Suggestions for Two Week Itinerary

Good news: you said old buildings and Europe has lots of those.
Other good news:
Eze is wonderful. But make sure you visit the correct Eze, the one up above in the mountains, not the town of the same name that's on the coast.
Swimming is not the biggest attraction in Europe, so you're in luck there.

About the budget,: airfare to and from Europe will be the biggest single cost.
You won't know how much the trip will cost until you see what airfares are a year from now. Right now they're about as expensive as they've ever been.
Airfares in May normally will not be low. It's basically high season in most of Europe, as far as airfares go.
Total airfare cost also depends on whether you're coming from the US west coast, east coast, etc, as airfares are very roughly proportional to miles flown.
In general, larger cities are more expensive than staying in the country. But some country locations, like Eze, are a bit of a challenge to get to without a rental car, which ups your total cost.

To get an idea of airfares now, go onto some websites and put in travel times in May 2015--this will give you an idea.

Hello,

Thanks for the reply. I did forget to talk about our flight. We live in the Midwest in USA. We figured (assuming flight prices don't change drastically) getting to Europe and back to USA would be around 2500 (USD) leaving about 5000 (USD)/4400 (EURO) for our 12-14 days. We did open jawed tickets and they varied anywhere from a total of 2200 (USD) to 2650 (USD) depending on different city combinations so we picked a number a little above the middle.

Based off feedback from another site, sorry if our post is confusing. I tried to provide a lot of information because I've seen a lot of questions on here where people are constantly having to ask the person that posted what they like, what they'll eat, etc... so they spend 2-3 posts just giving more information. What we're looking for is suggestions of other cities we may have missed or one specific region that we should look into. We seem to be drawn to France, but that doesn't mean we're opposed to looking at a different country. We just don't want to miss looking at a city/region because we had never found it on a search site. Another person from a different site thought we were asking how to visit the six cities we posted on that budget in 2 weeks. Really we just wanted to provide some examples of what interested us so far in case someone knows of an area that may really interest us that a lot of people don't realize is there/doesn't show up as one of the top cities of Europe due to it's size or something like that. Keeping in mind that at this point we plan to travel by train once we're in Europe.

Thanks again!

This is just my opinion but with just 12-14 days and based on what you want to see (mountains, sea, stone villages), I would limit the trip to France. Some combination of Paris, Nice, Annecy/Chamonix, Colmar - fly open-jaws into/out of Paris/Nice. If you don't rent a car and take trains/buses exclusively you might want to break up one of the train rides with a night in Lyon (you may have to change trains there anyway).

The heart of Paris is just a big village with lots of old stone buildings and neighborhoods with little nooks and crannies, just do some research to find the areas you'd want to see (Montmartre & Marais come to mind). From Nice you can visit St Paul de Vence, a wonderful little hill village and also Eze (both the coastal town and the hill village), maybe do a day trip to Monaco and/or Villefrance Sur Mer. From Colmar take a day trip to Strasbourg. Annecy is my favorite small city in France, it's just so beautiful and definitely take the boat ride around the lake to see the little villages. For 'real' mountains you could take a day trip to Chamonix from there, or if you want to take some of the lifts up the mountain, spend the night there. So many options.

I am also a picky eater and had no problem in France. I do love pasta, pizza, and other cheese dishes and these are easy to find. The best pizza I had in Europe was in Nice. You can probably find anything you would find at home. When looking for a restaurant it's nice that in France they all have the menu posted outside so you can see what you're getting into.

Thanks! Yeah, I think we have seen the most pictures of areas that we like in France with a few others spread out between other countries. Really appreciate the different suggestions of day trips to supplement where we stay. We are definitely going to narrow it down to 3-4 cities to stay in and day a day trip or two to somewhere else during our stay.

France has attracted you the most so far, so it sounds like a good country to narrow your focus. http://www.ricksteves.com/europe/france gives you an overview of great visitor options, but then I recommend Rick's France guidebook for practical information for several parts of that country. The more you study, the more you will want to see, but you will also be able to choose additional places in a near range, instead of hopping from France to Norway.

If you start around Colmar (e.g., flying to Basel/Mulhouse airport) or around Annecy (flying to Lyon), or even start in Paris, then it's also not hard to get to Italy, but it does take time. From Colmar to Cremona by train, for instance takes 8.5 hours with connections at Basel, Milan, and Fidenza. Stopping in Switzerland on route would be also be lovely, and you could choose anywhere in Switzerland, but our favorite area is the Berner Oberland.

How to Look Up Train Schedules and Routes Online gives you the DB train schedule link and tips for using it. Trains tend to run in the same areas as major roads, so any map of Europe can be useful in estimating distances.

Since your primary focus appears to be southern France, look into flying into Geneva out of Nice.

Airfare from ORD>GVA and NCE>ORD look to be fairly reasonable at this time on Swiss air.

Bus from Geneva>Annecy. From Annecy it makes financial sense to rent car to Chamonix.

You could then either drive to Lyon, drop car, then train toward Avignon and then Nice.

There are some sweet villages around Avignon and in the hills around Nice.

Spend your time in France, a combination of Paris and the south would give you all that you want. I love Nimes as a base, if you don't have a car. Nice would be beautiful for a few days, with daytrips as mentioned above.

You said you must include Annecy. And two other places in France are on your list. Therefore, I think being at France, only, would be satisfactory, in this trip. But, if you will have time for travelling to Italy : many towns in Italy qualify as a place where you can see the culture. I guess : Italy will always be very Italian. And, very many people from the U.S.A. liked being in towns in Italy, because when they saw towns in Italy, they knew they were in Europe.

If Colmar interests you, then you might enjoy Strasbourg too. Both have ancient stone buildings as well as half-timbered medieval houses, canals, in the spring there will be an immense amount of beautiful flowers, and the cathedral is fabulous.

With your short number of days, I think I would stay in France. If the desire to see just one more country overwhelms you, head across the border to Germany, perhaps Freiburg.

Thank you guys for all the suggestions, we really appreciate it. There have been quite a few suggestions of places that we didn't know about to look into as well! Maybe this would be a better topic in the France forum area, but from Annecy, do you guys have any suggestions of good day trips from there? I have seen Charmonix mentioned. Any other suggestions of things that may be up our alley? I think the idea of maybe hoping the border into Germany or possibly Italy is a good one. We had not really looked into Germany too much but are finding some interesting places not far from the border there as well.

If you don't stop there anyway, Lyon is a possible day trip from Annecy but also still in France. Annecy is not particularly well situated for day trips east into Switzerland or Germany because it's on the eastern edge of the Alps so anyplace east of there would involve a longer travel time. If you just want to say you've been to Switzerland then you can day trip to Geneva. It's a bigger city but in a lovely location on the lake and you can take boat cruises from there on the lake. An alternative to Chamonix is Grenoble another mountain town in the French Alps but not as dramatic as Chamonix.

For Germany, do a day trip from Colmar to Freiburg im Breisgau (google to see images), a university city with a nice old town area. From Colmar you could also easily do a day trip to Basel Switzerland.

Day trip from Annecy : Aix Les Baines. (It is south). It is a spa town. People have been going to it to immerse in the warm thermal water, for hundreds of years. And it is an elegant town. Kings and Queens of countries in Europe and Britain went to there. It is near a lake. Now retired persons (most of them are not wealthy) go to Aix Les Baines.