Trip throughout Europe

Hi, Ty.

I have deleted "mostly Eastern" from the title of your post because it did not fit.

You cannot visit 11 major cities in 2 weeks. Allow at least 3 nights to stay in each of the cities mentioned, to give you 2 days of sightseeing.

You can take trains to most of these places, but if you do plan to travel from Stockholm back to Amsterdam, that would be a good leg to fly; see www.skyscanner.com. Rick’s Train Travel Time & cost Map gives you an overview of faster train travel times.

Focus now on where you really want to go and which destinations will be cut from the list. Trimming the most-distant points often makes sense, such as Scandinavia, but given the fairly cheap flight options, that doesn't have to be the automatic choice. Try to include some smaller-town stops, which will give you a much different view of each country and often be cheaper, too.

For planning help, I recommend Rick's books Europe Through the Back Door, or see many topics exerpted here and Rick Steves' Best of Europe, which has practical advice on lodging, food, and sightseeing in many of the cities on your list. Doing some reading now, over winter break, will help you to have a clearer goal and to ask more specific questions as the trip gets closer.

What Laura said.
I think Phil is trying to tell you the same thing as Laura.

This may help - If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, starring Deadwood's "Al Swearengen."

Ty, how long will you be in Florence? If you will be there for a semester or even 4-5 weeks, it might be possible to see some of your desired cities on weekends during your stint in Florence.
If not you need to bite the bullet and whittle your list down to 4 cities at most. At least in my opinion. If not all you will see is airports and train stations. Fewer moves will also keep your costs down.

ty,

welcome.

since you are not a party of one, but a group of 3, you may want to include the others in on the planning and the workload. No reason to do it all yourself unless you like to do things like this.

i agree in that you need to whittle down your list.

what i would do is:

1. Ask yourself(es) why you want to go there and make a list and then rank them. Then begin cutting back until you have a reasonable list.
2. get a map of the region you want to visit and then plot them all out. You can do this on a home printer or go out and buy a laminated map of Europe and use dry erase markers to plot out your trip.
   

the links provided by Laura are helpful and many people use them.

just so you know, i love the train system in Europe and wish ours were more developed, but such is life. I think you will find its a great way to get around. I have used some of the buses, but mostly INTRAcountry type, not INTERcountry.

as far as lodging goes, if you 3 get along well enough to sleep in a room together, i would look at hostels. Ive only used the single room in some of the ones that offered them, but as far as im concerned, it was fine accomodations.

if youre college students or finishing college you are well aware of the food being consumed by you is not the best especially if youre the ones cooking. You can find all sorts of food including ethnic foods all over the place. the more global the world becomes the more the food is spreading out and mixing with the local cuisine. you can find McDonalds, Starbucks and Pizza Hut all around and then you maybe able to find the local chain equivalents. Then you can find sandwiches or donar kababs and such. I think that everyplace ive been to has had some type of 'food to go" and as such was usually less expensive but tasty. Some places have a "pasty" sort of like a meat pie to go. I doubt you will go hungry, but you can spend as much $$ as you want too.

You can shop in grocery stores for food too. If you stay in any hostels, ask your neighbor where to find some inexpensive food. Chances are that question has been ask/answered many times. If there is a attendant, ask them too.

good luck and happy trails.

Ty,

I know it's tempting to want to see as many great cities as possible, but your current plan is unrealistic. Look at www.bahn.de to see how much time would be spent on transportation.

I would suggest traveling in as straight a line as possible. Something like this might work: Florence, Munich, Paris, London, Dublin (or substitute Amsterdam for Munich, Paris or London) You can research to see if trains or planes would be the best mode of transportation between the cities. Booking as far ahead as possible will give you the best rates on both train and plane tickets.

Staying in hostels would probably be a good option for you - more economic and you'll get to meet other travelers your age.

Good luck, and have fun!

Ray's right. If all 4 of you list your priorities along with why they are priorities, you may (positively) find that you all have many of the same things high on your lists or (negatively) find that you don't. At least you would start with a list of some kind, the more specific the better. You all need to list where you want to go and what you want to do/see there.

Is Dublin last on the list because you are flying home from there? How were you planning to get to Dublin from Paris or London if not by plane?

Also heed the advice that people give you about the costs of hitting all the places you list and the time it takes to do that. Although you can't buy tickets there except for trips starting in Germany, use the DB Bahn website to check train routes and times.

For example, I checked for the route from Stockholm to Amsterdam on June 2nd. I picked that arbitrary day because the July information is not there yet. The options varied from 3 to 9 train changes and from about 18 to 24 hours. Compulsory reservations are required for at least one of the trains on each option shown.

You need to drop most of the cities you list if you actually want to see anything besides the scenery between locations and do anything besides stare out the windows. My recommendation would be to drop Scandinavia (Stockholm and Copenhagen) for a start.

If you are set on flying out of Dublin, dropping Paris could also be an option, even though it pains me to say it. If you are not set on Dublin, I'd drop it as well as London and stick with continental Europe. That's still too much for 2 weeks, but at least it puts you within a somewhat reasonable striking distance by train. Remember that the more people there are, the more complicated everything will become and the group will only move as fast as the slowest member of it.

There are lots of ways to approach this, the priorities list being the most important, but you could make a wonderful experience by locating yourselves in 2-3 cities (London and Dublin, London and Paris, Amsterdam/Brussels/Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam -- the combinations are endless) and exploring them and their environs.

This may seem trivial, but one advantage to sticking with the continent is that you will have to deal only in EUR (unless you go to Switzerland). If you were to somehow do all the locations you listed in your question, you would have to use EUR, DKK, SEK and GBP. Unless you are very good at estimating how much cash you will need to withdraw from the ATM, you will either end up with leftovers or have to exchange them at a loss. That might be important from a budgetary point of view.

