We've done the London/Paris/Swiss Alps/Italy/Barcelona trip three years ago. Now my kids are older, daughter graduating from High School, and we'd like to do another 3 week trip, seeing some Nordic and other countries. We plan to stop over in Iceland on our way over. Any suggestions for a good but not overly hectic itinerary? Kids will be 17 and 13 and we plan to travel later in June through mid July 2017. We were thinking of staring north then heading down to either southern France, parts of Spain we hadn't seen and/or Portugal, or other? Thanks!
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Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico
1743 posts
Three weeks covering some Nordic countries, Iceland, southern France, Spain, and Portugal is the opposite of "not overly hectic."
I did a three-week Nordic itinerary in 2012 that included an Iceland stopover. As I was planning the trip, it quickly became clear that I couldn't include all the Nordic countries and Iceland in a non-hectic 3-week itinerary. So I completely skipped Norway on that trip. I did Copenhagen, Aero, Kalmar, Stockholm, Tallinn, Helsinki, and Reykjavik. It was a really good pace. I was traveling solo.
In 2016 I did Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway in 3 weeks. I did 10 nights in Norway and wish I'd had another 10.
Assuming on a 3-week trip you'll have 20 nights in Europe, make a list from 1 to 20, and on each line write the name of the city where you will sleep that night. You can do this repeatedly until you come up with something that makes sense. If you are able to come up with an itinerary that includes all the places you mentioned and isn't overly hectic, I will buy you a bottle of Reyka Vodka (from Iceland... my favorite vodka).