mehul

Need help to plan 30 days euro trip itinerary route for following locations: London, Iceland, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Swiss alps, Rome, Venice & Athens?

Peter_S_Aus

30 days.
9 places
Yields about two days per place once you factor in travelling time.

janisj

Is this just a general wish list . . . or have you done any actual research?

Because Peter is correct -- you have nine places (more actually because a couple are countries/regions).

Say we are talking exactly 30 days . . that is 27.5 days 'on the ground'. Then if you want to hit 10-ish destinations that far flung you are going to need about 6 days just for transit. Now you are down to 21 days for 10 places. London -- the largest city in western Europe (by a long ways -- 2 days there and you will see maybe the Tower of London, the British Museum and a couple of other major sites. Two day free in Paris -- the Louvre, Notre Dame/Ste Chapelle, a boat ride and maybe two other major sites. And so on.

Plus -- if you are on any sort of budget -- all that extra travel will eat up a huge % of your money.


IMO - you have a lot of thinking/tough decisions ahead.

Heimdall

If you are coming from North America, you could fly with Icelandair, whose flights are all routed through Keflavik, the international airport at Iceland's capital city. They are happy to allow layovers, and even arrange excursions for travellers who choose that option. From Keflavik are flights to several northern European cities, including London.

If you aren't coming from the USA or Canada, Iceland is an outlier, being closer geographically to North America than to the European continent. I agree that nine destinations in a 30 day trip is far too many — even half that number would be pushing it.

StCirq

I doubt the OP is coming from North America, but at any rate, he/she needs to make his own itinerary and cut the number of destinations in half.

linda_77

Whatever you do in Europe consider that the amount of things to see is directly proportional to centuries of history and architecture preserved. Because Athens for instance you can see in 1, max 2 days; apart from Parthenon and archeological museum u have a city entirely rebuilt in 1960's. Rome is exhausting and it requires at least 4 full days, London and Paris could be seen in 4 days each, Prague in 2 days, but it is so nice there that you might want to stay another day or two. Venice is a big surprise! It's a tiny place that has more to it than any other place i visited, so 4 days for Venice is a must. You will need 2 touristic says to visit all of the islands, like Burano, Torcello, San Giorgio...one day to see Saint Marks with 4 museums on it and at least another full day to see the rest of the city and its 11 centuries if preserved history. Always go on a free tour in each city u visit, but stay away from free tours that are top rated on tripadvisor. In Venice for example top rated tour was terrible, they showed us practically nothing, calling it off the beaten path tour. We visited bunch of free tours in each city, and in Venice i would advise venicefreetours.com, their guide spoke excellent english and helped us saving money throughout the whole Italian trip thanks to his tips and advices.

PetrosB3

You can't see Europe in 30 days, it's not a country it's a continent. Period.

You can still follow a classic route, which includes many of the top destinations of the continent. You start from the NW corner of Europe, and end in the SE corner.
The route goes like that:
1) London: 4 days
2) Amsterdam: 4 days
3) Paris: 4 days
4) Venice: 4 days
5) Rome: 4 days
6) Athens: 4 days
7) Istanbul: 4 days

Remember, you do not teleport to your destinations. You have to take some seriously time-consuming flights that will take almost a whole day. So be generous with the days for each destination. That's a very important advice!

nytraveler

To make any useful suggestions we really need to have more info:

Are you traveling alone? If not, who and how many are in your group?

What month are you planning to travel?

What type of budget do you have? Student super low? Cheap and cheerful? moderate? Want more comfort or luxury?

What are you major interests? Since you list only cities I assume we are not looking at hiking, adventure travel, etc. But why have you picked these cities and what do you plan on spend your time doing? Shopping? fine dining? Wine tasting? Lots of nightlife? Museums? History? Architecture?

With that info people can give you specific recos.

But agree with others you are trying to do many different places - realizing that if you are moving every couple of days it will be a new county, a new language, culture, habits, transit system, dining hours - just becoming familiar with a whole new place.

janisj

A list like PetrosB3's is . . . a list assigning the same time to each of those cities. There is a LOT more to see in some than in others. Plus it implies you'd have 4 days in each, which you wouldn't . . . unless you <i>do</i> teleport

travelerjan

I think we should wait with our help & suggestions until mehul returns with more information... if you click on her name you see a photo of someone who looks to be around 20, so no, she has not done any research, at least any more than you can get on your phone in a few minutes, basic research is what she wants US to do -- give her "Europe 101" on her phone, instantly and free.
Of course I am probably unreasonable to suggest that she start with a guidebook that would FILTER things for her, aimed at a 20s demographic -- such as LET'S GO EUROPE. But that might require spending $4 (1¢ for used copy + $3.99 shipping on Amazon), and surely we can't expect someone who's going to spend many thousands on a month-long trip also to put money out for a reference based on years of young-person travel.

If I'm wrong, my apologies Mehul, I have underestimated you -- please share what backgrounding you yourself have done for this dream trip.

mehul

Thank you everyone for your helpful recommendations .Highly appreciated !! after going through the suggestions I have taken Iceland out from the list and added couple more days . I am planning to visit Europe during 3rd week of september. I believe now I would have enough time to visit & explore the place . The revised plan looks like :

Arrive at London : 5 days > depart via eurostar
Paris : 4 days > depart Via Eurail
Amsterdam : 3 days> depart via night train
prague : 3 days > depart via night train
Swiss Alps :5 days >depart via rail europe
Venice : 4 days >depart via rail europe
Rome : 4 days > fly
Athens : 5 days > fly back home.

Please let me know if the new plan sounds right? Thank you again !!

mehul

P.S. : I referred to the icelandair website. however i cannot book the ticket since i am flying via south america and since it was an outlier & would have required lot of time therefore i decided to take iceland off the list . I will be traveling with my husband and we have moderate budget . We are mostly interested in European history & scenic beauty. Can you please also suggest other travel hacks to keep in mind apart from what are listed above. Thanks again

thursdaysd

I thought you had 30 days? That adds up to 33 without travel to/from Europe. Plus you should count nights rather than days - two nights gives you one day in a place.

If you're going to use trains spend some time learning about European trains and how to buy tickets (NOT from Rail Europe) here: seat61.com

Your outline is quite good (aside from being 33 days), but it's sad to go to Greece and only visit Athens. Both the mainland and the islands deserve time - maybe leave Greece for your next trip.

mjs

I think the outline is quite decent. Doing the schedule by nights is more helpful to actually see how much time you have for a location. I too would leave Athens and the islands for another trip. Consider adding another destination such as Berlin or Florence or Budapest instead. Three full days in Venice is probably fine.