coolpm89

I'm planning a 14 day trip in the winter and would love to tips for my schedule I figured out.

-1/3
Lisbon-Rome 9:30am-1:30pm


1/6 Rome-Venice train 6:50am-10:35am


1/8 Venice-Berlin air 7:10am-8:45am



1/10 Berlin-Amsterdam air 7:05am-8:40am


1/11 Amsterdam-Paris train 6:17am-8:35am

1/13 Paris-London train 7:13am-8:32am


1/15 London-Lisbon air 6am-8:45am
Lisbon-USA 12:35pm




Any suggestions would be great!

raincitygirl

For starters it would be better to have a multi-city airline ticket, into one city and home from your last destination, to save back-tracking.

Kathie

This appears to be a tour of trains and train stations plus a few airports thrown in for variety. If you want to see/do/experience anything of the places you have chosen, you need to cut at least half of them.

Remember that it takes three nights in a place to get 2 full days. For instance, you have one night in Amsterdam, which means you don't even have a full day to explore the city. Also remember that the days will be very short in January.

Raincity is right, you could improve your itinerary by buying a multi-city ticket (also called open jaw), but that alone will not take care of your problem. Think of this as a first trip, not as an only trip.

Pegontheroad

I too think you're trying to see too much--and as a result, you will be seeing too little. Assume that you will return.

Whathello

Good to indicate the times of travel.
Now you must as time to go to airport and time waiting there time to deplane get out of the airport find a cab or train or whatever to go to the city plus time to check in. Plus time to check out. Then deduct some time for sleep and eat and you have the available time to visit the city you are in. Knowing that it will be dark until 8am at least and from 4 30 pm.
To make it short : cut the number of stops.

janisj

If you already bought your flights and are stuck returning from Lisbon . . then you are sort of stuck.

Anyplace you don't have 3 nights - eliminate because w/ the travel time, very short days, and possible bad weather one night will give less than half a day and two nights barely over one day.

You have 8 destinations (counting Lisbon as two since you have to be there twice). That is at least 3 too many. Decide which 4 are most important to you and visit those. AND wherever you are on the 14th -- fly to Lisbon that evening -- don't fly in the same morning you fly home.

Sassafrass

You are getting up at awful hours day after day, 4:00 or 5:00 am every day, minimum. You are arriving in your new place super early.
Hotels will not be ready for you to check in and many train stations no longer have lockers or left luggage places. You need to check that. If you can leave it or check it, you will have to waste time returning to the station to pick it up to take to your hotel.

One day in Paris and in London is a bad plan. They are huge cities with weeks of things to see and do. A day is not even a so called taste.

Not even a whole day in Amsterdam means more time getting there than being there.

Cut at least 2 places (your choice) and add that time to the rest of your cities.

We're are you coming from originally? Any time in Lisbon?

zorrosf

You asked for suggestions, so here goes:

1. Drop London, Berlin and Amsterdam for sure, seriously consider dropping Paris. That would leave you approx. 5 days for Lisbon (a given stop), 4 days for Rome and 3 days for Venice. Your current schedule has 2.5 days for Rome, 1.5 days for Berlin, 1 day in AMS. In the immortal words of John McEnroe: "You can't be serious."

2. One poster (who I still think was a troll) stated he wanted to "visit" 9 countries by car in 7 days. I am all for "whatever floats your boat," but IMO your schedule is punishment, not pleasure.

3. Less is more.

StCirq

My suggestion: start over, heeding the advice above. It won't be fun. It will be exhausting and expensive.

mjs

This is a good itinerary for exploring airports and planes and trains and train stations but not for exploring European destinations. You don't have enough time to even see the major sites for your destinations. You need to cut out about half of your destinations and open jaw to save time

suze

8 cities is too many for 14 days.

annhig

if you are locked into a flight that has you arriving in and leaving from Lisbon, use your arrival day to travel to your next destination [would appear to be Rome] and put all your time in Lisbon at the end of the trip so you don't split up your time there and you're in the right place for flying home.

apart from that, I can only echo what the others have said.

Actually I'm a fan of taking advantage of an opportunity to explore where I am i.e. if I fly into Portugal, I like to stick to Portugal [and possibly Spain]. As this is a winter trip, you will be in one of the nicest places to be in Europe at that time of year; as well as Lisbon you could think of going to Andalusia in Spain, where the weather is likely to be considerably nicer than in Amsterdam or Berlin, or even Rome.

The travel times should be shorter too.

BigRuss

<<Any suggestions would be great!>>

Here's one: pick no more than three places. Stick with that. Otherwise, your trip will suck eggs.

Fact 1: Way fewer daylight hours in winter, especially London compared to Lisbon = less time for touring.

Fact 2: Guess when the incidence of train and flight delays are greatest? Pick a season. Hint, the season starts with the letter "W".

nytraveler

Sorry - but you need to start over. You actually have only 11.5 days on the ground - you can;t count the day you depart of the day you arrive - which will be 1/2 days and you will be jet lagged.

You should do open jaw tickets into your first city and out of your last (called multi-destination on airline web sites) to avoid wasting time and money circling. Also you should be in the city you are going home from the night before - as you have planned it there is a good chance you would miss your return fight.

As for the rest - you have a very expensive and rushed tour of the train stations of europe.

In the very limited time you have (remember, short days, grey and dreary with rain and snow possible in several places) you should go to no more than 3 places, including the one where you land. Otherwise I fear that at best this trip will be a confusing blur and at worst it will fall apart when you run into some delay along the way (bad weather, train strike or whatever) and will have to rearrange everything on the fly at whatever prices are available.