Seeking feedback 27 day itinerary Europe in July

Lisa, Your Itinerary looks reasonably well sorted, however I'd make a few changes for efficiency. Rather than fly from Barcelona to Milan, my preference would be to fly Barcelona to Rome, and then work your way north (Florence, Bologna, Venice). Using a night train from Venice to Lauterbrunnen is not the best idea, as most have at least three changes at dreadful hours! You'll likely be completely worn out after the journey! The travel time with night trains is also considerably longer on that route. I'd prefer using a train during the day to enjoy the scenery. For example, there's a train departing Venezia S.L. at 07:50, arriving Interlaken Ost at 14:28 (time 6H:38M, two changes in Milano and Spiez, reservations compulsory). From Interlaken Ost you'll use the local Berner Oberland train to reach Lauterbrunnen. A few other thoughts..... - Is there any way you could arrange at least an extra day on the Rhine (possibly staying in Bacharach)? One night stops get to be a bit tedious very quickly, and that area really deserves more than one night. - I'd probably substitute Bruges for Brussels. Good luck with your planning!

Doable, but not desirable. That's a whole lot of location changes. I'll let others comment on Spain and Italy. Some specifics.... Lauterbrunnen is a long outlier for your direction of travel. Despite the impression you get from this website, you can get a great Alpine experience elsewhere. You can't leave Italy without going through the Alps, so I might recommend something that lies more in your direct line of travel, like Bolzano, the Tyrol , Innsbruck, Garmisch , Mittenwald, or a little further west, some place in the Allgau region of Bavaria. You'll see plenty of castles along the Rhine. Not sure how you planned it from the Rhine (I assume your're talking about the Rhine gorge) to Amsterdam. But the quickest connections from Koblenz (the largest rail hub in the area) to Amsterdam is almost 4 hours. I'm guessing that Koblenz is not where you would want to stay. For the smaller towns, it will take you almost 6 hours. Add two hours of check-in, check-out time and transit to and from the hotels on each end, and you're realistically looking at close to an 8 hour travel day. I would either skip Amsterdam or add more time there. Otherwise, you're only chewing up a lot of travel time and money just to say you saw the place and not much more.

Too much zooming around. In Florence and Rome, your teen will perhaps "see a lot of museums" but won't have much time to see what's inside. It's hard to envision doing Florence in less than 3 days. Rome really requires 4+ days. You're cutting Venice a tad short even if you take a night train - you'll be there for maybe 30 hours total. And you're doing all this when a peak number of visitors will be in Italy and temperatures could be sweltering. Your pace is roughly that of RS's 21-day guided tour (which is already ridiculously snappy) but I'll bet if you asked Rick, he'd tell you that his tour makes some harsh sacrifices in order to market the better part of Europe in 3 weeks. And YOU are not RICK. As a novice in these places and without your air-conditioned tour bus, you can't infuse the efficiency needed to carry off an already very skeletal travel plan. I would start by snipping off A'dam and Brussels, Tyrolia and Bavaria. That saves you about 6 days. Then add 3 days to the Rhine if you want "...history, architecture, hiking, food"... and "want to see castles"... http://www.marksburg.de http://www.burg-eltz.de http://www.burg-cochem.de http://wandern.rheinstein-ruedesheim.de/z-index.htm ...and spread the other 3 days around Italy. I would NOT drop Lauterbrunnen. It's spectacular.

Just to elaborate on Russ point. If you take a RS tour, you walk right onto the bus and go from place to place, whereas you are going to have to time your travel by the train schedules, and they will not always be scheduled at the exact moment you want,, you will spend alot of time getting to train stations from hotels, waiting for trains, then getting from train station to next hotel. Bus delivers the tour members from hotel to hotel. I think you need to rethink the trip a tad, I know you are used to a quicker pace then many ,, but you are not realizing that road trips are not the same as train trips. Have you thought about renting a car? You can lease one if you take it more then three weeks,, and then you will have some flexibility to change you routes etc. Anyways, sounds like many nice places listed,, but seriously, I would elimanate at least one or two places,, Rome is worth 3-4 days minimum,, Venice, well two nights anyways, I would skip Brussels and Brugges myself( and yes, I have been to both) . Book as many things in advance to avoid long lines( since you only have a day or two in Amsterdam, you must book to get into Ann Franks House, and I consider that a must see.

