Excuse me - how can you judge a city that you don't obviously know at all? If you think two days are enough, you've only passed by the few best-known sights that every ignorant mass tourist from all over the world "knows" (i.e. by their name and from outside...) - and you have seen NOTHING of Venice. Personally, as I have already told more than once on this forum, I've spent there at least six, but rather eight months, all my visits over the last 15 or 16 years summed up, and I'm still FAR from knowing Venice entirely. So please: simply stick to posting on subjects you know anything about, thank you.

Are you flying into London because of the air fare you can get? I would have chimed in to say Ira's plan is best, except for your post on Berlin being a necessity. I attended the World Cup in Orlando, so I know what you mean about having those tickets - they WILL be used! OK, here's my suggestion. you still have too many stops. Amsterdam seems a mere stopover given the days you've allotted, so I would eliminate it. If you CAN bring yourself to ditch one more destination, I would do that. Why? It allows you to do some serious daytripping out of your other destinations to give you a sense of the countryside in contrast to the big cities. And, if you daytrip this way, you can plan it or you can wing it, as you choose. Or, simply add the time to Venice, a terrific honeymoon destination, or...or...!

So, suggest: London 4N; chunnel/Eurostar to Paris, 3N; fly to Berlin, 3N; fly to Venice, 2N; ES train to Rome, 4N.

I based the above on your available 16 nights. If I miscounted and you have more, add to Venice or Paris or wherever most appeals...Even with this plan, you are doing a lot of moving around, making for a very active honeymoon. Heed the advice about how much time each move eats into YOUR time! And, remember, most people are wiped out for the first few days after the wedding. Give yourselves a break! Venice is the most laid back of your destinations so far, so I wouldn't shortchange yourselves here.

Geezzzz Franco chill out. It was a joke.

I only stated to them that 2 days is enough for Venice based on his original itinerary. It seems to me that Amsterdam and Venice are places with the least interest for them. The other cities appear to be a higher priority given the days they allotted. Keep in mind everyone has there own taste.

TravelFreak, One thing you want to remember in considering the train vs plane situation (and please share this with your fiancee):

Train stations are centrally located within cities. So while your ride may take more time, it is scenic, and you get on and off at a convenient location near to where you want to be.

Airports are some where outside the city so require more time, cost, hassle to get to, both in departing one city and in arriving the next.

I would definitely consider one overnight train ride in a private cabin because I think it is very romantic and a memorable thing to do.

To include Berlin consider:

Fly into Berlin
<b>Berlin</b> -- 3 nights
<b>Paris</b> -- 5 nights (don't honeymoon without staying in Paris at least 5 nights!) DON'T CUT PARIS!
<b>Venice</b> -- 3 nights
<b>Rome</b> -- 5 nights
Fly home from Rome

Alternates to above plan:

1) Cut 5 nights in Rome and substitute 5 nights in London.

2) Cut 5 nights in Rome and substitute 3 nights Amsterdam and 2 extra nights in Venice.

2)Cut 5 nights in Rome and substitute 3 nights Amsterdam and 2 extra nights in Paris.

Any of the 4 preceding itineraries will work well for you.

Rules of thumb:

A) Don't exceed 4 cities for 16 nights
B) Don't attempt a visit to mega destinations London, Paris, or Rome for less than the bare minimum of 5N/6D.

OH, my. I'm glad we all have different ideas of what's romantic, but an overnight train ride is not romantic to me -- I'd describe it as &quot;pure hell&quot;. Then again, I've never tried to make a &quot;creative&quot; use of a private train cabin on a honeymoon! Well, maybe it could be romantic, and certainly memorable.

Suze has it, all right.

franco, you say &quot;hopscotch, this is not fair. They are first timers in Europe, they're seeking actual advice and not sardonic mockery at their schedule!&quot; I am giving my opinion based on years of travel in Europe. Venice was worth an afternoon. I don't see any &quot;sardonic mockery&quot; in my reply. You love Venice and I think it is a tourist trap. My preference is to sit at a cafe and converse with locals rather than Ooh and Aah at stuff centuries old, unless it is really amazing. Venice is not really amazing and is bloody expensive.

I would take an overnight train any day any where any time before I would fly any plane in Europe. It is a no brainer. You take a bottle of wine, some local cheese, bread rolls, and oranges on board the train. It's like your own little apartment. Make sure you bring a corkscrew! TF168 and spouse are going to love it, if they do it. This will be the adventure of their lives.

