help planning for 20 day europe trip
 

hi....im from asia...and never been to europe....
all that is about to change....

i will be travelling with my family to europe for 22 days (1 july 2012 - 23 july 2012)
i will start off at zurich, travelling around europe will be in a rental car.
(me, my wife and my son are able to drive)

really need suggestion on where is best to visit in that 20 day period.

i was thinking vienna (stay overnight) - venice (stay overnight) - milan - florence - rome (stay 2 nights) - vatican monaco (stay overnight) - andorra - barcelona (stay 2 nights) madrid (stay overnight) then drive up (stay overnight somewhere in france..suggestions?) to paris (stay overnight) - brussels - rotterdam (stay overnight) - asmterdam (stay overnight) stuttgart (stay overnight) - munich (stay overnight) then back to zurich.

was thinking driving roundtrip would take a total of 3 days on the road....
u think i should spend more or less in the above mentioned cities or i should just skip them totally...
or u think i should change my routes...any suggestions is greatly appreciated....

really need help with the planning....thanks....

You must really like driving.

Travelling will take longer than you think and be less pleasant - consider taking out a few destinations and increasing stays in the big cities. Add more to Vienna and Paris, for instance. Plus if you want to make good time you will be using the major roads (freeways) and you won't see much in the way of sights. I would aim for 7 - 10 destinations. I might add that unless you like modern architecture, Rotterdam is not amazingly attractive to me. But it sounds like you will have a blast - 22 days - terrific!

Lavandula

never been to europe..hence needing suggestions badly...
if its too much in that 20 days period...please suggest which city/country i should leave out....

@lavandula...thanks for the adivce....ok rotterdam is out then....

marking for later comment

I think this is an awful lot of driving. Suggest that you omit Spain and Monaco.

And a few other places.

Dear God, this is a driving nightmare. Please look at a map of Europe, figure out the scale to show you how far distances are, and try to settle on a reasonable plan.You have 22 days. Go to three places and plan to do a couple of day trips from each.

And don't plan on picking up a car in one country and dropping it off in another - that will cost you a small fortune. So look at trains between the main cities and a car to get you around the country areas of certain countries.

You know you can compute nominal driving time yourself? www.viamichelin.com and maps.google.com are some of the sites.

There are personal differences in what it means to be "too much" driving. The route one says "too much" can be a piece of cake for you. Get nominal objective driving time and combine it with route specific realistic prevailing traffic condition in July by asking others to arrive realistic travel time. Then you have data to determine if this is too much driving for you.

You need to plan two to three nights each city if you want to see anything other than roads. I would pick seven cities max with only 22 days. I would also limit to only two countries or you'll spend too much time on the road.

A car won't be a good idea for many cities as often you aren't allowed to drive in the centers (especially in Italy) and parking is expensive. Picking a car up in one country and dropping in another can be expensive also.

You plans and driving calculations are both totally, utterly, 100% unrealistic.

Just a few examples:

Driving from Vienna to Venice will take about 7 hours plus any stops/breaks.

Milan >Florence > Rome . . . about 7 hours

Paris > Brussels > Rotterdam . . . about 6 hours

These are the time behind the wheel -- no looking for parking, no sightseeing, no breaks, no meals, Nothing. So "in real life" you will be driving all day long almost every single day. Plus a car is just about useless in every one of those cities.

17+ cities in 20 days!!! Sorry -- but your plan simply is not doable

Use Google map or any other web based mapping (viaMichelin is another option) and start plugging in destinations. viaMichelin is good in that you can choose a variety of options (fast route, scenic route, no tolls, etc.) and it will give you estimated fuel costs. The time/distance information will perhaps show you how to reduce your itinerary.

St Cirq: <i>Dear God, this is a driving nightmare.</i>

Oh, oh, you've got St Cirq praying for you, that's not a good sign...

:)

Just kidding!

Please heed the good advice being given here, cut down on your destinations and take the train instead of driving. Any number of European trains go over 100 km an hour, which is a lot faster than you can drive, AND the trains will deposit you right in the middle of the big cities, so you don't have to negotiate the nightmare of surface streets to get to your hotel by driving.

By trying to see everything, you'll end up seeing nothing.

Take your first destination: Vienna. You could spend an entire week in Vienna and barely scratch the surface. There are palaces to visit, museums to browse, and local foods to sample. What's being in "Wien" and not having "wienerschnitzel" or passing by the Hotel Sacher and not having "sachertorte"??? And once you've had the sachertorte at the Hotel Sacher, you'll just HAVE to go over to Demel's and try their version of the sachertorte. There was even a sachertorte "war" fought over which establishment has the right to call its cake, the "sachertorte". Did you know that December 5 is National Sachertorte Day? Really, you didn't? ...and we haven't even come to my favorite food in Vienna: gelato, nor my favorite activity: going to a musical event. Vienna is the capital of music - there are operas, concerts ---anyhow, you get the idea. You need to stop and smell the roses in each place you visit, instead of smelling the gas fumes of your car.

