Where are when to drive

You can reach all of those destinations easily by train. I don't see that you would need a car at all.

My two cents:
Unless you plan to go off the beaten path and explore the countryside in the places you plan to visit then I agree with Jill that a car will simply be an aggravation to you. Better to organize your trip using planes, trains and buses to connect the various cities on your list. Also, you'll have the opposite challenge from most of us, ie dealing with driving on the right versus on the left as you're used to doing in Oz. Would you be comfortable with that, especially in the high traffic environment of crowded cities?
You might consider booking your trip as an open jaw to avoid backtracking. Fly into Amsterdam for example, then work your way south towards Bruges, Brussels and Paris, planning to ultimately terminate your trip in London for the flight home. Your current plan has you wasting at least a couple of days just getting to where you really want to be from somewhere else.
From the cities you plan to visit you can easily arrange day trips to explore whatever attractions in the countryside that appeal to you, further negating the need for a rental car - will make life a lot easier for you I think.
Lastly, try to organize your packing into the smallest and lightest suitcases you can. If you're going to be horsing your stuff from place to place around Europe for 70 days you really want to be traveling as light as possible.

Thank you Jill and Robert for your excellent advice. I will look at open jaw tickets and trains. I have another question:) . Is a Eurail global pass worth the money if I also have to pay for reservations? I plan to book train trips prior to leaving Oz.

Most of those destinations are big cities which have very good public transport. Having a car in places like Vienna, and Prague would be counter productive since you would be mostly spending your time looking for parking. Note that these are old cities which pre-date the invention of the car, so the streets are often narrower than here in Australia. A car might be handy in the rural areas in between the cities that you are visiting, and Salzburg for example has some nice mountain and lake areas nearby. But if the chief focus of your trip is cities, and so far that is what it sounds like, then a car is a hindrance.

If you do decide to hire a car, I think you should actually plan a different route which bypasses big cities like Vienna, Budapest and Prague, and visits either the countryside or smaller towns.

I think you may have one of the rare cases where a global pass may be worth it. I count 10 countries you will be going to. You probably could save a little money by prebooking in advance, but IMHO there is also value in the flexibility a pass will give you. If it were me with your itinerary I would seriously consider the pass. Many of those trains won't require reservations, but the ones to and from Paris most likely will. I always use the DB Bahn website to figure out if reservations will be required.

This is lots of moving around. How many nights do you plan to spend on the continent as opposed to the UK?

I counted 20 continental destinations, including Paris twice. Considering that you typically need 2 nights in one location to have one day to see the place, you're already using up 40 of your 70 days and possibly spending half your time packing and unpacking, checking into and out of your lodging, getting to your mode of transportation and from it to your new lodging, and in the air or on the rails.

I do agree that taking trains, especially fast ones, is most likely faster and better than driving. It may even be faster than flying when you consider getting to the airport early and going through the mess there.

P.S. Travel carry-on only. One carry-on bag and one personal item. Pack for a week plus a day, and do laundry along the way. Leave the suitcases at home. It will make your travels much easier no matter how you do it. See the the tips on packing light for advice and the forum on packing for testimonials.

Lo has zeroed in on what I noticed: You are trying to cover an awful lot of major destinations, over too wide a territory, in 70 days. Seventy days is a long time, but you are going to spend way too much of it moving around, checking in and out of hotels and finding your way to and from train stations. (Yes, trains are far better than cars for a trip like this.) You have some long travel legs, and even the short ones will chew up about half a day. That means you'll have much less than 70 days of real sightseeing time. Places like London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Berlin are not places I'd be ready to leave after 2 or 3 days. I'd rather see fewer places, more fully. You'll figure out a more realistic pace when you start really digging into guidebooks. I think you're going to find that you need to cut back some, and I would suggest that you do it geographically.

Another concern is that a hectic pace (and that's what this is, given the mix of destinations you've chosen) may be maintainable for 10-14 days. For longer trips you either need to slow down in general or give yourself down days when you don't do much. Your bodies just will not hold up if you're constantly running from sight to sight, trying to squeeze 5 or 6 days' worth of activities into 3 days, city after city.

I also think it's a shame on a trip of this length not to have time to see some of Europe's charming smaller cities and towns, which would provide some needed variety. There's a reason why everyone wants to go to places like Paris, of course, but I find it easier to relax into the European atmosphere in smaller places where half the people on the sidewalk are not speaking English. In hopping between the cities you've chosen, you're skipping over dozens/hundreds of lovely areas. I suggest making time for some of them by reducing the territory you are covering.

