rachelmm

Hi there!

This coming Spring I am Studying Abroad in London, England. I hope to explore as much of Europe as I possibly can. I will be in Europe from Early January to Early June and I will be traveling on my weekends due to school but I hope to see as much of this part of the world as I can! I am most concerned with travel routes to each of these places because I obviously have to travel back to London each time.

Money is not necessarily an issue but I'd like to be conscious of it, traveling by train, air hopefully and trying to use either airbnb or local hostels for rest. I will most likely be with 2-3 other people as well.

As of now, this is my list of hopefuls, it's obviously quite extensive so if you could comment feedback on best places and opinions that would be immensely helpful.

London( Leeds, Manchester, Brighton, Oxford), England
Cardiff, Wales
Norway
Stockholm, Sweden
Finland
Dublin, (Kilarney, Cork,)Ireland
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Glasgow(Inverness, Edinburgh), Scotland
Paris, France
Monaco, South France
Alicante, Spain
Lisbon, Porto, Portugal
Brussels, Luxembourg, Belgium
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Germany
Copenhagen, Denmark
Oslo, Norway
Budapest, Hungary
Vienna, Austria
Prague, Czech Republic
Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Italy
Patras, Kalamata, Nafplion, (Tolo), Corinth, Thessaloniki, Athens, Greece
Istanbul, Turkey
Cairo, Egypt

Thank you in advance and let me know if you have any questions!
Rachel

yorkshire

What is it you are asking for--which places make good weekend getaways?
You're young, you have money, and you have 6 months--just go, girl!
Seriously, I guess some places work better in a weekend than others so I would be doing some transport research with websites like skyscanner. I do hope you can save some money and have time to travel a bit when you finish in June, rather than just rely on weekends, which will be exhausting.

hetismij2

Norway is a big country. Where did you want to visit?
Oh I see further down the list you have Oslo listed. OK. Expensive, as is most of Scandinavia. Even in hostels or airbnb.

Luxembourg, unless you mean the Belgian province, is a country in it's own right.

Easiest way is to look into cheap airlines for much of the places you want to visit. Paris you can do by train. Brussels too.
Amsterdam you can either go the Eurostar/Thalys route or get the train/boat/train Harwich Hook of Holland route.

For advice on trains in Britain and Europe have a look at www.seat61.com

For cheap flights think Ryanair, Norwegian, EasyJet, but do look at the legacy airlines too as they often have some great deals on flights to EUrope. The earlier you book, whether train or plane the cheaper it will be.

Some places on your list are just too far to do as a weekend trip. Maybe you can combine some of those at the end of your study period?

sandralist

Between January and March, some destinations will have nicer weather than others. So think about going to warmer destinations first. Also, you have listed an awful lot of capital cities that are hard to conquer in a weekend, plus often are actually a bit dead on weekends (like Milan).

When you research cheap flights, don't overlook flights to airports in Verona or Sevilla or Girona or Bologna or Naples or Palermo or Cologne or Marseille etc. You might find bargains, and you also might find it more engaging to go to an interesting intimate Italian city like Verona -- which has Roman ruins, renaissance piazzas, great wine etc -- than try to get a grip on Rome, a much bigger place.

But in the end, if you really want to see someplace like Venice more than anything.... carpe diem!

sandralist

One other tip:

British newspapers often have a lot of travel articles about good weekend destinations. The Guardian website has entire archive of short-hop weekend travel ideas.

HappyTrvlr

Replace Monaco with Nice for a better experience. Have fun!

Southam

www.skyscanner.com is good for budget airlines in Europe. Be aware that air fares, and long-distance trains too, are far cheaper when bought months in advance. Getting the urge on Wednesday to travel on Friday will be considerably more expensive than planning ahead. While long-distance buses are less common, this article explains some of the services http://www.eurocheapo.com/bus/buslines.php
An essential travel tool for railroads is www.seat61.com

rachelmm

oh wow, thank you all so much for your feedback!! Yorkshire, yes I will hopefully have some leftover time to travel come June but we'll have to see how the earlier months go in terms of money and which ones I'd like to see again. What suggestions do you have? I' in the midst of planning so any advice would be wonderful! Hetismij2, what places were you thinking from the list? Sandralist, thank you so much for those suggestions! What other cities (in other countries) do you think would be good, if you have knowledge of them of course!

kerouac

If you have a "normal" travel budget, you will quickly remove some of those places from your list, because the price range goes from 1 to x5.

My main recommendation would be to wait until you arrive to start making plans, probably along with other people in the same program, since they should have all sorts of valuable information that will help you to make decisions.

Also, with the low cost airlines, some places are super easy to get to and others not at all.

And frankly, if you are just talking about weekends, there are not many places where you can reasonably go. For longer school holidays, that is another matter.

Finally, I must admit that I really cannot imagine a "study abroad" program where a lot of weekends would be not need to be devoted to actually studying rather than travelling.

kerouac

would be not need = would not be needed

rachelmm

Yeah, thank you kerouac that's why I'm asking for specific places! And I have the month of April off (which I should have mentioned above) to travel around wherever!

powhatangal

Rachelmm - I spent my junior year abroad studying in Paris many years ago. I had a very limited budget but managed to spend a weekend in Amsterdam (took an overnight bus there from Paris). Also traveled to England, Scotland, Switzerland and Spain but those trips were longer than a weekend. I traveled over school breaks and only once did I miss a couple of classes to travel.
I spent many evenings and weekends studying for my classes but also considered my traveling as part of my education.
Good luck with your studies abroad!