Try and read up online on a few of your proposed destinations and decide which places you really want to see. 4 or 5 places will be more than enough for 22 days.

Oh, and travel light - janisj is very good with teaching people how to pack and travel light.

You've come to the right place - lots of good people to help you with your trip.

Have fun planning your trip!

Hi Freddy,

I hope you have a great time on your first trip to Europe. As the other posters have suggested, trying to see/drive to all of these cities in the amount of time you have is not realistic. I would suggest picking the 2 countries that interest you the most and focusing on those. For example, Italy and France in 22 days could be very enjoyable. If you are set on seeing as much as possible, consider flying once or twice during your stay and renting a car as you need it within a given country. For example you can fly from Rome to Paris in less than 2 hours and the cost is very reasonable (in some cases cheaper when you factor in gas, tolls, parking, etc.). Parking can get expensive and in many of the major cities you have listed the car will likely be sitting in a garage. Best of luck to you!

Since you are going so far, I bet you really want to see some of the great things Europe has to offer, not just highways.

StCirq, Janisj, kybourbon, easytraveler, Burke30 and all the rest are absolutely, 100% correct. Please take their advice.
StCirq, Bravo!

One thing you might want to check into is using a car leasing service like open Europe with Peugeot instead of a straight car rental:

http://www.peugeot-openeurope.com/presentation-926/

It is a minimum 21 day contract. When you rent only 22 days, the price should be about the same as a straight car rental, but the the advantage for you is that it is much cheaper to pick the car up in one place and return it to another city, but it is only around 50 euros instead of sometimes hundreds or Euros with a straight rental car. (there is a slight charge if the pick-up or drop off place is outside France, though not in Geneva. So you might consider landing in instead of Zurich and then driving all over the rest of Europe and then dropping the car in Paris for instance) You also can choose your car-like a diesel that gets much better gas mileage. And you have full insurance and a brand new factory car.

My husband and I are in Europe just finishing a lease with them for the first time and we have been extremely happy with the program. We had a rock chip the windshield and the program arranged to have someone come to our village in France to fix it! Impressive.

Anyway, I know Renault also has a similar program as does Volkswagen, so you might look into the various programs. Here is another one that lists a couple of the programs:

http://www.ttcar.com/uk/index2.php?goto=home_ttcar

Have a good trip. I do agree your trip is a bit ambitious. I would choose 3-4 MUST SEE cities and plan to spend 2 overnights in each and then see what that might leave you with in terms of time to get between them. Since you are making such a long trip from Asia, I would try to pack a lot in-but at least a pace where you might actually get a high quality visit if you can

wow...thank guys for the great tips...yah will cut down some cities/countries!

am so glad for the advice! and the viamichellin site is awesome...

as mentioned...i havent plan or paid anything yet..except for the air tickets and rental car (both provided by my company)...so i still do have lots of homework in cutting down some countries/cities.....

hows this...is this doable....? please help....
zurich - vienna - venezia - rome - monaco - nice or cannes - barcelona - paris - amsterdam - zurich
(should i erase monaco/cannes/nice?)

i love this forum! thanks people....

i will cut down even more within these few days...so far i have this

zurich - vienna - venezia - rome - barcelona - paris - amsterdam - zurich

It sounds like you will still be driving, in which case, cut out Barcelona and Amsterdam and add in Monaco, etc, since these will be more or less on your way from Rome to Paris, otherwise, it's a lot to be driving Rome-Paris in one stretch.

You are still focused on the mode of transportation and not on what you want to see and do once you are at a destination.

Getting there is one thing, but BEING THERE should be the main focus. What do you plan to do and see in each place? Then you can better budget your time.

yah..im still searching on what to do on each of the countries mentioned....

its work in progress...any advice is highly appreciated...
will consider leaving out amsterdam/barcelona....

So I see you have at least got your flights and car. So it sounds like you need to go in and out Zurich at least, right? I would be tempted to cut out either Vienna or Barcelona, since if you look at the google map with you current idea on it, these 2 cities are kind of the ones that take you most out of your core driving area if you will:

http://tinyurl.com/6jeq6q6

Another option would be to cut off either one or both of the north/south destinations i.e. Amsterdam or Rome. But really you will probably have a much better idea once you figure out which cities in general interest you and your familly.

