32 Day European Trip – Itinerary and Travel Planning

surm on 02/05/2022 - 11:44
Last edited 02/05/2022 - 13:41

I am planning an European trip for us (2 adults, 2 teens). Duration is about 32 days. I have seen on travel blogs that travelling via train (Eurail) is a good option.

I have marked the cities (red diamonds) we are interested in to visit on a map.

https://ibb.co/sscHX8N

I thought that we should fly to a city that is cheaper to fly from Sydney and then visit the cities in a loop route and fly back from the final city.

Alternatively, I thought of flying to London and then travel southwards to Madrid visiting cities en-route, then catch a flight to the northern region such as Italy/Germany (a train ride takes too long) and continue to visit the rest of the cities and fly back to Sydney from the final city.

I appreciate feedback from other experienced travellers. I am open to dropping/adding cities based on suggestions I receive. We are happy to visit the main tourist attractions. Nothing off the beaten track.

UPDATE

The majority opinion is that the itinerary has too many cities.

I am now in the process of cutting down the number of cities to about 6-7.

Which european cities are cheaper to fly from Sydney? We are planning to depart from Sydney around 17 June 2023 and return around 20 July 2023

Travel Europe

Comments

  • MeesusEff on 02/05/2022 - 12:04
    +2

    Tbh I feel your destinations are too spread out. I focused on an area instead of spreading it out too much to save on travel time. I did Paris -> train down to Belgium -> train to Germany -> drove around South Bavaria (so damn beautiful!) -> train to Prague then drove around Czech (small towns are meh imo lol) - > train to Budapest and hung around there for a flight home. That way next time we go back to Europe we can focus on the other parts without wasting too much time travelling. Each travel portion to the next place already eats up half/full day. I think it's better to take the time to explore each place so you feel that it's enough of an experience instead of a little bit here and there and then feeling you missed out on some things.

    • jv on 02/05/2022 - 13:03
      +2

      Agree. It looks like a Contiki trip where you spend half your time travelling.

      • stirlo on 02/05/2022 - 13:17
        +5

        At least with Contiki you have a bus driver to take you places and don’t need to think about where to next while nursing a hangover. Doing this kind of itinerary as a family sounds way more stressful

  • MS Paint on 02/05/2022 - 12:05
    +5

    I am planning an European trip for us (2 adults, 2 teens).

    Is that you Clark?

  • thatonethere on 02/05/2022 - 12:13

    You could look at the Eurailing packages - https://www.eurailingpackages.com/packages/?partner_id=4__90… get some ideas from them

  • SBOB on 02/05/2022 - 12:14
    +6

    skip Milan, go to Florence

    (though thats an immense amount of area to cover in a month)

  • MrThing on 02/05/2022 - 12:16
    +5

    Way to many places to visit in 32 days and get a good experience without feeling like your travelling all the time. I would cut it down to 6 or 7 tops.

    I would scrap Rome for Florence. Rome is so bloody busy and I thought it was over rated. I liked Florence a lot more and it also closer to your other destinations - Milan and Venice - Very easy to do the train journeys for those 3. Also florence is in the heart of tuscany SOOooooooo many amazing day trips available in tuscany (Lucca, Pisa, Cinque Terre). Venice is a zoo so ymmv

    Amsterdam to Brussels is a very easy train trip also

    London to Paris via the eurostar

    I would scrap Spain off your travels as its so far away from the other cities, meaning a plane trip is almost guaranteed

    Been to Geneva, found it very underwhelming, expensive and not a lot to see compared to the other cities your have posted, it was an over night stop before flying home, wouldn't go back again.

    See germany and austria another time, I think you'll run out of time.

    What would I as a trip schedule…..fly into london, eurostar to paris, train to belgium, train to amsterdam. fly to florence, train to milan, train to venice. fly back to london (or you could fly into venice and then do the reverse and put rome back on the trip schedule and fly qantas from rome to australia at the end of your trip)

    • stirlo on 02/05/2022 - 12:51

      London to Paris via the eurostar

      While this is fast it's certainty not the cheapest way to do it.

