Europe Itinerary
 

Hello everyone!
My boyfriend and i are planning a 6 week trip to Europe in june-july 2015.
I have been to Europe before but he has not. He would like to go to France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Croatia which i'm really happy with. just wondering what you think the best option might be for travelling. i realize these places are not very close to each other.
Bus about vs the train.... also we are doing a 7 day croatia sail tour on july 14th so we have to take that into consideration to.
Looking forward to hearing what you all think
Kind regards,
Holly Phelan

I assume you are relatively young. In that case, you will probably return to Europe. The only thing that seems to be concrete is the Croatian sail.

I would drop Switzerland and spend more time in the other countries because just there regions in those that vary greatly and it is interesting to see the similarities and difference.

The trains in Europe are usually quite good and remember even when you move to a town close by you will lose at least 1/2 day.

You need to first work out where you want to go and what you want to see and then work out the best ways to travel between those places.

Budget flights can often work very well, but you may have to adjust your itinerary to fit around the flights available. Try skyscanner.com .

That's five countries. Some of them are big enough that you could easily spend all six weeks there without seeing one entire country. You need to pick one or maybe two places in each country.

After choosing actual places, look at a map to see where they are located. Some of them may be geographically close, while others will be farther away. In some cases it may be faster to fly than to take the train/bus, although you need to remember the wait time at airports when you calculate travel time.

Is the Croatia cruise the end of the trip? Are you planning to fly home from there? Where is 'home'? Flights from Croatia to the US, for example, are a lot more expensive than from the other places you are going. Some times it makes sense to fly cheap intra-European flights to/from Croatia and use a major hub like Paris for your transatlantic flights (if the US is start/finish). Most of the time open jaw flights are as cheap as in/out the same place. So you should figure out your start/end points and then people here can advise on the rest.

One possibility would be to start in Spain, then assuming Paris is your France destination, fly easyjet or similar to Paris, then train to Switzerland and Germany then fly to Croatia.

Aside from Croatia, parts of all the countries you're thinking about are fairly close. So I'd say in six weeks it's doable. You could see a good bit of France, north eastern Spain, western Germany, and some of Switzerland, plus Croatia, in the time you have

As said above, you need to get one or more good travel guides and a map of each of the countries and decide, based on your interests, what you want to see..