You're counting your days and nights wrongly - you've counted lots of days twice. If you have 1 night in Amsterdam you don;t have 2 days there - you have parts of 2 days - or maybe one day total - or maybe just one evening - depending on your travel arrangements.

So - in fact - 4 nights somewhere is actually 3 days. Redo your itinerary on this basis - with actual days of the week - and you'll see what the problem is. (Getting from one place to another often takes most of the day - when you include packing, checking out, getting to the station or airport - actual travel - then getting your luggage, getting transport, finding your hotel, checking in, unpacking - even a little.)

Voila - frequently all you have time left for is dinner.

TravelFreak:

I've been following this, but I'm confused about the number of days. If I'm reading it correctly, your initial post includes 16 nights. But your later post says &quot;(20 days)&quot;. How many NIGHTS will you actually be spending in Europe?

Have you tried using Excel for your itinerary? Make a column for each: day, date, city where you'll sleep that night. On the rows between dates you can enter notes about transportation from place to place. I'd be happy to email you my format if you have Excel.
jeannebab at comcast dot net.

hopscotch - did you notice that you're on the European forum here? We're not, thus, talking about Venice, Las Vegas... there is an even more famous city of that name in Europe, you know?
Just in case, however, that you'd be talking about the same Venice as we are, I think I should consider it quite a relief that you didn't want to spend more than an afternoon there. People who think that dining in an overnight train cabin could be the aventure of anyone's life might be exactly the type of tourists whose superabundance makes it quite tough sometimes for some of us (nessundorma, where are you?) to continue to love Venice.

Hi TravelFreak,

One very important factor to consider - every time you fly you are facing the very real possibility of a major delay, cancellation, lost luggage, etc., etc., etc. With the itinerary you have outlined, even the slightest problem will become a huge problem. Flying isn't as convenient as it used to be!

Good luck and you definitely owe us a trip report.

You really need to sit down with a calendar and mark out your itinerary in detail.

Step 1: List all of the places you want to go to. (done)

Step 2: Figure out a logical order for your stops. Do not base this only on point to point distances. Look at the options for connecting city pairs and see what is fastest/ most economical.

Step 3: Calculate all of the travel time between each city pair. Include your total &quot;hotel to hotel&quot; time including taxis, transit, security etc. This may require some research, and will help you make the &quot;train vs plane&quot; decision. If the total time is even I always opt for trains as it is relaxing and productive time.

Step 4: Get out a calendar (make a bunch of photocopies) and block in your time in each city as well as the travel time between each place. I imagine an individual square on the calendar as starting at 8am and ending at 10pm, that way I can identify 1/2 day blocks of time etc. Colour/Hilite all the time that you are in travel mode - you can now see how much time you ACTUALLY have in each place.

Step 5: Delete a stop, and reshuffle, making for a less hectic itinerary.

Step 6: Start researching hotels etc. At this point if I find one city very $$, and get a deal in another, I may make slight changes, stay an extra night, and take an early train etc.

You mention that your fiance prefers late flights. It is a matter of preference, but I don't like that idea. Knowing that I have a flight coming up always looms over me during the day. It also make for complications checking out of hotels, checking bags etc. I prefer to get up fresh in the morning and go wherever, then have the rest of the day to enjoy the new place.

franco,

Las Vegas sounds Spanish. I've never been there. Is it near Madrid? I was talking about a city in Italy. It's OK for an afternoon, or longer if you have a sack of cash and want to see every tourist on the planet. This is not my kind of travel.

I read your last sentence, &quot;People who .... love Venice,&quot; a half dozen times but I am perplexed. What are you trying to say? Have you ever spoken to a local person in Venice, aside from the ones waiting on you?

Hi guys!

Am taking time out to itemize my itinerary. As we will embark on this trip in June, we still have some time left to plan.

Do you propose extending the Venice part of the journey to 3D/2N and lowering the Rome part to 4D/3N?

And yeah, do I owe you guys a Field Report!

We've met many locals in Venice over the years.

Just go to campos away from the most popular areas after the work day is over and you can meet local people if you are open but not pushy.