      • MrThing on 02/05/2022 - 14:06
        +1

        eurostar from london to paris isnt expensive. its all about planning ahead and being flexible with departure times.

        seems to range from 52pounds (cheapest) to almost 200pounds. that includes baggage.

        easyjet is like 50pounds++ and doesnt include baggage plus you have to get to and from the airport on both ends.

    • Dslrfirst on 03/05/2022 - 09:16
      +1

      Don't drop Rome -Europe was part of it's empire.

  • dirtybigbjelke on 02/05/2022 - 12:30
    +1

    Train is very good but depending what is happening you may experience a strike be prepared to make quick arrangements, I unfortunately did not realise my trip coincided with Euro 2016 so the French being French used it as an opportunity to strike . The French public seemed to be used to it and just get on with it. I agree with above poster that your destinations seem too far spread out and in my experience you want to plan for a 3 night minimum in any one city otherwise your holiday turns into a grind of arriving at hotels, leaving hotels taking taxis and flights etc. Maybe stick with the Atlantic coast then train across to Barcelona or Mediterranean coast and do the same.

    My focus is very much foodie destinations but with teens it might be different.

  • capslock on 02/05/2022 - 12:42
    +1

    On my last multi country European trip I used a mix of air and rail, all were point to point individual bookings and cheaper than a rail pass. I suggest the train for short journeys with a direct rail service and flights for the rest.

    Go see as much as you can in the time that you have. You never know when you will be able to come back. I'm not a fan of hanging around a place to soak in the atmosphere when you can spend that day in a new city to see new sights and have new experiences.

  • slow on 02/05/2022 - 12:44
    +1

    Agree too many places too far apart to cram in.

    Depend how confident you are driving, but you could hire a car. Gives a lot more flexibility and you get to visit out of the way places between cities. Driving through the French and German countryside is amazing

  • RandomNinja on 02/05/2022 - 12:45
    +1

    If you're game enough to cruise, I found that to be a pretty relaxed way to explore coastal areas and surprisingly cost effective (when I went anyway). I hopped on at Rome and disembarked at Venice, stopping at Monaco, Florence, Athens and the Greek isles as well as Turkey. Although the schedule was fixed, not having to lug suitcases around, checking in and out of hotels etc. is a huge perk.

    Perhaps you can see if there are cruises departing from London that allow you to disembark at Hamburg, ideally with stops in Belgium and Netherlands?

    • surm on 02/05/2022 - 12:46

      Thanks for the tip. Let me investigate that

      • MrThing on 02/05/2022 - 14:08
        +1

        If you cruise you need to clarify when they sail for each port

        I did a cruise in Croatia and they sailed during the day (left at first light, arrived early afternoon), so it left basically no time to explore the cities

        it was trash, I vowed off ever doing a cruise after that experience (also I get sea sick)

  • stirlo on 02/05/2022 - 12:47
    +2

    13 cities in 32 days is going to give you a bad time.

    I'd suggest spending at least 3-5 days in most cities (keeping in mind at least one of those days will be lost to travel each time).

    I'd also consider thinking about what attractions you want to see rather than just what cities. Some attractions require an hour or two or half a day, while some require travel away from the city and take far longer.

    Thinking of the big ones here's how long they'd take if you wanted to go there and have a selfie at each one.

    London:
    Tower Bridge - 2 hours
    Palace - 2 hours
    Tower Of London - Half a day to see most of it
    Stonehenge - full day

    Paris:
    Eiflel Tower - 2 hours to see it. Double that to go up top (queues are long)
    Louve - 2 hours to see Mona Lisa. To see all the big stuff half a day.
    Champs-Élysées - 2-4 hours to walk it see everything there
    Notre Dame - 1 hour (I assume tours are still closed)

    While this is possible in a day or two in each city your really stretching yourself and I guarantee you'll have regrets about things you wanted to do and didn't have the time for.

    Far better would be to pick 4-5 cities and have a week in each one.

  • GG57 on 02/05/2022 - 13:19
    +1

    In my view, opting for 13 cities will restrict your actual 'experience' time, due to the travel requirements / duration.

