FIRST Europe Trip. Help please?

Old Sep 24th, 2015, 08:22 AM
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FIRST Europe Trip. Help please?

Hi everyone,

My wife and I are planning our very first Europe Trip for June, 2016. It is probably a once in a lifetime trip for us. We are thinking to visit 5-7 places/cities, for around 2 weeks, and our budget is moderate (no crappy dorms and hostels, but cheap hotels where we can leave our luggage so we don't have to carry around are fine). I'm 24 and wife is 22.

Things we're looking for/not looking for:
- NO interest in night life culture, drinking, party scene.
- YES to historical architecture, culture, mainstream tourist spots, the "must go to" spots, great local food

Places we definitely want to hit:
- Paris (although my wife things it's overrated)
- Venice
- Rome
- Florence
- Somewhere in Switzerland (if not too costly)
- I heard Bern is nice?
- Germany perhaps?
- And open to other recommendations

Our budget is around $3000-$4000. We'll be flying in from Chicago, USA.
I heard traveling via trains to places is a good experience/cost efficient(?)
I would love any tips, ideas. Detailed itinerary would be amazing.

Thanks
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 08:31 AM
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Why assume that it is a once in a lifetime trip? You're young, presumably just starting on a career that will allow financially vacation travel.

Does your budget include the transcontinental flight? If so, you won't make it. Assume $100 per night for lodging and that's $1400 of your budget. That is a low estimate for the cities that you list.

I would rule out Switzerland. It might be possible to do low budget travel in that country, but I suspect that one must be experienced in that type of travel. You are not, according to your opening statement.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 08:34 AM
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<5-7 places/cities, for around 2 weeks>
Assuming you mean a total of two weeks, that is way, way too many places for the time. I understand feeling that this is your one shot at it, and a fast-paced trip is fine (despite what some here will tell you), but this is not doable.

If you search this Board, you will find many detailed itineraries for the places you're interested in. But my first suggestion is to figure out which are must-do's for you (pick three at most) and go from there.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 08:35 AM
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You will hear again and again that you are trying to see too many places in too short a time. This generally makes for a rushed and unhappy experience. In two weeks (minus day of arrival with jetlag, and factoring in travel between destinations), you would truly get to experience about 4 places. Maybe start honing in on your (limited) bases which are ABSOLUTES....
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 08:40 AM
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The more stops you have, the more expensive the trip gets and the less time you have to see things.

Keep in mind that you lose up to a 1/2 day each time you change locations: have breakfast, pack, check out of hotel, get to train station, find train, train trip, get from train station to new hotel, check in, drop bags, now it is time for lunch.

Train travel in Italy is fantastic. If you book the tickets ahead of time, you can get substantial savings.

IMO, trying to see Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome in 14 days is pushing it, let alone trying to cram in one more location. Assuming you actually have 14 full days in Europe (not counting the day it takes to get there and the day it takes to get home) your schedule would look something like this:

Day 1: arrive in Venice (jetlag)
Day 2: Venice
Day 3: Venice
Day 4: train to Florence/Florence
Day 5: Florence
Day 6: Florence
Day 7: train to Rome/Rome
Day 8: Rome
Day 9: Rome
Day 10: Rome
Day 11: fly to Paris/Paris
Day 12: Paris
Day 13: Paris
Day 14: Paris

How you allocate the days between your destinations will depend on what you want to see in each destination. A few good guidebooks will help you choose.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 08:41 AM
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Does your budget include airfare?
I'd eliminate Switzerland right away as it is just very expensive.
My first step is always to scope out airfares, using kayak or whatever website you like. Start searching open jaw (aka multi city) flights, for example into Paris and out of Rome.
Once you have narrowed down your list, make a list of destinations and how much time it takes to get between them. A good rule of thumb (meant to be broken like all rules) is three days per place. Adjust that to your interests. Paris and your Italian choices would be a perfect FIRST trip--be an optimist!
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 09:03 AM
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You need to clarify your budget. For 2 people you need to allocate at least $2K for airfare. Ad 14 nights at $100 each for hotel (seriously budget price for these cities, esp if you want good AC) that leaves you only $600 for 4 days or $42 per day for food, entrance to museums/sights and local transit. And noting for intercity flights (Paris to Italy) or trains.

Sorry - with this you won't be able to afford to see many sights and will be limited to supermarket sandwiches or buying food from street markets for picnics.

