders? And many people would mention the difficulty of having a car in large European cities, and the difficulty/expense of parking.

A car will not really be helpful for moving around within cities. You can't just drive up to a museum or historic site and feed a parking meter. And trains are often faster between cities--though that won't be the case in Croatia.

Croatia is a zone 2 country for rental car firms. You will get only limited brands and models with allowance to enter this country when pick-up is not in Croatia.

You will have tons of things to check when driving in all these different countries, starting with validity of driving permission (not licene only). Example Germany: https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/StV/Roadtraffic/validity-foreign-driving-licences-in-germany.html

Leave time to enjoy the honeymoon................
You currently are planning a trip with a focus on memories of TRAVEL from point A to B.
Strive to create memories of a wonderful journey by reducing the geographic range of destinations.
A number of the responders to your initial post are vastly experienced in these destinations. If you focus on accepting their recommendations and then ask where to stay and what to do you will enjoy receiving the next level of information to help create the maximum opportunity to create wonderful travel memories.
BTW: water temps in Croatia quickly cool in September and finding the idyllic beach experience becomes a bit challenging.
Marriage counseling from a 40 year vet of the institution............. no matter how often the spouse may demur from trip planning.............seek involvement. Has your spouse any favorite hobbies, other than you? If so, seek to find a way to blend in their interest into this trip.
Slow down you move to fast, you got to make the honeymoon last!

Your list of cities is better. This could work in 18 days but a bit of a rush, but each to their own. I never get very much into style discussions. Im not the OP, so I stick to mechanics for the most part.

The rental car will do no good in any of the cities you mention. I would budget the parking at 40 euro a night, gas costs 1.5X more than the US and there are tolls, lots of tolls. One poster a while back said it would be free cause they stayed in hotels with free parking. Sorry, nothing in life is free, they just paid more for the hotel room.

Then of course the drop off fee at the end. Seriously, it can be close to 1000 euro.

If you had a longer trip where you could do a little driving and exploring it begins to make sense to have a car. How can you put a price on that sort of freedom. But you are using a car for point A to point B transfers, its all you have time for, and the train or bus, or a private driver (Croatia) will be cheaper.

The cost of what I show below will be about $200 in trains, about $200 in airfare, and about $500 in private transfers for two (I can tell you who to call for cheaper). Let’s call it $1000. 18 days of rental car with gas and parking and tolls and drop off fees ….. maybe you could do that for $2000?

The beach in Croatia at the time of Oktoberfest might be a tad cool; just so you know. Maybe you run this in the opposite direction so you start out at the beach when it might be bit warmer?

1 Arrive Zurich
2 Zurich
3 Zurich (I assume you will get out and see more)
4 train Zurich to Munich (or from a lot of other locations in Switzerland but generally 4 hours or less)
5 Munich
6 Train Munich to Salzburg about 90 minutes
7 Salzburg
8 Train Salzburg to Vienna about 2.5 hours
9 Vienna
10 Vienna
11 train Vienna to Budapest about 2.5 hours
12 Budapest
13 Budapest
14 Schedule this so today is a Sunday or a Thursday …. Non-stop morning flight on Wizz to Podgorica
Hire a transfer with stops in Kotor and Perast on the way to Dubrovnik. About 4 hours of drive time on that route. Maybe Daytrip.com can do it for you. I might even suggest that if you want romance you spend the night in Perast.
15 Dubrovnik
16 Dubrovnik
17 Transfer from Dubrovnik to Split
18 Split
19 Home

Personally I would skip Split. Not one of my favorites. Use the day you pick up at another location along the way.

I would also skip Salzburg and put the saved time in Croatia or Montenegro.