By the time you go, after your time in Italy, you will be well-experienced with trains, buses and other means of public transportation, so do some research now and trust that you will also learn a lot about European trains in the metal over the next few months.

Hi,

You'll meet other college kids (US and European) when you are over there. In planning this trip of 2 weeks, keep in mind to get the most of out of the trip set your priorities. It's also a matter of give and take as to what to see depending on the various interests. There are 4 of you. Are you willing to split up for the day so that you can pursue you own particular interests, or are you all sticking together no matter what? Do you have compatible interests? First, decide which cities you want to visit, realistically, pick three maximum., maybe 4. You're spread out from Ireland to Central Europe (Vienna, Berlin) How much zig zag traveling do you want to do? I suggest using discount airlines, night trains, Since you're college students, stay in hostels, university dorms, Pensionen, youth guesthouses (Jugendgästehäuser).

If you're final itinerary is spread out geographically, say Vienna, Dublin, Stockholm, Paris, (ie, no more than 4), plan on using discount airlines and plan the specific train routes to maximize you visiting. I also suggest getting a rail map to use in planning which routes to take.

Ty,

I agree with the others that you simply have too many destinations on your list for a trip of two weeks. To put this in perspective, visiting 11 cities in 14 days is an average of 1.27 days per stop with no allowances for travel time between them, which in some cases will be considerable! Also keep in mind that each change of location requires both time and money, and will take a minimum of about half a day in each case. Therefore you'll need to either pare down your list or add some time to your trip.

Of the countries you mentioned, the Scandinavian countries are the outlier in the list. They're somewhat more distant from the other places you want to see, and they're also some of the most expensive places. If you're on a budget, those are the first ones I'd suggest cutting. Given your ages, you might enjoy Ghent more than Brussels as it's a university town as I recall.

If you and your travel mates could pare down your list to perhaps no more than five places, I'm sure the group here would be able to suggest an efficient and cost effective Itinerary. One method you could use is make a list of the places you want to visit, listed in order from most important to least important. Choose the top five and that will give you a place to start.

To answer your other questions.....

• Transportation - train will be best in most cases, and 2nd class is perfectly adequate. In a few cases, you could also use Bus. Whether to use budget airlines will depend on which cities you'll be visiting.
• Lodgings - if you're on a tight budget, Hostels will be your best option. Have a look at the HI Hostels website (having a membership will provide slightly better prices and preferred booking over non-members). There are also some excellent independent Hostels in most cities. It will be easier to make recommendations once you have a definite list of cities locked down.
• Food - in some cases, Hostels will provide breakfast, so that takes care of one meal. For the others you can go to local grocery stores or deli's and pick up sandwiches or whatever. Restaurants will be the most expensive, but there are different prices ranges in those. If necessary there's always McDonald's, which are ubiquitous in Europe.
• Whatever else - you might consider wearing Money Belts, as there WILL be pickpockets about (that's also true in Florence) - keep in mind that you'll have to change currency in some countries (Prague, U.K.) - if you're planning to travel with any technology, you'll need to check that it's compatible with the European 220 VAC (if you need more information on that, post another note) - you will of course need Plug Adaptors specific to the countries you'll be visiting - the "Euro" style with two round pins will work in most of Europe, but the U.K. models have large rectangular pins.

Good luck with your planning!

I find the website Rome2Rio.com to be an excellent source for comparing the possible transportation options between any two places and the relative time involved in each option. I would not use them for estimating costs as they usually list the most expensive, last minute purchase fares and you can almost always do better. But for distances, estimated times, and transportation options (air, train, bus, car) they have helped me a lot in my planning.

As others have said the number of places you suggest is almost physically impossible in 2 weeks, when you take into account the amount of time to relocate from one place to another. Get together with your friends and whittle it down to each of your 'must sees' and then plot out a logical sequence for the time you have.

Good luck with your planning.

As a 20 year old college student turned loose in Europe, I know where you're coming from. On your proposed itinerary, you're biting off more cities than possible. I too say travel in a straight line, but also supplement your journey with some budget European airlines.
I would suggest you take a train from Florence thru Innsbruck into Munich--a great city for young Bohemians.

Then take a bus up to Prague--another lively city with $1.05 beer. It's an easy train ride to Berlin from Prague. Needless to say, Berlin is really coming around as a city for young people, and it's more reasonably priced than most other large European cities. I wouldn't visit northern Europe without visiting Amsterdam--the holy grail for young folks. Berlin-Amsterdam is by train as budget airlines don't serve that route.. You'll have to fly Aer Lingis from Amsterdam to Dublin to catch your flight home. Be sure to save time to visit the pubs of Dublin. Five great cities, including travel from city to city, is about all you'll have time for in two weeks

I once met a gentleman for whom the travel was the experience. Using Bus, train, foot and what ever means of transport that he found available he made his way across Europe for three weeks; only stopping for food and sleep. He said he would never forget the experience and loved every moment of it. So, yes Virginia there is a Santa......if that fills your desires.

Hey Ty, I'm surprised no one has mentioned this website: http://www.wsaeurope.com . They have weekend tours specifically for guys like you that are studying abroad. I encourage you to check it out. BTW, the person that runs Weekend Student Adventures is the son of the guy that owns Rick Steves' Europe. Have a great time in Europe!

I really appreciate all the replies, I will reconsult with my travel mates and post another topic in a few weeks when we have whittled down our must-see travel locations, sites, and our proposed methods of transportation. Thank you all!

Ty, when do you get to Florence? My guess is that most of the students there will be planning something similar. You may also meet students from other parts of Europe while you're there. I'm not saying to stop planning, just not to lock into anything right away.