If you have $4K plus airfare this is doable.

But you do need to cut back on the number of places or you will spend a very large part of your time in transit rather than sightseeing.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 10:21 AM
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That's way too many places to try to get to in the amount of time you have. You need to cut your list in half (at least).
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 10:28 AM
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You are young and once you see Europe you'll want to go back. So think of it as your "first in a lifetime" trip.

I'd do Italy, although as indicated above your budget is quite low and probably impossible if it includes airfare. Venice, Florence and Rome (as well as many other places in Italy) offer what you're looking for. (You and we travel for the same reasons)

You'd be happy in Paris too (except food better in Italy these days) , but for budgetary and timing reasons, I'd leave it for your next trip.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 10:46 AM
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Tips: Less (stops) is more (fun, cost-effective, etc). You need to start by cutting the number of places you want to visit. If you have 14 nights on the ground in Europe, I'd recommend 3 or a maximum of 4 places.

Fly into your first city and out of your last city.

Choosing places close together will be less costly and will take less travel time.

Consider going shoulder season - not June July, Aug.

Forget Switzerland this trip, as it is the most expensive destination. Three of your destinations are in Italy - perhaps make this an all-Italy trip. If so try for a cooler month than June even May is a bit better, but March or April might be better yet (and prices will be lower).
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 10:47 AM
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I'd agree that you may be trying to stuff too many places into two weeks. You could easily spend your time in one country, or in a couple of larger cities with some day trips to smaller towns.

Take a look at Emirates Airlines and watch for their sales. In May, we used Delta and Southwest points to get from ABQ to New York, then flew from JFK to Milan in May for $400 RT each on Emirates.

We stayed 11 nights in Italy, renting Airbnb apartments in Milan, Rome, and Florence, and stayed a couple of nights in an expensive hotel in Siena and one night at an agriturismo near San Gimignano.

Even with having to pay full price for a couple of train tickets and spending a night in NYC on the way home, we spent about $3000 total on this trip, so it can be done.

If you're interested in details on our Italy trip, here's a link: http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...y-may-2015.cfm

Lee Ann
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 10:57 AM
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It's a fair bet your wife is a better person than I was when I was 22, but when I was 22 and I thought somewhere was someplace I wouldn't find thrilling, but went along with someone else's desire to see it, if I wasn't thrilled when I got there, and if they weren't either, I said something like "I told you so". Now that I am older, I just think it and don't say it.

I can see you have avoided the mistake of marrying me, but I would still suggest that unless BOTH of you can't wait to see certain parts of Europe, then pick the places BOTH of you are really looking forward to seeing and don't imagine are "overrated." If it turns out you go to Rome and look at each other and say: "What a lot of hype" -- well, at least the 2 of you made the mistake together.

Paris will still be there if later in your lives your wife gets a true urge to see it. But many many people have gone to Paris -- even some who couldn't wait to see it -- and were disappointed and much preferred other places. I wouldn't take the chance on spending your precisous bucks and time seeing places that don't excite your imagination and travel urges.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 11:01 AM
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I heard traveling via trains to places is a good experience/cost efficient(?)
I would love any tips, ideas.>

Yes in deedy trains are superb, blowing along the rails at speeds of up to 200 mph at times - and in cities cars are useless and in Italian towns not even allowed into city centres in many cities.

Well for lots of great info on trains check www.budgeteuropetravel.com (check their free online European Planning & Rail Guide for lots of rail itineraries in various countries; www.seat61.com and www.ricksteves.com.

a general itinerary that makes sense would be to start in Paris - go thru Switzerland and stop in say the Interlaken area, to many the absolute highlight of Alpine Switzerland.

then bop by train down to Venice - Florence - end in Rome and fly out of there.

Forget Germany as it is an outlier from your other wish lists and you simply do not have enough time.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 11:05 AM
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typo -- "buys value"

money doesn't. Developing taste gets you value. Money never will.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 11:06 AM
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Bravo for going to Europe. You will want to return.

You are both very young. At ages 22 & 24, you are able to go, so unless one of you has an illness, there is no reason to think you can't return in a few years.

It isn't just a matter of two many places in 14 days. The budget simply does not work. Advice so far is good. June is summer, so $1,000 for plane fare is probably minimum. The $100 per night is likely as cheap as you can go without staying in a hostel, though some are nice. If you stay someplace cheaper away from the city center, you will just spend more money (and time) going back and forth.

