I am planning a European dream for my and I to take next year. We are almost 50 (not quite yet and have been married almost 30 years.

We plan to leave in Mid-April and stay in the following cities.

Amsterdam - 3 days
Frankfurt - 2 days
Munich - 2 days
Verona - 3 days (Making a day trip to Venice 1 day)
Lucerne - 3 days

We will be departing from the Austin, TX area and are planning on being gone a total of 16-17 days so there is a little bit of flexibility. We are planning on making all the bookings our self for flights and hotels.

The plan is to rent a car in Amsterdam and make this a driving trip as my we both like to see the countryside and those little things off the beaten path. The cities are about 250 miles apart.

We have been to Europe once about 15 years ago and visited both London and Paris. We know these are a lot of cities to visit in this short amount of time but we may never have the opportunity to return and so we will just see and enjoy as much as we can.

We would certainly appreciate any comments about 1) The proposed itinerary, 2) Our ability to truly rent a car and drive to all of our destinations, 3) Must sees in the cities listed, 4) Advice on booking air fare and hotels, 5) Best travel guides to help us plan outings and places to go and finally 6) Anything else that comes to mind

Thanks in advance for your help!

Blessings from Steve and Cynthia

A couple of things come to mind immediately. You're renting a car so you can get off the beaten path but your itinerary does not allow much time (if any time) for this. Have you checked driving time between destinations? If not, go to viamichelin.com to plot driving routes and times.

Amsterdam to Frankfurt is 5 hours on the motorway. If you take secondary roads and explore it will be at least a day or more.

Renting a car in one country and returning it to another will result in a hefty drop off charge - probably 500USD.

Your itinerary calls for cities. It would make more sense to take trains between these cities. The train brings you into center city and you can make your way to your hotel via taxi or public transportation. With a car, you'll need to find hotels that accommodate parking and you're paying for a car when it's sitting idle most of the time. Parking will add costs to your trip.

Most of the time if you book trains ahead of time (60 to 90 days ahead) you can find very inexpensive fares.

There are web sites where you can watch for airfares such as kayak but it's a bit too early for next year.

#6 - get some guide books from your library and start reading about what is in each of these places. My must sees may not be yours and you have little time in each place so you must choose carefully with your interests in mind.

Fly into one city and home from another - do not backtrack.

In Frankfurt I can recommend this overview walking tour. It's a good initiation to the city.

http://www.frankfurtonfoot.com/

Other cities have similar walking tours.

Where do you depart Europe?
This plan really makes little sense to me
Why Frankfurt---dullsville.
Why Munich but no castle country nor Salzburg?
You need to start over and decide how to solve your car problem.

First, I compliment you for starting early. Many people box themselves first by booking non-refundable flights only to find there is not much that can be done after the fact.

1) As mentioned by the previous poster, your goal=countryside, and your itinerary=big cities, are incompatible. There are too far spaced to allow visiting off the beaten path.

2) You can physically rent and drive around. Whether the price tag is what you have imagined is a different matter. You don’t have to wait for someone to do this for you. With viamichelin.com and actually using a rental car booking site, such as autoeurope.com, you can quickly estimate <u>minimum </u>rental expenses – excluding parking, highway stickers, etc.

3) Must see – each guide book has “top attraction” pages. Check guide books from your library.

4) Booking air, hotel, <u>AND</u> ground transportation (car/train) are integrated. You should not book any one component until you are sure other main components are compatible. Why is this? Supposed you book a flight into Amsterdam <u>assuming</u> hotel availability at an acceptable rate. If there is a big conference going on, what hotels left will have breathtaking price tags. Same for Frankfurt and Munich.

Since the trip is about one year away, quickly look at hotel price/availabilities right now and make a detailed note. What you see now is probably a good indication of what you see around the same time next year.

This is certainly doable by car - but you should pick it up when you leave Amsterdam and drop in Lucerne.

Besides the cost of the car rental there will be a drop off fee (perhaps as much as $500), hotels typically charge $35 to $40 per night for parking and gas is about $8 per gallon.

If you do it this way I would fly into Amsterdam and home from Zurich (about an hour from Lucern by train).

I would also drop Frankfurt - not a lot to see/do - and spend those days touring some of the countryside to make use of the car you are paying so much for.