Finally, going to Switzerland and spending all your time in Zurich and Lucerne? Truly not a great idea. Switzerland is terribly expensive. Its cities are pleasant, and Lucerne is justly popular, but its scenery is magnificent. I urge you to carve out at least a little time for the mountains.

We are spending 6 nights in London prior to visiting family for 2 nights in Lincoln, overnight ferry from hull to zeebruggen,
2 nights Bruges
4 nights Paris
2 nights Brussels
3 nights Amsterdam
3 nights Barcelona
2 nights Marseille
2 nights Nice
3 nights Florence
4 nights Rome
2 nights Venice
2 nights Lucerne
3 nights Zurich
4 nights Munich
2 nights Salzburg
3 nights Vienna
3 nights Budapest
4 nights Prague
3 nights Krakow
3 nights Berlin.
Then we had planned to go back to Paris for a night then back to London for a night prior to flying back to Queensland via Singapore.
However I will look at maybe flying out of Berlin? And adding back a night or 2 elsewhere??
Ok Perhaps I should not stay in Switzerland and perhaps add on the days to Munich and maybe do day tours from Munich to Jungfraujoch and the countryside from there?

Ok maybe instead of flying from Amsterdam to Barcelona, we could change our route a bit and go from Bruges to Brussels to Amsterdam to Paris by train and then train to Barcelona stopping halfway somewhere in France for a couple of nights. Then if I take Switzerland off the itinerary and do some days trips there from Munich, I can add those 5 nights elsewhere? Maybe a night or 2 in Cesky Krumlov? And do you have any suggestions as to where we could spend another couple of nights to break up train travel at all please?

Thanks everyone for your fantastic advice and education. We really appreciate it. We now won’t be hiring a car and will use trains predominantly to get around. I will look more closely at the global pass, as well smaller towns throughout to break up the travel and experience less touristy places.
You guys are awesome. X

Hi Tracey, that's a lot of places to cover and not much time to see any of them. Some suggestions; take a look at Rome 2 Rio website or app to get some idea of how long it takes to get between places, for really good information about train travel The Man in Seat 61 website is a great resource. I am assuming that you are looking to fly with Singapore Airlines, you can play around with booking schedules using the multi-city function, use next year's dates to get a feeling for what is possible. Raid your local library for travel books and research all of the places that you would like to visit. Get a map and plan a sensible route so that you have no backtracking. Be prepared to save some places for next time, Europe will still be there. Remember that things like laundry will still need to be done so some down time in your schedule is essential. Also give some thought to accomodation, hotels can get a bit boring after a while but self-catering accomodation often has limits on minimum nights booked. Happy planning!

I think you need to write out your itinerary including both days and nights, adding in travel times and then checking exactly how much time you’ve got for sightseeing in each place. At the moment you’ll be travelling for most of one day, sightseeing the next day, then travelling the next day... for quite a bit of your trip.

Sorry, but I think that you need to significantly reign in your expectations as to what can comfortably be experienced within your timescale. Some locations, such as Venice, Paris and Berlin, IMO you haven't allowed enough time there, even ignoring the fact that it may take you the best part of a day to get there eg Venice to Lucerne is probably 8+ hours door to door. As it stands at present, you will be spending a fortune on transport then having little time in each destination to appreciate it, so it will end up as a huge blur!

For a trip this long, a down day every 3/4 weeks is a good idea to pace yourselves, without running ragged for 70 days.

You are going to be experiencing a variety of weather over the 3 months and will need a mix of clothing, so I would take as large a bag with wheels as you can manage, as you don't want to be washing every few days, you're on holiday - you don't have long enough anywhere for this! I only travel with hand luggage if I am doing a short city break, otherwise, take as much as you can and have some room for souvenirs. All public transport is used to carrying large luggage.

Use rome2rio.com for route planning - some places that are relatively close together may have poor transport links, so play around with your order. Plot out how many days you need to see each place and factor in travel time. I think that you need to cut at least a third of the number of destinations and even that would be a fast paced trip. You seem to be hitting larger cities, not countryside.

I would try to find an apartment with a washing machine for whenever you need to do some washing, rather than staying in hotels.

The time you are allotting city by city appears about right. But I would hate to have to follow a set iitinerary such as this.
Every trip takes on its own personality. As you go along, you never know what places and people you run up on. Some cities you want to rush through. Some cities you will want more time. Remember you cannot visit every travel sight in 20 different towns. It gets to where all churches and all art museums start looking alike.
I would prefer to plan the first 10 days and then go on to the second. 10 days. With a laptop or tablet, you can easily find accommodations as you go along your odyssey. If you see areas you like, rent a car and drive through the countryside and off the beaten path.I
And don't forget the budget airlines can open up a completely travel experience. For example, you can make a loop from Budapest to Vienna to Prague to Berlin. Then fly all the way to Portugal. Or fly to Scandinavia for a completely new experience. A leg in the air might cost the same as a leg on the train, but you can get a lot farther using them.
When we travel from town to town for a week or 10 days, we often will stop in a small town to rest up a few days, get clothes washed and get ready for the next leg of the trip. And some of the layovers can be very enjoyable times. Good luck to you both.

