Is our itinerary reasonable?
We are going to Europe for a 16 day trip during the last week of June and first week of July. The beginning of our trip is set in stone, as we are meeting family for a birthday the day after we arrive. The rest of the trip is what we’re trying to decide upon and finalize.
We are arriving in Rome and picking up a rental car to take us to Montalcino. We will be staying in Montalcino for the first 5 days and our departure date is not flexible. After that, we have been trying to arrange the rest of the trip. While we would love to spend more time in the area, we aren’t a fan of very hot weather and we don’t want to fight the summer crowds at the most popular destinations, so we thought we might make our way north instead of remaining in Italy this trip.
Our plan is to head from Montalcino to Lauterbrunnen/Murren. We would like to drop off our rental car before leaving Italy, likely in Milan, and then travel into Switzerland by train. While we would like to minimize hotel transfers, we think it may be necessary to spend the night in Milan so we can take our time on the drive up and so we can have a rested train trip to Lauterbrunnen/Murren.
We would stay in Murren for 4 nights.
Afterward we would take the train to Basel, where we would rent a car from the airport on the French side. We would stay in Colmar for the remaining 5 nights and then drop off the car and fly out from the Basel airport.
Do you think we are planning too much travel time into our trip? Should we just try to stay in Italy for the rest of the trip instead of going further north? If so, we were considering Verona and Lake Garda.