You don't need 4 nights in Belgium. 2 in Amsterdam is not enough. Take at least one from Belgium and add to the Netherlands. There is more to the Netherlands than Amsterdam.

Night trains are not as easy as you think and some are downright dreadful. If you want to sleep you need to pay extra for privacy otherwise you'll be sharing a six berth couchette with other people and their snoring. Flights between certain destinations are cheaper than trains - that is something you'll need to sort out given your budget. For example you can fly Vueling from Barcelona to Paris for 30-40 euro if you book early enough. Same with Easyjet Paris to Rome as another example. If you're set on trains, this website will help.

http://www.seat61.com/

You wrote:

>>>we aren't interested in the major tourist places we like to get to meet the locals and learn their culture so I did say small towns were best <<<

If this is what you want out of all the expense and effort of a trip to Europe, your itinerary is odd, because it is not going to get you want in the slightest. Not only are you not going to any small towns, the brief amount of time you are spending in each city is guarantee that you will be heading to the Big Tourst Attractions, surrounded with souvenir shops and postcard stands, big crowds of other foreign tourists, no locals at all.

Reading your itinerary, it's like flipping through one of those packs of 20 postcards with a picture of all the best known tourist icons, with only a few exceptions.

If you want to see the tourist icons, there is absolute nothing wrong with that, although at week 4 and week 8 of your itinerary I would spend at least 4 or 5 days in one place just to do laundry and get off the merry go round for a spell.

However, if you want to experience the small towns and local culture of Europe, then you need a different and more imaginative set of destinations. Europe is filled with great small towns and cities overflowing with charm, great food, and very interesting historical sights. Most people who visit them leave Europe with a much better understanding of Europe than those who go for 2 or 3 days to all the most famous tourist draws, plus they have an unforgettable experience and loads of fun.

Sandralist do you have any recommendations for any must see small towns? These were just general ideas of where to stay and how long in each country, most blogs that I have been reading only list most of the big cities so it's hard to know which small towns to go to.

This could get you started:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...m#last-comment

PK, great question.

Unless you have a pressing reason to visit Hamburg, I'd scratch that and perhaps add the time to the alpine area south of Munich, such as Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Your itinerary doesn't seem to allow for very many smaller towns where you might experience what you're looking for.

What about this old town hall

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altes_..._%28Bamberg%29

where the special smoked beer comes from, you open a bottle and can smell the bonfire straight away.

or pretty little Dresden https://www.dresden.de/index_en.php

This plan just makes me dizzy.

I'd try to pare it down to 12 stops, and see where that gets you. You need to dig deeper in your research. I'd get a bunch of guidebooks from the library and pore over those for awhile until you can come up with a more reasonable plan.

Just a small sample of how rushed/practically undoable your (new) plan is:

>>France
5 nights in Paris
2 nights in Nice

Italy
2 nights Milan
2 nights Cinque terre
Stop in pisa on the way to florence
2 nights Florence
4 nights Rome
2 nights Venice <<

Will give you 4 days (and the first day or two jet lagged) in Paris, a little over 1 day in Nice, a little over 1 day in Milan, 1 day in the CT, 1 day in Florence, 3 and a skosh days in Rome, 1 day in Venice.

The 1 nighters will net you a few hours in each city and the 2 nighters = 1 to 1.5 days depending on how far you have to travel.

How in heck can you expect to meet any locals or experience ANY culture when you are in a place 1 to 1.5 days????

And night trains don't really help that much. There aren't all that many and assuming you can sleep, you still have to get to your hotel, hope they will hold you luggage for you until you can check in in the late afternoon, then head back out to sight see.

12 weeks is wonderful -- but you are trying to see all of Europe in 12 weeks. It isn't just the crazy dashing from place to place -- You will save a FORTUNE if you cut back the number of destinations and take fewer trains.

get yourself down your local library and get hold of this book

http://shop.lonelyplanet.com/europe/...ravel-guide-8/

you'll then have a better idea of what you want to see and how to go about it

rule number one when planning a 12 week trip - don't plan too much, your plans will change as you meet fellow travellers and discover places where you want to hangout for longer

You started off saying you wanted to backpack through Europe as inexpensively as possible. But you don't make clear whether you are planning to use hotels for such a trip (*very* expensive and very inflexible if you plan on booking ahead with an itinerary like you suggest) or hostels/couchsurfing/airbnb (much less expensive and much more flexible).

My most urgent advice:
Whatever you do, build in lots of flexibility. After a month of rushing from hotel to hotel every couple of days I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be tired of travelling and just want a couple of days to relax and unwind.

Next:
really think about what you want to do and what you want to get out of the trip.

Do you want just to quickly see the postcard sights? Or do you want to experience Europe and its people? *** Or, since its your honeymoon, do you want to relax with each other and experience each other while getting to know each other? ***

(*** Warning: travel is very exhausting and creates irritations. On a trip that you outline you will be in very close quarters without much interaction with other people - just with your travel partner Most of my friends who backpacked through Europe for 3 months were good buddies when they left, but would get irritated with each other and end up going their separate ways for a few days or weeks part way through. And even though my wife and I get along great, and have similar interests, on most of our 3 or 4 week trips have a day or two where we get really irritated with each other.***)

Imagine a person from Europe coming to Australia to tour.