Have fun planning. I hope to explore more of Asia someday. I spend lots of time in Europe but have only made it as far as Tokyo in your "neck of the woods".

We have done many, many road trips in europe.

Thre are a couple of problems with your plans:

Cars are useless or worse in citis in europe- many areas are pediatrians only and yuo wil have to garge the car at $30 to $40 per night.

In a 3 wek trip you have 2 anchor cities - where you spend 5at least 4 or 5 night each. In between you can have a mix of smaller towns and countryside - but should spend at least 2 nights anywhere and 3 to 4 night in smaler cities. (You need to cut out at least half of the destinations you have listed or you will have nothing but a drive by on the highway - not a visit - to most places.)

Also - do not plan on driving more than 4 hours in any one day - or you will feel you have done nothing else.

If all you want to do is see larger cities yuo are much better off taing the train - or flying - between them.

Finally - get a map and chec out the viamichelin web site - soyour order makes some sense and yo have a realistic idea of travel times between destinations.

I realize that with a company-paid car you want to get as much "mileage" out of the use of the car - however, planning a trip to Europe around mostly free use of a car isn't the best kind of planning.

As the others have suggested, think of where you would most want to visit.

Having a car makes a lot of sense in Europe if you do a <i>focused</i> trip out into the countryside. Pick a country. Germany, for example. It'll be great to be driving the Romantic Road - or Austria, up into the Alps and around the lakes - France, how about driving around Provence?

A car is for the countryside. You're trying to hit as many far-flung major cities as possible in a car. Not only are the distances between the cities impractical, driving inside those cities is a nightmare - on top of which, you can't drive a car in Venice anyhow.

So, your first decision is: drive around the countryside or hit the major capitals of Europe?

Or you could do a drive-fly or drive-train combo. For example, you could drive from Switzerland going through and spending time in the lake district of Northern Italy to near Venice, park the car, train a short distance into Venice, do Venice, then take a train to Rome. There's a rapid train from Venice to Rome that takes less than 4 hours; or, what would make more sense for you, there's an overnight sleeper train that leaves Venice at 11:30pm and gets into Rome at 7:00am with no need to change trains. Do Rome, overnight train back to Venice to pick up your car, drive to the French Riviera (Monaco, etc) and drive further into Provence. Park the car, Nice would be good. Take the fast TGV train into Paris - a less than 6 hour journey. Do Paris, then return to Nice, or, if you have the time, train to Barcelona from Paris. Do Barcelona, return to Nice, and return car in Zurich.

This way you're not wasting your time and energy combating the crazy traffic in the big cities. You're also saving time and energy by taking the rapid trains between major points.

Also check the costs of renting a car. if you do a drop-off in another country, costs go up.

Consider mixing car + train + flight to make better use of your time.

With the amount of time you have, keep cutting.

Europe is more than roads. I would pick three areas, and then either base yourself there and do day trips, or drive that region. Then move on to next via train/flight

Another consideration when you are looking at transit times between places: every time you pack, check out of a hotel, load the car, drive or train or fly out of the city, then after you arrive in another location find your hotel, and check in, you have used up half a day AT LEAST. That does not include the actual time going from one city to another. You need to ask yourself, "How much time will we actually have to see this town?"

That is why it is important to limit your moves. And to decide which things you really want to see. Also keep a map handy so you can see how far apart things are, and whether some destinations are too far out of the way to make it sensible to go there and back to the next.

And DO avoid using a car in the cities. It is really a liability to have one. You have plenty of time to plan this trip, and the time you spend now will make the actual trip go that much better.

It seems your rental car is being paid by your employer. Does that mean you must pick up one car when you arrive and drop it when you fly home? OR -could you rent one car for a few days and later on rent a different car for a few days?

Because it seems you are planning this entire trip around having a car and driving thousands of miles.

You really should plan your trip around the places you want to visit - not around the car. W/ just under 3 weeks even just hitting 3 countries would be VERY hectic. 10 days in Italy and the rest in Paris and Switzerland or Germany. Something like that would be doable

Soooo - which 5 or 6 places (7 absolute maximum) do you want to see? After you decide that, THEN you can decide the best way to get there.

I note that you are still working out what to do in each country, I guess it would help us know what you like to do

Visit Museums, Art Galleries in which case each of the cities you have mentioned have at least 2 good ones
Architecture, again lots to see
Shopping, loads
Food, oh yes
Landscape, canals etc

Even for a first visit you could limit yourself to Zurich, Venice, Florence, Rome, Milan, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich. You really need a copy of the Rough Guide to Europe to get an idea of what available