First Europe Trip HELP!!!
 

So my boyfriend and I have a trip planned for two weeks in Spain from May 23-June 6 with some friends. After Spain we decided to spend a little more time in Europe and explore some cities/country. Our time is flexible but leaning towards 14-18 days depends on expenses in each city. We wanted to mix up our choices with cheap cities and somewhat expensive ones just so we can budget properly. I have narrowed our options down to
1. 3-4 nights in Paris
2. Amsterdam
3. Berlin
4. Czech
5. Budapest

I'm having a few issues figuring out my itinerary:
1. Is that too many cities to visit? Should I take out either Amsterdam or Berlin?
2. I'd prefer to fly to Paris first right after Barcelona because a friend will be there during that time...but if it won't make sense for the itinerary it won't be an issue to not go to Paris first from Barcelona... So is that the smart place to go first or should I fly to Budapest since it's the furthest out?
3. I'd like to figure out which city I should book my return to Los Angeles from. I heard rates are definitely cheaper in bigger cities. Should I end in Berlin .?
4. In your opinion what do you think the best / realistic itinerary should be for the cities I'd like to go to?


And feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!

Go flop on the riviera (Nice area) for a few, train up to Paris for 4-5 and London for 4-5 and go home from there because it has the most flights to the US (or Canada; assuming you're from North America).

Does your 14-18 days include your days in Spain? If so, save the Czech Republic and Budapest for next time and fly home from Berlin. You already have the order: Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin. You'll want to stay long enough in each place to make the travel time seem worth it. Move around too much and you just get a tour of the train stations and airports of Europe, not the places you came to see.

I would suspect that you would come up with more satisfactory itinerary by focusing on results instead of rules.

What do I mean by this?

Take a look at how you are approaching the plan.
1. <i>Is that too many cities? </i> What is the criteria used to determine this? So many days, so many cities? Is there a magic number applicable for all? If you don’t think such simple number exists, think instead of what you can do by distributing days differently across different cities.

2.<i>Should I fly to Budapest since it’s the furthest out? </i> Flight segment is a powerful planning tool. Using simplistic rule trashes leverage you can gain from a carefully chosen flight. What is the consequence of using different flights?

3. <i>I heard rates are definitely cheaper in bigger cities.</i> If we postulate for a moment that this is true. Suppose you save $100 per person in airfare. Is this a winner? What if you have to pay $200 per person more to include that city and you lose a day due to travel. Is this still a good choice of airport to return from? If you don’t want to get into this kind of oversight, look at what you can do by returning from various cities and look at the SUM of all relevant cost associated with each return option.

Unless you believe everyone thinks like you, has the same interest, enjoys same things, and has same constraints, it would be difficult to come up with "best / realistic itinerary" to your satisfaction. I would put together several options, use www.viamichelin.com if driving, www.bahn.com if taking a train to come up with realistic travel time, and ask this forum for more objective questions. Check the accommodation situation before boxing yourself into a situation where you have to stay in a city while a big event is going on with scarce expensive accommodation availability.

You can easily take trains between each stop once you fly to Paris (which is several hours by trains so flying makes sense) but the rest are at most about - 5 hours apart or less.

anyway for lots of great info on the European railway system check out these IMO superb sites: www.seat61.com - great info on discounted tickets you can get between those cities - like Thalys trains Paris to Amsterdam for as low as 39 euros - quicker than flying and cheaper and city centre to city centre; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

Trains make sense if just doing large cities where cars are more and more a liability and rather useless - cars are great for driving through say rural Provence or Bavaria, etc but if just doing point A to B - take the train.

3. I'd like to figure out which city I should book my return to Los Angeles from. I heard rates are definitely cheaper in bigger cities. Should I end in Berlin .?>

Not necessarily true IME - few direct flights from Berlin to LA I think but lots from Cologne, Paris and Amsterdam - generally pricing from other airports makes no sense often - it may be cheaper to fly Berlin-Cologne-LA than Cologne-LA !!! - that type of stuff does happen but not as a rule - there is often no rhyme or reason to fares - but yes try flying home from your last city so you do not have to backtrack to get to your return flight.