If they wanted to meet locals and get a feel for what Australia is really like, how would they do it? What would be their impression if they just stayed in a different hotel in a different city every night or two? How would you recommend they tour Australia?

If in the end you decide what you really want to do is to rush through Europe flipping through sights like flipping through postcards, then fine, alter your plans just a bit and flip through as you intend. To each his own, and lots of people actually prefer to do that.

But please, take at least one bit of advice:

Plan to spend at least 3 or 4 days every few weeks in one laid back place just to decompress and to catch your breath, to unwind with and enjoy each other, to wash clothes, to relax by a pool or in a pub or just to wander. If you devote 10% or your tour to that, I'll bet in a few years that 10% will form most of your great memories.

PK92,

I don't really believe in "must sees" and I am more familiar with Italy (where I live) than any other country in Europe, but you would actually have a wonderful experience of Italy in September/October in places like Bologna (you can visit Florence as a day trip from there) or Naples, or if you want smaller places, try Spoleto or Lucca.

I'm sure people could give you similar suggestions for all the other countries. Many people sing the praises of smaller and less touristed French and German cities that are still quite easy to get to. When I planned my trip to Poland (which I unfortunately had to cancel), I was much more intrigued by Gdansk than Krakow as a way of sidestepping the picturesque ye-olde-timey-tourist magnets in hopes of understanding every day Polish life better.

Of course all the places I am mentioning have tourists and tourist attractions, and plenty of photo ops. I love to see spectacular things and historic sites. And places like Rome or Paris or Dublin have huge native populations that outnumber the tourists, and you don't have to work too hard to get away from it.

But you really truly can visit Europe and go to smaller, less touristed places and find fabulous things, eat delicious food, have memorable experiences and not pay as much as you do in Big Ticket Tourist Towns. So if you are dying to see the picture postcard attractions, but are curious to see historic Europe and how people are living in it today, it is easy and fun to do, with lots of good train connections -- and plenty of opportunity to dip into seeing some of the great sights on day trips from nearby.

If you continue to think that might be fun, you could start another thread asking people for their favorite "secondary" cities of France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc -- places that surprised them for being so interesting and beautiful, and left them wondering why more tourists don't pile in there.

Sorry for my typo - I meant to write: "So if you are NOT dying to see the picture postcard attractions, but are curious to see historic Europe... etc."

Here is thread where people talk about their favorite smaller cities in Europe:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...500000-pop.cfm

We have never been to Europe before so yes we do want to see many of the famous sites but we do want to experience the culture also.

As for accomodation and such we do not know anyone in Europe so we won't be couch surfing but we will be staying wherever is cheapest (will not sleep in a shared room as heard too many bad stories of things being stolen while a sleep and hey it's our honeymoon) whether it be a backpackers with our own room but shared facilities, BnB, hotel, apartment what have you.

I have heard good things about Southern France and that it is amazing but I have been told it is very hard to backpack through and only mostly has hotels no hostels. That's why I only picked Paris and Nice.

As for Hamburg someone recommended it but am happy to change this if there is somewhere better.

Italy- tbh I have heard only bad things about Naples so was avoiding it on purpose. As for Bologne, I have heard about this as an amazing destination for its food especially the pasta but alas I am a celiac so no gluten/wheat/barley so places that main focus on food is not of much interest to me as I can't eat it unfortunately. But if there is more to Bologne than the food I would considering going here instead of Florence. I will do some more research here.

Kraków- we are only going here as my fiancé wants to go to auschwitz. Is there a better place to stay that is still easy access to this?

Thanks for the small town recommendations I am trying to work out where I can fit them in and what to give a miss. And thank you everyone in general your feedback is very helpful :)

Avoiding Naples on purpose? There are all sorts of untruths about this city and 'dangerous' is one of them. Naples is not dangerous, it is not 'crazy', it is not dirty - at least any more so than any other two thousand year old city.

What it *is* is a culturally rich city with incredible food, sightseeing, people and it is still cheap. You can get a room in Naples for 30 euro per night. Good luck with that in Venice.

You say you want to 'experience culture' - well Naples is as good as it gets as it is still unspoilt by Globus and Trafalgar buses and mobs of tourists following umbrellas and clogging the streets.

I see Barcelona is on your schedule. Barcelona has worse street crime statistics than Naples but no one knows or speaks about that.

I agree totally with Blueeyedcod regarding Naples.

"As for Bologne, I have heard about this as an amazing destination for its food especially the pasta but alas I am a celiac so no gluten/wheat/barley so places that main focus on food is not of much interest to me as I can't eat it unfortunately. But if there is more to Bologne than the food I would considering going here instead of Florence."

I think you have a misconception about Bologna and generally about Italian cuisine. It's not all pasta in Bologna or anywhere else, and IMO you shouldn't skip a city/region in Italy based solely on the need to avoid gluten. But, as you would in any country, you need to understand the descriptions on menus and be able to communicate to the waiter your need to avoid gluten.

As for Bologna (and anywhere else being recommended or considered), you need to do your own research to know if a place will interest you enough to include it on this already complicated trip.