Sleeping in Verona and day tripping to Venice is exactly backwards. For starters, there is far more to see in Venice than you can manage in one day - I spent six days and still have plenty for the next trip. Second, although it's not too difficult to avoid the crowds, Venice will be a lot nicer after the day trippers have left. What is it you want to see in Verona?

After reading the replies (thank you), we have made changes to our proposed itinerary:

Flying into Amsterdam
3 nights there
Rent a car in Amsterdam and drive to other destinations
2 nights in Brussels
3 nights in Paris
2 nights in Luxembourg City
3 Nights in Lucerne
Drop off car and flight out of Zurich

As far as the car versus train between cities, even with car rental, drop off fee and parking charges, it still seems to be a good deal as the transportation fees for trains and transportation from stations to hotel will add up to about the same $1,100 estimate for (car rental, fuel and parking). Although we may not have a great deal of time to get off the beaten path, we will be able to enjoy some of the country side's beauty.

I think you are WAY over estimating your train costs - where are you getting your numbers from? I can't imagine the costs being over a few hundred for trains with that schedule.

For great information on train travel in Europe read www.seat61.com

I used European Destinations website to price the transfer fees from station to hotel and hotel back to station...It is the transfer fees that were so expensive and not the train fees themselves.

Why book transfers? Use public transport or taxis...

You're not understanding the European railways. There's no reason to pay transfer fees; every country has great public transport. For the actual train tickets, you need to use the websites for the national railway of each country, and book in advance, when the cheap tickets become available. It shouldn't cost more than a few hundred dollars for all that transport.

And I hope you realize that 2 nights in a city yields you just 1 day of touring. Your itinerary as it stands now gives you just a single day in several places, then you're packing up to move on somewhere else for yet another single day. And while you mention wanting to see some countryside, you don't have any time at all to do that.

jamikins, thanks for your response...it shows my ignorance. I am planning on booking all of this trip myself and of course i have look at many websites to find out the "hows". Obviously I have much to learn.

In case you have an opinion, my plan was as follows:

Book flights from an independent source and then book hotels through European Destinations. Based on your comment, we could just take local transportation from stations to hotels and if in any of the cities we visit, we could rent a car for a day trip into the countryside. As our only European experience in the past is Paris and London (17 years ago), we don't know much about the train system nor how far out the local transportation systems will take us if we venture out of the city.

StCirq, is there enough to see in do in both Brussels that its worth staying 3 nights in both of those cities? I have been debating that or eliminating one of the destinations and staying 4 days in some areas.

There is no way I would drive in Paris. Absolutely none, and I am used to European driving.
You can buy discounted train tickets which would hugely reduce your estimate.

Much as I personally dislike Brugge I would suggest it would be a more interesting place to stay than Brussels.

Paris being the one city we have been to before, I remember the city having a great transportation system.

No need to use any agency to book hotels. Use www.booking.com to do some research then I always go to the hotels website and book directly with the hotel. You can read reviews etc. Try to get as central as possible!

Before nailing anything down feel free to post your ideas here for feedback. You may need a bit of a thick skin as sometimes tone doesn't translate over the internet but we are all willing to help

With 13 nights I would pick 3-4 locations tops and enjoy each one rather than rushing to cover more ground and spending more time in transit!

resmoss, this is just personal preference, but I would dump Brussels and Luxembourg City. I am actually fond of Brussels, but the majority of my travel colleagues find little to like there. I don't think you need 3 nights in Lucerne, either.

I can't address all of the cities, but from Paris, for example, you can easily and very cheaply get out to some lovely small towns and villages on public transportation,if you want to see some countryside: Chantilly, Senlis, Fontainebleau, Auvers-sur-Oise, Moret-en-Loing...there are dozens and dozens, and that's likely true of the other destinations. If you go that route, you also save the hefty one-way drop-off car rental fee.

What is the "independent source" that you're using for flights? Why not book through the airlines?

Why are you booking hotels through European Destinations? Why are you limiting yourself to this one web site. When I looked at 2 star hotels in Paris the search only gave me 1 hotel. Poor choice. And they show hotels by stars, rather than the normal option of "price."

I'm glad you reversed your decision about renting a car.

Why go from Brussels to Paris and then to Luxembourg City? Are the train options to Lucern so much better from there than from Paris? I can't imagine that they are.

Trains should be booked in advance to get the best rates; 60 to 90 days before travel. Use this criteria when estimating train travel costs.

Please, please, please, read some guide books and get an idea of European culture and travel. With all the information available today you can be well prepared and save money.