I don't know if I'd take anyone who spent only one afternoon in a place as any sort of expert on it. Couldn't have seen (let alone experienced) much of Venice in that amount of time.

Are there tourist traps in Venice? Of course there are, just like there are in Rome and Pisa and Florence and Munich and London and Paris. Is the entire city of Venice a tourist trap? Of course not--unless you think the entire city of Venice is just that portion along &quot;Daytrippers' Alley&quot;--which is pretty much all you would be able to experience in one afternoon.

Rufus is precisely right. And more than just talking to &quot;some&quot; locals in Venice, I'm talking all the day to them when being in Venice, and I have even gained several personal friends among them. I have my cheese vendor and my fish vendor and my fruit vendor and my bakery, and all of them know and remember me though I am, of course, not their frequent customer, even as a frequent tourist. What has become my favourite coffee bar in Venice is a place that attracted me from the very beginning, and so I frequented it on two or three subsequent days when I first discovered it. It took me more than one year afterwards to return to Venice and to that bar... and yet, they still remembered me at first glance, and their immediate question was where I had been for such a long time...

OK, rufus and franco. You sound like local experts and I give you your due.

However, where is Las Vegas?

Also, which area of Venice would you recommend to get away from the tourists and high prices? I am game for a second try. You have to admit that the tourist area is a disneyland, don't you?

It depends, first of all, on the season when you go and on your own attitude as a visitor - in winter, nowhere is a disneyland, and also in summer, the disneyland ends in the evening, so the most important thing is to stay overnight, then you can go anywhere without experiencing the big tourist overkill. And to escape the tourist masses, it's mostly just enough to turn around the next corner - the tourists are in frequenting but a few main routes through the city. So for a relaxing summer day in Venice, it's just enough to remain in the (bigger) Western half of Dorsoduro, e.g., everywhere in Cannaregio off the train station, in the greater parts of Castello (San Pietro in Castello, San Francesco della Vigna, San Giovanni in Bragora, Santa Maria Formosa) or in Santa Croce (off Piazzale Roma, which you would do in any case, as this is the only really ugly part of Venice).
The Canal Grande, the smaller rests of Dorsoduro and Castello, the quarters of San Marco and San Polo should simply be left to the evening, or to the early morning (or to the off-season, of course). As for the laguna, Murano off the very first street after the water bus station (where all the glass shops are to be found) is a perfect anti-disneyland (though not really worth visiting for art lovers, in my opinion); Burano and Torcello should be visited off season, at least not in July and August; Sant'Erasmo and Le Vignole, the two agricultural islands where Venice's famous vegetables are grown, aren't bearing the faintest sign of disneyland, even in July and August, and so is Pellestrina (south of Lido). And you have to go into the less known monuments, even in the touristed areas. Everyone wants to see the La Fenice theatre, e.g., and justly so, because it has become a beauty again after its rebuilding; but on the very same square, Campo S. Fantin, there is a Scuola, now for long residence of the Ateneo Veneto, a scientific institute. Very few people pop inside, but it's a real beauty, and the historians working there will be proud to give you a thorough private guided tour (and you'll already have your first locals whom to talk to - if you are showing some interest in their building, they won't let you go!). That's just one of dozens of examples...

Maybe franco and hopscotch should just start their own thread instead of hijacking this one for their snarling rejoinders. TravelFreak168 just wanted some advice for what is clearly meant to be a &quot;taste of Europe&quot; - not a lengthy exploration of Venice's back alleys.

Like every other poster, my advice is to cut your schedule down to fewer locations for longer times. Definitely buy an open-jaw ticket so you don't have to retrace your steps at the end. London and Paris and Rome all make great entry/exit points for Americans. The Chunnel between London and Paris is a unique and efficient experience - could you delay your Berlin visit a day or two to squeeze Paris in first? Berlin is a tougher city to appreciate on a short visit than the rest of your schedule - so once the match is over (and you have recovered from your celebration) you should get out of town to either more scenic parts of Germany (Munich, Salzburg, and the Bavarian countryside are all great) or go directly to Italy. As for Amsterdam, it is certainly a pleasant town but it is by no means a must-see location for a once-in-five-years trip.

So I recommend either London/Paris/Berlin/Venice/Rome (a real grand tour of Europe's greatest cities) or London/Paris/Berlin/other Germany if one of you has German ancestry and wants to see more of the fatherland.