    No-one here knows what your interests are (apart from "…main tourist attractions…"), so I won't give you my choices of places to visit.

    If it were me, I would ask each member of the family to prioritise / rank where they want to go / what they want to do, and build some sort of consensus itinerary from that (taking into account your limited duration and the travel times between locations).

    Your current list of cities looks more like a 'tick-the-box' exercise, which is ok but might be better achieved by an arranged tour (which would also remove all the work you will be doing to choose accommodation, travel arrangements, etc.).

    • MrThing on 02/05/2022 - 14:17

      last thing you want is to come home and feel like you haven't actually had a holiday, but have spent money like a drunk sailor

  • surm on 02/05/2022 - 13:20

    Thanks everyone for the feedback. The majority opinion is that the itinerary has too many cities.

    I am now on the process of cutting down the number of cities to about 6-7.

    • jv on 02/05/2022 - 13:31
      +5

      I'd leave out Spain altogether and it will reduce the geographical area considerably…

    • AdosHouse on 02/05/2022 - 13:32

      I personally would take London, Paris, Barcelona or Madrid not both (I did Barcelona, so much to see and do), Rome, Munich, Amsterdam.

      Flying is pretty cheap inside Europe, but once you factor in airport time it might not be quicker. But might have no choice for Spain.

  • sonicentropy on 02/05/2022 - 13:39

    I did one month via eurorail, after 3 weeks on trains we swapped to easyjet/Ryanair. We love trains but after clocking close to 100 hours we had our fill. We went as far as Turkey on one direction and Spain in the other. Fav's were Antwerp, Dresden, Sofia, Geneva. Looking to go again next year this time taking our snowboard

  • surm on 02/05/2022 - 13:39

    Which european cities are cheaper to fly from Sydney? We are planning to depart from Sydney around 17 June 2023 and return around 20 July 2023

    • GG57 on 02/05/2022 - 14:07

      Wouldn't you decide where you wanted to go to first?
      Some countries will be cheaper to fly to, but getting there may involve multiple stops during the flight and you then need to get to the cities you want to actually visit.

    • MrThing on 02/05/2022 - 14:13
      +2

      London heathrow is just about the most expensive airport to fly into

      A quick google will tell you the most expensive / cheapest airports to fly into…..but I would be focusing more on whats a logical route for your holiday vs the cost to fly into an airport.

      No point flying into the "cheap" airport, if its in a really inconvenient place for your holiday.

      Best way to check is hop onto skyscanner.com.au and do some dummy searches and see what comes up

    • stirlo on 02/05/2022 - 14:19
      +1

      Flight costs will be dwarfed by on the ground costs once your there, particularly as your planning to go in European summer peak season. While you might save a few hundred per person flying into one city over another you should really look at the costs of accommodation and transport within Europe.

      Picking the wrong weekend to stay in a busy city like Paris will cost you hundreds more a night in accommodation. Choosing the wrong route will also increase your transport costs. See the example above about the Eurostar train, it's not particularly cheap.

  • try2bhelpful on 02/05/2022 - 14:30
    +1

    Been to Europe a few times and much prefer to travel by train when I can.

    I would look into a Eurail pass for days travelled.
    https://www.eurail.com/en/help/interested-in-eurailing/what-…

    You should look at this site too.
    https://www.seat61.com/

    This allows you a mixture of train and car hire.

    Paris, Florence are, certainly, must sees. For Paris I would get the Carte De Musee tickets. They allow you to pop in and out of galleries over the allocated number of days. Look into the metro options with France; including the RER. Versailles is, also, a must see.

    https://www.parismuseumpass.fr/t-en

    If you are looking at the French countryside you could stay a few days in the Loire valley and look at the Chateaus. You will need to hire a car and best to do that from Versailles. Do not drive in Paris.

    If looking at Switzerland I would recommend Interlaken, Zermatt, Lucerne as good options. The secret in Switzerland is don’t try to eat out. Stay at air bnb and do ready meals from the supermarket.