I am not sure if this is part of your plan, but hiring a car in one country and returning it in another is either not possible or has a high surcharge. Driving into other countries and then returning the car in the original country is usually no problem.

I agree with the others, you are listing mostly big cities with good public transport in which you will not be able to drive.
And travelling between such cities is faster and more comfortable by train. Or if they are further apart (e.g. Berlin to Paris), fly.

I would cut the 3 nights in Zürich. Unless you have a reason for 3 nights there I would spend the time in the mountains.
Zürich is only 70 minutes from Luzern by train, you could do it as a day trip. Bern is a better city for a 1 day visit.

Brussels and Brugge are also close enough for one to be a daytrip from the other.

Also look at flying from one city to another, if the train is going to take longer than 7 or 8 hours (others cut the train time at 6 hours).

I would buy point-to-point tickets for trains, Italian train fares are pretty cheap, and France limits the number of pass-seats so you may have to buy a ticket in that case anyway. Cost out each journey for a better idea of comparable costs.

Trains are best and less stressful than driving especially in the big cities and not to mention finding somewhere to park.

I find Rome2Rio, as recommended above, helpful for indicating travel legs that may be more complex or slower than expected. I have learned not to trust its estimates of fares or travel times, though it's possible the train times are better than those provided for buses.

I recommend using the excellent Deutsche Bahn website to check out schedules and trip durations. It will help you determine where day trips are viable and where they are not. For example, you really cannot day-trip to Switzerland from Munich. It's about 4 hours one way, just to get into Switzerland, and that doesn't put you in the high-mountain region, which is probably about six hours away. Munich does work for some side trips into the Austria Alps.

For rail fares, I use the website of the specific rail company you will be using for each trip. You'll generally find that there is a large difference between walk-up fares and the cost of tickets bought way in advance, but I agree that I wouldn't want to lock down an itinerary for a trip of this length so far in advance. Still, there are often some lower-priced tickets available rather close to the travel date if you can be flexible about the time of departure. Often there are regional trains that are much less expensive than the express trains and not all that much slower if you aren't traveling terribly far--another benefit of including some smaller cities in your itinerary to break up the series of major-city stops.

Others like to price and buy their rail tickets from trainline.eu. Do not use RailEurope for this purpose, because it does not always display all the trains, sometimes omitting the less expensive options, and you may well encounter significant service charges.

Although a rail pass may work for you, do not rush to buy one. There are complicating factors: the previously-mentioned cap on pass-holder reservations for French trains, some very good deals on regular tickets for some German trips (and trips to nearby cities in neighboring countries), availability of a half-fare card for Switzerland that confers discounts on some extremely costly high-mountain transportation that the Eurail passes do not cover, the existence of bargain airfares on many routes, etc. To the extent that you scale back the number and length of your travel legs, a rail pass will be less likely to pay off. In addition, you may well find occasions when a bus would work better for you than a train, and the rail pass will usually not help you there (Swiss postbuses being a major exception).

Perhaps you can figure out a few travel legs that are so certain (perhaps the return to London at the end of your trip?) that you will be comfortable buying the rail tickets or plane tickets early enough to get super-low prices.

I completely disagree with Jennifer's suggestion to take as large a suitcase as you can manage. Unless, that is, you plan to take taxis to and from the train/bus station every time you switch hotels. And even then, getting a large suitcase onto a train and (sometimes) down the aisle to the storage rack is not a picnic. I take summer-long trips and do not use taxis. I can tell you that pulling a 30-lb. wheeled bag over cobblestones and lifting it over curbs and up steps is not an ideal situation. Carefully consider the weight and bulk of everything you take. Figure out what quantity of each toiletry you will need for 70-75 days; those things are heavy. Be ruthless about shoes, and don't take more warm layers than you might need to wear all at once. I've settled on 5 days' worth of underwear, 4 or 5 blouses, and 4 pairs of slacks (two very lightweight, two normal). I've traveled with less, but most of what I carry is very lightweight (no tunic-length tops), and I like not having to worry about whether everything will dry overnight in a damp climate like London's.

For budget flights within Europe, skyscanner is a good resource.