So, that is $3,400, leaving $600. Honestly, I do not think you can do it on that, even eating supermarket sandwiches, while paying admission to museums, using subways in Paris, flying from Paris to Venice and taking trains from Venice to Florence to Rome. You either need more money or cut the trip to ten days and do either two major cities like Paris and Rome, or stick with one country, say Italy.

My reco is to cut the trip to 10 days and visit Italy. That would free up $400, giving you $100.00 a day for food, transportation and entrance fees. Still tight for two people, but close to doable.

Don't feel you would be cheated. Italy is one of the most beautiful countries anywhere: ancient ruins and architecture, art, food, natural scenery, you name it, Italy has it. There is so much to see in each of these places, you could fill days, if not weeks or months. However, if you feel you want to once you are there, you could do a few days trips to see even more places nearby: Sienna or Luca and Pisa outside Florence, Orvieto and Ostia Antica outside Rome, the islands of Venice.

It would still be an amazing trip, and no matter how many more you take, I bet this would be remembered as your "trip of a life time."
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 11:24 AM
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Sandralist is right about the food. I think many people, myself included, just say supermarket when we really mean markets and stands, etc. rather than full blown restaurant meals. Venice, just for example, which is an expensive city even for mediocre food, has fabulous sandwich stands and at least a couple of decent cafeterias. They also have an open air food market where you could get fruit, cheese, etc. It is a bit more effort than just plopping down wherever, but you get to know the city more, so that is a plus.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 11:27 AM
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To be near Florence and not at least see if for a brief day would to me be daft - a place you gotta see if not love. Most fall in love with it however.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 12:44 PM
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No, you don't "have" to see Florence. I am in Italy right now for the sixth time and I have yet to visit Florence.

Nor do you need to spend $200/night for the two of you on a hotel. For instance I know a B&B in Venice that is 85 euro a night for a double in high season ($95). It is out beyond the Arsenale, but two minutes from a vaparetto stop, and you're going to want a vaparetto pass anyway.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 01:23 PM
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First of all, if you could manage to travel in February or March rather than June, you could save a lot of money on air fare and on hotels. If that's not possible, how about November?

I just looked at the cost of flights into Paris and home from Rome this November, and found some in the $950 per person range. Flights in February are about the same. However, for next June, the price jumps to about $1300. You can expect the same sort of percentage increase for hotels. June is high season in all the places you want to visit.

I've traveled all over Europe on a tight budget, even to Switzerland. When I was younger, even up into my 50s, I often stayed in hostels, some of which were very nice indeed. Most of them had a communal kitchen so I could prepare some meals and save a little money on restaurants. I even stayed in hostels when traveling with my kids.

Now I can afford better hotels, so it's been a while since I've stayed in a hostel. However, I rarely spend as much as NYTraveler seems to consider the absolute minimum for a double room. We almost never spend €200 for a double room, and didn't even spend that much in Switzerland this summer.

I use www.booking.com to find lodgings. In larger cities, you can specify the area of the city, or just use "XXX center city" as the destination. You can sort the list by price, and then go down the list until you find a lodging with a guest rating that isn't dreadfully low. For cheap hotels, I consider 6.5 a sort of minimum, but it also depends on the city. Some nationalities are more generous with their points than others. Once you've got a short list, read the guest reviews to see if the things people are complaining about would be deal-breakers for you.

On Booking.com and other booking sites, many hotels have two prices: a pay-now price and a higher pay-when-you-check-out price. You can sometimes save considerably with the pay-now price, but you can't change or cancel the reservation without forfeiting what you paid. I wouldn't take this discount unless the savings were considerable, and they usually aren't.

It's usually not true that you can save lots of money staying out in the boondocks. Most cities have a central location, often near train stations, where lodgings are cheap. If you stay too far out, you'll waste time and money on transportation, and be hampered by limited choices of places to eat.

There are many ways to save money on food. Even supermarkets (at least what we call supermarkets in Italy) usually sell excellent cheeses and salamis, sometimes with a focus on local products, and you can buy the makings of a nice meal in your hotel room without cooking. Some rolls, salami, prosciutto, cheese, fruit and wine, and you'll have a lovely meal. Small grocers will usually make a sandwich to order and charge you just for the ingredients: so much for 100 grams of prosciutto, and so much for a roll, and they'll assemble it for you.