    Brussels is good, which means you can pop into Amsterdam.

    The Cinque Terra is great if you want to look at little Italian villages. You walk between them the take the boat back from last to first.

    I wouldn’t discount Rome. St Peter’s, Vatican Museum, Colosseum, the Forum. Honestly it is stunning.

    One time we just did a figure 8 of the most scenic trains in Switzerland, just stunning.

  • MrThing on 02/05/2022 - 14:38
    +1

    Best way you will save money OP is by planning ahead (read: start now) and locking things in.

    Anything to do with transport gets exponentially more expensive as time goes on (especially car hire - which you can secure now for free)

    Hotels book out and you might be left with the dregs out of town, or having to suffer the expense of last minute purchases.

    Before you start booking anything, get travel insurance so if shit hits the fan you wont be left hung out to dry.

  • lainey13 on 02/05/2022 - 20:33
    +1

    What are you actually interested in seeing? If its just a box ticking exercise go on a tour.. No thinking or organising required, and you see the main attractions.
    Surely you have some idea of what you want to see? Then prioritise those and see how much time you would need in each city. Realistically you lose half a day travelling to another place so try and minimise the amount of places. Also sticking to more places in the same country helps minimise the changes you may need to make eg currency (other than euro obv), sim cards, language barrier, tourist passes etc.

  • slow on 03/05/2022 - 08:10
    +1

    You may be doing this already but are you involving your teens is setting your schedule? Get them to do some research and suggest some places that they would like to visit and things to do?? Then less chance of complaints when you are on the trip.
    We were planning a Europe trip before Covid and both my teens had specific places they wanted to go to and were excited about

  • IM-Cheap on 03/05/2022 - 12:40
    +1

    I think its too much for the number of days dragging 2 teens along. We visited 9 cities in 21 days with 2 adults in our late 20s but we took 4 overnight trains to save on travel time and 3 of the cities were in Italy (shorter train trips in 1 smaller country). I recommend cutting it down as it takes more time the more people you have to please and adding kids makes travelling like its a contiki tour hard.

    I think if you are covering alot of area flying can make more sense than rail. Spain for example is out of the way. In our early 20s we flew into Barcelona - flew to Paris did a Sweden, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium loop and flew out from Brussels via UK in 21 days - again its alot of ground to cover and I think you should visit fewer cities but you should plan a "loop" to minimize travel time. Seat61 has awesome train resources.

  • bweiss on 03/05/2022 - 17:26
    +1

    I disagree with most of the others about it being too many places for the time. If you're ok doing rapid travel, then you should stick with the plans you want.

    My recommendation is to consider overnight sleeper trains. Through Europe they are generally pretty high quality (not hotel style though), and they certainly save you time, although the contra to that is you don't get to enjoy any of the sights through the journey.

    For trains you'd ideally look at InterCity Express (ICE) trains, and their ilk
    https://www.eurail.com/en/get-inspired/trains-europe/high-sp…

    Some journeys like the Paris-Madrid are just long, but if you go high speed Paris-Barcelona, and then Barcelona-Madrid you can make it work.
    But then you'd want to fly out of Madrid.

    For reference my first trip to Europe I did the following cities in 32 days.
    Munich, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Zurich, Venice, Ljubljana, Vienna, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Athens, Cairo

    There's obviously compromises to travelling quickly (less time in each place), but there's compromises to travelling slowly also (less places for the same time). So you should pick a style that suits you for that period of your life.

    Travelling fast inevitably costs more money, planes cost more than land transport but can be faster, high speed trains cost more than slow trains / buses etc, and short hotel stays cost more than longer stays (on a per night basis).

  • endolphin on 12/05/2022 - 00:08
    +1

    My 2c is that this is way too "city" centric.

    Imagine basing your opinion of;

    Switzerland based on Geneva (and not Zermatt/Grindelwald).
    Italy based on Rome and Milan (and not Cinque Terre and the DOLOMITES).
    Austria based on Vienna (and not Hallstatt and Salzburg).

    Etc, etc.

    It would be like a foreigner visiting QLD and going only to Brisbane.

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