I am willing to bet that taking as much stuff as you can will be your biggest single regret on a trip of this length. While there is space for large suitcases on trains, you will have to get it to the luggage racks on your own. Wrangling a 25" suitcase on stairs and underground passageways will take a toll on your good humour.

Only about 6 of your possible trains routes actually require seat reservations with a rail pass, so that's not going to add more than about 100 euros per person to your total cost of rail pass use. Eurail passes can be purchased up to 11 months before first use and sometimes go on sale in the winter (as they are now). Look at rates next November or December for your 2019 travels.

Start in the south in early Spring, and finish in the north in late Spring.
I don’t see the need for a car except for odd days locally if you desire.
The number of destinations (18-20) seems about right for a 10 week trip.
I would add Milan & Lake Como to ease the journey by train.
This order makes sense to me ...

Fly to Barcelona
Marseille & Provence
Nice & Cote d’Azur
Milan & Lake Como
Venice
Florence & Tuscany
Rome
Fly to Zurich for Lucerne
Munich
Salzburg
Budapest
Vienna
Krakow
Prague
Berlin
Amsterdam
Belgium
Paris
London

And consider open jaw possibilities with your flights to/from Europe.

Either in to London and home from Paris.
Or in to Barcelona and home from London ... (if you move the Lincoln family visit to the end of your trip)

Note that you have one stop flights from Australia to Barcelona with Singapore. Emirates, Qatar, Cathay and QANTAS (through their Emirates codeshare).

I'm a pack heavy person who loves her 25 inch suitcase and doesn't mind hauling it up and down a staircase or three.

I do realize the inclination that, hey, trip of a lifetime and you want to see as much as possible. But I would go in the schedule and designate some 'light tourism days' where the main focus is sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast and then deal with things like running a load at the self serve laundry and just going for a walk in neighborhoods and parks near your hotel.

It's a marathon trip you're planning and not a sprint, and you don't want to find yourself hitting the wall midway through and developing a sense of dread over heading to Belgium tomorrow. If I had that length of a trip planned, I'd do a vacation from the vacation midway through, rent a car, and find a place to stay with a kitchen in the Alps or Pyrenees that's got a good year round and well developed tourism sector and just spend 5-7 days mellowing out before returning to the city-heavy part of the trip feeling refreshed.

WOW you are all amazing, and have given us some major food for thought. I'm the kind of person that wouldn't cope with not having a suitcase, but I realise that I will have to have a reality check and only pack the essentials!
Have started to think that maybe we will need to perhaps do a tour of a country or two with a reputable company ( ??Cosmos, Trafalgar) maybe, just to take the pressure off planning for a period of time from us. We will take Zurich off the list of places to stay and add in Bern or Lucerne or Interlaken, as I really want to go up to Jungfraujoch. Does anyone have any recommendations for small towns to stay a couple of nights at? Perhaps nearing the end of our trip either in Hungary, Germany or Czechia? Thanks Tracey

The problem is your average organised tour only stays one or two nights in most places, as opposed to the 3 or 4 night you will be seeking.

I think taking a tour to cover some of the areas you want to see and building free time for other destinations around it is a fine idea. My suggestion would be that you look for a tour that includes some smaller towns. Even for novice travelers it's usually quite easy to arrange a series of 4- and 5-night stops in cities linked by direct express trains. Getting yourself efficiently to smaller towns can take more research, and it will probably be slower than going on a tour bus. For that reason, I tend to think that tours going to smaller cities can be a better value.

I thought these three smaller cities in the eastern part of Germany were lovely. They came through the war with minimal damage and a lot of the half-timbered buildings are looking really fine. I don't know that any of them would be practical for you from a logistical standpoint, but I highly recommend them:

• Quedlinburg has a castle, a cathedral with an impressive treasury (Google for info on American connection there), and the Feininger Art Gallery. The tourist office does English-language tours, or you can rent an audio guide. Gets lots of European tourists, not so many American visitors.

• Erfurt is a lively university city with a Martin Luther connection. Side-trips are possible to Weimar (and the Buchenwald concentration camp) and Eisenach (with Wartburg Castle). Erfurt has an impressive cathedral and a merchants' bridge. Rick visited Erfurt during one of his 2016 programs--available to watch on this website.

• Gorlitz is more lightly visited because it sits on the Polish border, east of Dresden. It has varied architecture of such beauty that movies are filmed there.

There are many really wonderful options in Germany. There's a very recent thread in which one of our German resident-posters provided links to info on dozens of possibilities. I'm sorry that I have no clue what thread that was, but you might find it rather easily in the German forum.