I'm not sure why Sandralist thinks there aren't many supermarkets in Rome, Florence, and Venice. There are plenty, although they may be small compared to US supermarkets. Here we call a supermarket any store that belongs to one of the chains of supermarkets. The Sigma group, for example, has supermarkets all over Italy, operating under different names. Some are very large and some are tiny mom-and-pop operations. They tend to carry many local products in addition to national and international brands.

Markets, including farmer's markets, as mentioned by Sandralist, are great places to buy the makings of a meal. Some covered city markets have tables where you can sit and eat your purchases.

In Italy, bars often serve light inexpensive meals. In touristy areas, you usually pay more to sit at a table, and you should make sure to check on this before sitting down.

Self-service cafeterias can have inexpensive meals. We ate at one in Lucerne, on the top floor of a department store, that had some very nice inexpensive choices; I would imagine other Swiss cities have similar places.

In Rome, there's a self-service cafeteria on the top level of Termini station. The food is not the best Rome has to offer, but you can get a decent meal at a modest price. There's a smaller self-service restaurant, whose name I forget, on the main level of the station, alongside track 24.

Florence has a decent self-service cafeteria on Via de Pecori, very near the Duomo. It's called Leonardo, and is on the second floor, easy to miss if you're not looking. There's also a self-service restaurant in Venice, near St. Mark's Square, where we ate once, but I don't remember the details.

Even when I'm on a very tight budget, I try to have one nice meal in each place I visit, even if it means eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the rest of the time. A "nice meal" doesn't necessarily mean an expensive one. There are plenty of nice osterie or trattorie that have good local specialties. Avoid the lists of restaurants you find on the internet, because they're almost always on the expensive side. Just follow your nose and learn a bit about the local specialties so you get the best that's on offer.

Another way to save money is to focus on the hidden gems of the city, rather than its top ten must-sees. Every city has some lesser-known museums and archaeological sites that are on the same level as the famous and expensive ones. If you want to see such famous museums as the Louvre or the Vatican Museums, you should definitely try to travel off season. Wild horses couldn't drag me to either of those museums in June.

Usually tourist passes don't save you any money. Even bus passes won't save money if you're willing to walk a good deal. Walking is the best way to see a city.

I agree that you're young and it's very unlikely that this will be your last trip to Europe. However, if you really want to see this many places, here's a way you could do it without making it into a forced march.

Paris: 4 nights

Take a direct train to Basel. You could go on to Bern from there, but you might also just make a day trip to Bern, which is about an hour away. Basel is cheaper than Bern, and has better direct connections to Paris and Italy.

3 nights Basel

Take a direct train from Basel to Milan and change for a train to Venice.

Venice 2 nights

Florence 2 nights

Rome 4 nights

That's 15 nights, which might be more than you can spare. You could cut a night from Paris if you're half-hearted about that. Or you could stay only one night in Florence. Since it's not far from either Venice or Rome, you could leave Venice early and leave Florence late, to get nearly two full days in Florence.

I would buy the airfare about three months before you travel. If you buy too early, you may miss out on some sales. Right now, several airlines are offering fall sales that were just announced in late August or early September. We picked up round trip tickets to New York for less than €500 round trip.

As soon as you have the air fares taken care of, reserve the hotels and then buy the train tickets. There are lots of bargains for train tickets if you buy three or four months in advance. However, like the discounted hotel prices, these bargain train tickets are cast in stone, so be sure you've got everything else lined up before you commit to train tickets.

Assuming you can get flights for around $2000, I would expect that you could keep to your budget. I would assume that you would spend an average of about €90 per night for a double room in the off season. We can assume that would be around $1500 for 14 nights. I would guess train fares would run to about $500 for the two of you if you buy well in advance. That would already be $4000, without considering food, sightseeing, and local transportation. If you're very careful, you should be able to eat on average for about €50 per day, and I would estimate €20 per day for entrances, metro and bus fares, and the like. To be safe, you'd need about another $1500 for your trip. If your budget doesn't include air fare, you should be all right.
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Old Sep 24th, 2015, 01:26 PM
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I meant to remove that sentence about being able to keep to your budget. After I added it all up, I realized that you'd probably come up short, unless the budget doesn't include air fare.
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