One thing that I did while planning our 13 week trip was to make a spreadsheet with a line dedicated to each day. Each day was then broken up in to times: 8-1, 1-6, 6-10. I would pencil in the places I wanted to see for each location. It wasn't so much that we were going to follow the schedule day to day but it did give me a good idea of how long to stay in each place. Sometimes I thought we needed X amount of time in a place, but then when I spelled it out on the spreadsheet, it really helped with the allotment of time. Be sure to fill in travel time also from place to place. It will definitely help with your deciding how much time to stay in each place when you see it written out on paper.

That's a super idea, michele_d, especially for such a long trip... maybe do it on a Google doc so you can make changes easily.

<maybe do it on a Google doc so you can make changes easily.>

Great idea! It really helped with the planning. I even penciled in half days every couple weeks for laundry.

Hi,

I would advise you not to skip Florence as it's such a lovely & arty city not to be missed. Florence is not a big city but it has nice nearby cities to explore such as Siena, Tuscany hills, San Gimigano. I would recommend a 2-3 night stay if possible.

You should consider stop by Hallstatt and possibly stay a night if you are in Austria (closer to Salzburg). It's a beautiful hill town, you can easily spend a day there and not get bored.

Netherlands is not all about Amsterdam, nearby cities such as The Hague, Haarlem, Rotterdam worth a visit too.

I would remove either Scandinavia cities if I were you as this can be a separate trip by itself as you can easily spend a month there. If you have one extra month then it's ok.

Also, cut down the number of flights especially the consecutive days as you'll get tired moving from airport to airport.

<I would like to thank everyone for their advice but I will no longer be commenting anymore as I don't think arguing on a forum is needed.>

I'm really sorry you feel that way about this thread. People were just giving their opinions, which of course don't always agree.

That said, for preliminary planning I do think guidebooks are less confusing than internet travel forums.

But please don't be afraid to come back if you want help working out details. People are very skilled here and have a wealth of knowledge about specific cities, hotels, trains, etc. etc.

"That said, for preliminary planning I do think guidebooks are less confusing than internet travel forums."

Amen.

I would like to thank everyone for your advice. We had a fantastic time and with everyone's advice we were able to follow a very doable itinerary. It was still short stays but enough to get a taste in each place and I couldn't recommend it enough. I apologise for getting worked up and offended I was very overwhelmed trying to plan everything with lots of different advice and opinions but we did change things and places we visited according to feedback.

PK92, thank you very much for coming back with your post. Also, it takes a big person to apologize so sweetly. Planning such a long trip is hard and it is easy to get frustrated. It is great to know you had a good trip and that some advice from the forum was useful. That is really what everyone wanted for you.

PK92 I'm so glad to hear that you had a fantastic trip. Thank you for coming back and telling us. The opinions of everybody here, no matter how much it crossed with your owns, aim only at getting you a pleasant voyage.