cnies

My Husband and I are looking to travel for 8-9 weeks in Europe from Late Fall-Early Winter 2017. We have both been to Europe only once and have only been to London and Dublin (so we are looking to skip those places on this trip). We are looking to get the most out of our time in Europe while trying not to over-do it. We are looking for any and all advice on itinerary suggestions, must-see places, and places that are worth the visit but less well-known. We are looking to spend some time in the bigger cities seeing the famous landmarks and such, but we both really have a passion for the outdoor, nature, hiking, scenery etc. we are looking to put an emphasis on places that are less big, busy city, and more countryside and scenic.

Here is our first draft at an itinerary. Looking for any and all suggestions as it is hard to figure out what, when, and where while trying to find all your information via google!

Stockholm, Sweden - 4 nights
Copenhagen, Denmark - 3 nights
Amsterdam, Netherlands - 4 nights
Brussels, Belgium - 4 nights
Berlin, Germany - 5 nights
Prague, Czech Republic - 3 nights
Munich, Germany - 2 nights
Switzerland (~2 different locations) - 7 nights
Italy (~3 different locations) - 15 nights
Barcelona, Spain - 3 nights
Paris, France - 4 nights
Edinburgh, Scotland - 4 nights
Bergen, Norway - 1 nights
Oslo, Norway - 2 nights
Stockholm, Sweden - 1 night

I realize this could quite possibly be too many places to try to visit in one vacation. It's just so hard to know which ones to cut over others. Looking for suggestions on which places might be worth saving for our next trip as well.

Thank you in advance!

Kathie

Traveling late fall into early winter, it would be advisable to start in the northern and end in the south. Bu an open-jaw ticket, into your first city and out of the last. You have a total of 7 nights in Scandinavia and 7 nights in Switzerland - both veery expensive areas. So if budget is a consideration at all, think more about this. Also, late fall/earl winter is not a great time to visit either Scandinavia or Switzerland.

If it were me (and it is not), I'd skip the northernmost places and spend my time in Paris, Italy and Spain. Take a look at a good weather site like www.weatherbase.com and look at the data for each city you plan to visit.

Remember that moving around so much eats up both time and money.

davejewell

Terrific! We have been taking 2 6-week trips a year to Europe for the past 10 years, so have seen a lot. You don't say how you are traveling around (we always rent a car so a lot of my comments will be directed in that area.) Beware that the cities you mention can be very unfriendly to autos and that smaller towns are difficult to get to by public transit. Since you will be in Italy and enjoy hiking, I urge you to spend a few days in Portovenere (south of Genoa) and a convenient spot for hiking the Cinque Terre, one of the most scenic spots in the world (yes! really). We also have traveled without reservations, but find that knowing where we are landing that night is less stressful (we had to sleep in the car once). You say that you plan on traveling more, so you might want to limit this trip to only Scandanavia, or only Central Europe. Our most recent trip was 6 weeks only in Southern France and mostly smaller cities.
David Jewell
Buon Viaggio!

StCirq

<<it is hard to figure out what, when, and where while trying to find all your information via google!>>

You don't have to. That's what guidebooks are for.

You are going to some very cold, expensive places. If that's what you want, then fine, but do at least buy open-jaw tickets and start north and move south. For me, I wouldn't be in those countries at that time of year, but it's your trip, not mine. I'd be in Sicily, Italy, southern Spain, southern France, and Morocco.

It would not be a time of year I'd recommend visiting the Cinque Terre, even if it's possible, which it may not be.

PalenQ

Trains and budget flights rather than car -overnight trains can be used on some of your longer routes- anyway for lots on trains and railpasses - certainly viable if you do most of that by rail - check www.seat61.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

check the Global Eurail Flexipasses- covers all countries save the U.K.

LisaG

cnies,

Sounds like a great trip! My husband and I have been going to Europe for 8 weeks at a time for the last 11 years. We have learned quite a lot about what works for us and doesn't. I'll attempt to distill some of those things in a list here. I'm not including those things that apply to all travel regardless of length of time, just listing the things that apply to the long trips.

I will also note that these things apply to what we like to do and may not apply or be useful to what you are doing. Some of these are quite specific and mundane, but very useful!