I would pass on Bologna and add an extra night somehwere else.

pat: I was actually focusing on travel skills and knowledge, not car vs. train (btw, the train makes it quicker to get between these major cities driving in Venice requires a gondola, driving in Rome, Bologna, and Florence requires special skills you only get with Italian heritage.) The point was that the OP, like every novice who turns himself into a small-group tour planner and guide, is likely to make bad planning decisions and get confused or lost or find other ways to waste the very few hours they have allocated for seeing City X, whereas Rick and other tour operators know just what they're doing, how, and when, etc. An itinerary as tight as this one doesn't allow enough time for slightly disorganized travel (or even for seeing the basics in a highly organized way, no matter how good you are.)

Hi Lisa, your trip sounds amazing. I have done two 'whirlwind' trips to Europe...2004 & 2010. I thoroughly enjoyed them and learned many valuable lessons...for example, I am not cut out for overnight train travel AT ALL! I need a decent night's sleep. I am now in the beginning stages of planning a 3 week trip to Spain in the summer of 2012. There will be hiccups along the way, but as long as you are flexible & open, you will adapt and enjoy. The best advice I could give would be to start planning out the specifics...look at train schedules, sites, hotels, etc...once you put things on paper, you will make adjustments to fit your schedule and desires and budget. Don't forget to time for eating, travel between sites, etc. The only specific things I might change would be skipping Bologna and flying straight to Rome and working your way up from there (as someone already mentioned). You have seven days planned from Lauterbrunnen to the Rhine River...sounds like enough to do what you plan. In 04, we left Amsterdam around 10 am and went to Bacharach where we spent the night and then headed to Rothenburg...it felt rushed and I do wish we had a little more time on the Rhine, but part of our time crunch was a side-trip to a town we had lived in when my daughters were babies...it wasted about six hours of our day and included ten different trains! If you're interested, you can check out the blog I wrote during our most recent trip at http://embracing-the-journey.blogspot.com. Cindy

Thank you for all the feedback! Dropping Brussels and Bologna. Adding another night in Venice. Thanks for the train information to get to Lauterbrunnen. The family wants to keep that destination. 6.5 hours on the train isn't ideal but it should be beautiful. We are continuing to evaluate and trim cities. How long does it take to get from Heidelberg to Rothenburg? I am having problems searching the train schedule and am sure I doing something wrong because it keeps telling me it is 4 hours. Considering leaving Lauterbrunnen and traveling to Heidelberg or Rothenburg.
3 nights and 2 days in one city. Then spend the night in Bacharach and spend 2 or 3 days Rhine Valley. Again thank you for all the help!

3 and a half to 4 hours is about right between Rothenburg and Heidelberg. They appear much closer on maps, but neither city is a major rail hub and the Odenwald mountain range sits between them. I would still seriously reconsider another Alpine destination besides Lauterbrunnen. On a tight itinerary, you're simply spending too much time and money to go that far out of your way when there's plenty of great Alpine areas directly between Venice and your German picks. You can be in most of these in about half the time it takes to reach the Berner Oberland.

Lisa, you have obviously given this a lot of thought--and gotten some good advice. I'll just observe that except for your time in the Berner Oberland, and maybe some of the three days right after that, your tour is entirely urban and entirely fast-paced. I think this is probably a mistake for a trip of this length, especially in July when things are hot and crowded. My own experience is that travel south of the Alps entails many unexpected bumps and delays--small ones for the most part, but they add up. Fast-paced itineraries are especially vulnerable because there is no slack.