We are planning a trip in June flying into Frankfurt and wanting to go to the following places:

Mainz
Dachau
Berchtesgaden
Geona, Italy
Rome
Cesenatico
Brno, Czech Republic
Prague
Meissen, Germany
Leipzig
then back to Frankfurt.

Just wanting advice, travel trips, warnings etc. We are planning on renting a car and driving. Are we leaving enough time to visit each place? Any recommendations on traveling between countries?

Have you looked at a map of Europe???? This is not possible in 13 days. Eleven destinations spread over a vast part of three countries in 13 days . . .

Use www.viamichelin.com to find the driving time and distances between two points and stops in between. Add 20% to the time given once off the autobahn or similar roads. Then rethink your desired stops.

Ack!!!

I agree with janisj...way too much in too little time. Back to the drawing board.

For thirteen days you should aim for 4 locations at the most. Plan to lose 1/2 of a day when changing locations. This will bring your 13 days down to 11, less than three days in each location.

Get a map. Look at the distances between your locations. You will do nothing but drive from place to place. Also, seriously consider flying open-jaw: into one airport and out of another. Weigh the option of this against the car drop off charges for dropping in another country.

>>Plan to lose 1/2 of a day when changing locations<< That is a good rule of thumb when using trains. But - driving, you lose more than 1/2 a day every time you move - the basic drive time plus having to fight traffic into the city centers, trying to find parking, etc.

You will lose a full day between some of those city pairs.

I don't know of any Geona in Italy. Do you mean Genova? If so, those three places are nowhere near each other.

I suggest you stay in only one or two countries. Given the number of places you want to see in Germany, I would suggest just staying there the whole time. It's a very big country, and 13 days is not too much time to spend there. I would definitely skip Italy, which is way out of your way.

If you want to visit multiple countries, it's almost always best to plan multi-city, or open-jaw, flights. For instance, you could fly into Frankfurt, rent a car, visit all the places you want to see in Germany, then drop the car and take the train (or fly) to the Czech Republic. Then fly home from Prague.

Because of the number of high-speed trains in Europe, it's usually faster to travel between places by train rather than by car. I don't know about Germany and the Czech Republic, but in Italy it's also almost always cheaper to take the train, especially if you buy the tickets far enough in advance to get good discounts.

Just out of curiosity, why did you choose Cesenatico as one of your destinations in Italy? I live a few hours south of there, but I've never been there, and haven't heard anything that would have induced me to visit. Genova is also an unusual destination for a tourist in Italy, but I'm not sure that's what you meant by "Geona".

@bvlenci - thanks for the info. Not sure why my husband picked Cesenatico - I guess he looked it up and thought it looked nice We don't have anything in place yet. Just weighing the options and trying to decide. I think we are leaning more towards an open jaw flight now. Where are you from? Any places you recommend as a "must see"?