1) packing and unpacking: I now exclusively use Eagle Creek packing folders. Like these:
http://shop.eaglecreek.com/packit-ga...-medium/d/1325

I take 4: 1 for all pants, 2 for tops/jackets, 1 for scarves. I never actually unpack the entire trip. Everything goes into and out of their respective folder. I use different sizes.

Here's why this is so useful for me---one of the biggest hassles on a long trip is the amount of packing and unpacking you will do. Your current itinerary has you doing this 18 times. This will become very tiresome very soon, or it would for me.

2) less is more: one of the joys of an extended trip is having the experience of being in a place more deeply. For instance, having nothing to do for a day or two and just wandering, sitting in a cafe, or hiking with a great picnic of bread and cheese, You can only achieve that by going to less places. In addition, we found that when we went to more places, by the middle of the trip they were already starting to run together in our minds. And we still had as many places still to go. We found that to be not very satisfying. If I were going to do a trip such as yours, I would cut out about 50% of the locations.

3) account for travel time: we have found that travel between locations takes WAY more time than you can imagine. In addition, we found that "move day" consisted of packing, driving, getting lost perhaps, checking into next location, unpacking, orienting yourself, figuring out what to do about dinner, etc. I now know that "move day" is a day pretty much off the itinerary. That's 18 days as of the current itinerary. That's al ot of down time. Now much fun can happen during move days, but not usually.

4) account for time of year: many of the locations you will be going will be getting dark quite early. Not a bad thing, but for many people that's a surprise. Look up sunrise/sunset times for the places you'll be at that time of year. It's one of the first things we learned to account for. We started our trips in the Fall and switched to Spring for that very reason. Also, look up when daylight savings is in Europe and see if it affects your trip.

5) holidays: we travel in the Spring now, and Easter is always something to consider. Where do we want to be for Easter to take advantage of any music or cultural events? We also want to make sure we are not traveling on a holy day. You may want to do the same thing. In addition, it is more difficult to travel on Sundays in some countries (rental car return and such). You may want to take that into account. We have been in places in Italy where it was difficult to figure out what to do with the car when we got to the rental return location. We now know to ask ahead of time---they sometimes arrange to have someone there to receive the car. Then there's the "how do we fill the car with gas before returning when gas stations are closed on Sunday?". Our current rule of thumb is fill when 1/2 empty.

6) laundry: I wash undies and socks every night in the sink. Allows us to travel with less, and to require the use of a laundromat only once on our trip.

7) knife: we have a permanently designated serrated knife (from Target) that we take to Europe for all kinds of uses. Mostly for cutting food (bread, cheese, fruit, tomatoes) for lunches. This is part of our permanent stash of "Europe things". It's one of the most useful things we bring.

8) copies: go to a copy store and make color copies of all your credit cards (front and back) and passports. Put one set in the lining of each suitcase (ours have a zipper in the lining and we put it in there), and one set in each piece of carry-on luggage.

9) passport pics: we have taken a picture of each of our passports on our phones. I can't tell you how many times this has come in handy as we do not carry our passports around with us (leave them in the safe at the place we are staying). This is just a handy tip!

10) packing: pick a color and stick with it. I pick black. Pretty much everything I bring is black. I pack scarves as my source of color and dressy. Allows me to pack for a long trip without exceeding luggage weight limits.

11) meds: there is something called a "vacation prescription" that allows you to get 2 refills at once (applies to US insurance companies). I didn't know that for a long time. It's easy...just inform the pharmacist and they do the magic with your insurance provider.

12) car rental insurance: find out what coverage you have through your credit card company and ask them to send you a letter of coverage confirmation or where you can print out the info. Bring that with you. Some countries require that you either show them the doc. or buy through them (Austria, for instance). Some countries are quite lax about the condition of the car (Italy), some are quite strict (Austria). Take pictures of every little thing you see on the car when you pick it up. Have them note down everything you see when you take those pics.

13) traffic tickets: almost every time we have driven in Italy we have gotten a traffic ticket. Either for speeding or for going into a ZTL unknowingly. It's part of the cost of the trip! You won't find out about this until maybe 7 or 8 months down the road when you get a ticket in the mail.

