Thank you so much for your responses to my posting earlier. I agree. We need to eliminate some of our planned locations. How about 3 days in Vienna (where we fly into), 3 days in Lucerne, 3 days in Venice (eliminating Rome & Florence), 3 days in Paris (remember that we have tickets from Venice to Paris via the Orient-Express) and the final 2 days in Amsterdam (where we fly back from)? That would mean that we would be traveling on 3 trains; not including the Orient-Express (which I consider to be a destination in itself). What do you think? Again, my new bride has never been to Europe. I took the Trafalgar bus tour a few years back. Please advise.
- Sean

That is perfect. If your bride backs out, take me.

Seriously, when you are in Lucerne, if the weather is nice, take the lake steamer to Vitznau. From there take the train to the summit of Rigi. Enjoy the views, have a little lunch, hike a little. Take the train back down, getting off at Rigi Kaltbad. From there take the gondola down to Weggis, catch the lake steamer back to Lucerne. All much simpler than it sounds. A perfect day.

Hello Sean. I had read your other post and felt way overwhelmed with your plans.

Your new itineray looks wonderful to me. Think you and your bride will really enjoy your honeymoon without being stressed and tired.

And congratulations on your wedding!

Much better, Sean.

Thank you very much everybody! My wife now says that she really wants to see Rome (She's half Italian). What about 2 days in Vienna, 2 days in Lucerne, 2 days in Rome, 2 days in Venice, 3 days in Paris & 2 days in Amsterdam? Too much? Should I go back to the recently revised plan?

Oh Sean, personally it sounds like a nightmare to me.

And with the number of days you have for the entire trip have you figured in all the time lost with traveling from spot to spot.

IMHO I would leave Florence and Rome for another trip.

Much better and doable. I personally would subsitute Salzburg for Luzern and save a ton of travel time. The Lakes and mountains around Salzburg are very nice too.

Have either of you travelled much before? The reason I'm asking is that your somewhat frantic honeymoon might be doable if you're both intrepid travellers, and travel well together. (My fiance are changing locations every few days, going diving and going hiking, on a 4 week honeymoon, but we've both travelled a lot and got along smoothly when we travelled together, so I think we'll be able to handle it.) If one or both of you is likely to get stressed out by the experience of having to pack up and move every few days, hop on and off trains, etc, you might want stick to your revised schedule and skip Rome and Florence.

As for night trains (in your earlier post), my fiance thinks it would be really romantic to take a night train (I'm thinking - ok, once). So maybe the night train is a good idea for one of the journeys (in addition to the Orient Express) but maybe not the first and maybe not all of them.

Are you locked into your plane tickets and dates? If not, perhaps you could delete Amsterdam, return from Paris and add Rome. If you can't change the tickets and she really has her heart set on Rome, pick up bobthenavigator's suggestion to substitute something more convenient for Lucerne.

A final option would be to look into the price of cheap one-way flights in Europe, instead of all those trains - maybe converting Lucerne into a Salzburg sidetrip, then flying from Vienna to Rome.