If you go to the Hungary forum and scroll back through a few months' posts, I think you'll come to one or more contributions by James E in which he discusses some smaller cities in Hungary.

There are some tour companies (VBT comes to mind) that specialize in walking or biking holidays through the countryside- they handle moving all your bags and such to the next hotel while you enjoy your day of riding or covering a mountain trial. Said tours are also generally good at giving an activity level for each, ranging from causal ramble to intense enough to require a doctor's note of health to participate. If you're active sorts, that might be a fun week.

Lots of good advice. Looking at your itinerary, I see a lot of 2 night stays. Every 2-night stay is 2 travel days and 1 visit day. 3-night stays are really better.

Your itinerary as posted with nights has 19 stops. This is 19 of 70 days traveling. That's a lot of traveling. We were just on a 40 day trip (May 5-June 12). On this trip, we stayed in 8 places. That was plenty. Scaling up to your trip, that would be 15-16. I would cut 4-5 stays out of your trip. I would eliminate some stops based on countries. You have about 10 countries. I'd get it down to 6 - Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic. Dump cities not in those countries. Everyone who goes to Europe for the first time wants to do everything. We have gone now 10 times, and do fewer stops each time.

Another point: In the middle of your trip, you are going to want to relax, and not do much for a day or two, or even 3. We stayed with a friend in a very small city in E Germany, Cottbus. For 3 nights, we just sat around, walked in the woods and around a lake, went to a small restaurant or 2. Very refreshing.

For you, what I would do is take your itinerary, and make it into actual trips. Where will you start? Nights there? What is the next stop? How long a trip, and how will you travel?

For the 2 of you, if you are comfortable winging it, that's an option. Use booking.com and hostelnet to find locations. For instance, in Salzburg, we stayed in JUFA hostel, in a private room for one night (after leaving our AirBNB 3 night stay). We paid 45E for a private room. We looked online the day before.

I had bookmarked the post that acraven mentioned, it is: germany/frankfurt-19-26-nov-please-suggest-places-to-go-that-won-t-be-freezing-cold

Tons of great links for smaller towns.

Before you finalize your plans, I suggest deciding why you want to go to each place - what’s important to you there and determine how much time that you need to do those things. Then determine your priorities and connect the most important destinations in a logical order - that’s when rome2rio is most useful.

Consider Lauterbrunen or Murren in Switzerland instead of any of the cities and ride the first morning train up the Jungfrau. It was a priority for me and worth the cost and time.

If seeing any Alps is your priority, you could rent a car and do a loop around Innsbruck from either Munich or Salzburg. Zugspitz is close to Munich or just take a gondola up from Innsbruck. Or drive to Söelden or Kitzbüel.

Enjoy the planning and the trip!

My rule of thumb is four hours of travel on a travel day. When you add checking in/checking out, getting meals, getting to transportation, connections, etc., four hours of travel works out to a pretty full day.

For car or train, I agree with others, if it's easily reached by train (especially city center to city center) stick with the train. You won't have to worry about traffic, navigation or parking.

Using my four hour rule of thumb above - if the train is going to be longer than four hours, I either look to break it up into two travel days or take a plane. Flying from Paris to Barcelona makes sense unless you find an intermediate stop to justify the time. The cost of a European flight is cheap. I flew from Nice to Paris Orly in October. The slightly over one hour flight cost $50 US, so 40 something euro. The train was something like 64 euro (might have been cheaper if I'd looked more than a month in advance) and took a lot longer.

To be honest, I only looked at your proposed itinerary. I saw lots of 2s and 3s. That's tiring after a couple of weeks, probably exhausting after a couple of months. Consider that 2 nights gives you one full day to enjoy a place. 3N = 2 days. You'll use up 1/2 day or more each time you move. You'll use up a lot of energy getting oriented to each new place. Small towns are generally easy but big cities mean figuring out how to use public transport, how to find street signs, how to get to sights, and more. Over a long trip, you'll have to spend time shopping, doing laundry, maybe getting a haircut, maybe taking care of an unforeseen incident.

Here are a few adjustments I would make. Fly to A'dam from London City airport (stay there after visiting family). Stay in Ghent (3-4N) and day trip to Bruges and Brussels, then train to Paris. If you want to keep Barcelona, you can take the train from Paris. But it's a long way to go for only 2 days of sightseeing. Is it worth the travel time to spend what amounts to one full day each in Marseille and Nice? I'd skip both for more interesting places, especially in April when the water will be much too cold for bathing.

My advice for travel is less is more. Spend enough time in a place to get to know it and have time to see the sights and enjoy just being there. You can't see everything, no matter how long you have. Take time to enjoy everything in the places you visit.