That's all I can think of for now! I hope this is useful and that you have a wonderful time planning this trip. What a great adventure.

Travel well,

LisaG

cnies

Thank you all for the GREAT advice! We are looking at paring down the number of locations and also possibly shifting our itinerary more south to take advantage of longer days. We are not bothered by cold temps as we both grew up in North Dakota and Minnesota but it would be a bummer to miss out adventures because of early sunsets.

You have all been very helpful to this novice traveler! I will be sure to come back and post when I have more questions!

julies

I live in Minneapolis, so perhaps I can help a bit with that pesky climate part. Yes, early sunsets and very short days are going to be a very big problem for you. I am trying to figure out what you mean by late fall to early winter. Does this mean perhaps the months of Nov. and Dec.? Last Oct. (we arrived home several days before the end of daylight savings time) we visited SW France for three weeks focusing primarily on outdoor type activities. It didn't get light until 8:30--something we hadn't counted on that was different from home. The prior fall we spent the same time frame with three weeks in Sicily (highly recommended because it meets nearly all of your criteria). We left for home two days after the end of daylight savings time and were immediately aware of the fact that we were so happy we had traveled earlier when we didn't need to worry about it being black at 5:00. So, is there any way you can do this some other time of year? I think even mid Feb to mid April might be preferable (due to the longer days) especially if you started in the south.

Finally, for some one who says they want to do a lot of more outdoor activities, your itinerary seems to be nearly all cities.

annhig

less is more: one of the joys of an extended trip is having the experience of being in a place more deeply. For instance, having nothing to do for a day or two and just wandering, sitting in a cafe, or hiking with a great picnic of bread and cheese, You can only achieve that by going to less places. In addition, we found that when we went to more places, by the middle of the trip they were already starting to run together in our minds. And we still had as many places still to go. We found that to be not very satisfying. If I were going to do a trip such as yours, I would cut out about 50% of the locations.>>

This.

[i see that you've already taken that on board - well done!]

with 9 weeks to play with, either side of Christmas, I would divide it into 3 sections - before Christmas, the Christmas-New year period, and after Christmas and pick 3 hubs.

work out where you want to spend Christmas - that's one. Germany would be a great spot - Christmas markets, Gluhwein, Gemuetlichkeit, - plenty of advice here on where would be the best combination of a good place to stay and which would also make a good base for Christmassy day trips.

Then where to fly into? ?Italy? - you have 15 days allotted there already so that suggests a high level of interest. You could base yourselves in somewhere central, e.g. Florence and use that to visit others, even for a few days if you are renting an apartment.

And where to end? Personally the south of Spain would be my choice, perhaps with 2 bases, though Malaga wood be a good place to base yourselves for a longer stay I suspect.

I know that's a little different to your original idea but particularly for a winter visit, I feel that a succession of longer stays might prove more satisfactory.

cnies

We were originally thinking our travel time would be from the middle of October to the middle of December arriving home just before Christmas but after doing some research on daylight hours and climate around that time of year, we are considering shifting our vacation one month earlier to middle of September-middle of October. We would rearrange the itinerary a bit and start in the Northern most destinations and work our way south ending somewhere around Spain (not back tracking back to Sweden). We are also considering saving all of Scandinavia for it's own trip in the future and just starting our trip in mainland Europe (possibly Paris) in which case we could add more days to our destinations to account for travel days and allow for some day trips outside the city.

cnies

I like the idea of finding places that we can base ourselves and rent a place for a longer period of time and make numerous day/multi-day trips

annhig

I would definitely consider leaving Scandinavia until you can see it in the summer - a winter visit could be quite limiting due to lack of daylight hours, unless you are desperate to see the northern lights, in which case why not just do a short trip while you are here?

PalenQ

I like the idea of finding places that we can base ourselves and rent a place for a longer period of time and make numerous day/multi-day trips>

Yes indeed! I love it - see smaller less touristed places perhaps and not have to relocate -come back to your home base city that you know better at night can be a joy too.

Switzerland (~2 different locations) - 7 nights>

Depending on where those locations are a Swiss Pass may be useful for just a few days even - www.swisstravelsystem.com for lots of details as well as sites I gave you before in post above.