Itinerary/ideas for 8-10 weeks in Europe
 

I am looking to go to Europe in August/September/October this year for between 8 and 10 weeks. I have been pouring through brochures, books, internet for days and days and I am now more than a little overwhelmed. I would appreciate any advice/ideas/sample itineraries anyone can offer me.

I would like to go to the following places:
Italy – Florence/Pisa (have been here before so not essential), Rome, Vienna, Pompeii
Greece – Athens, Olympia
Austria – Vienna, Salzburg
France – Paris, Nice, Avignon, Lyon?, Normandy
Germany – Munich, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Neuschwanstein Castle
Holland – Amsterdam
Belguim – Brussels, Bruge
Switzerland – Zurich, Geneva

Is there anything anywhere that has the best direction/order to do a trip similar to this?

I am getting completely confused, and a lot of it is because during this trip I was considering doing a basic tour of Scandinavia and Russia (21 days), and one of Italy (13 days) that I was interested in doing so that I did not spend the whole time travelling alone. If I am to do these tours however, I will only have about 14 days to get from Copenhagen down to Rome in between, then have 8 or so days to get back from Rome to London.

Anyhow, any ideas, comments, sample itineraries would be appreciated. Many thanks, tricg

How are you planning on traveling? What are your interests?

You want to visit approx 22 cities in 8 countries in 8 to 10 weeks. That is a HUGE undertaking and I dare say you won't remember half of them when you get home.

No wonder you are overwhelmed! Why not slow down a bit and simplify a LOT - and plan maybe 4 countries (max) 2 or 2.5 weeks each. That would be a lot easier.

You must be retired to be able to take a 2-3 month vacation?

It's a long time but a lot of places.

Would you consider taking several trips, hitting 3 or 4 destinations each trip?

Yeah to go to all these places seem like a whirlwind tour, a binge which won't let you digest the character of any of these places.

Thanks for your replies.
To answer questions - no, I'm not retired. I'm a 26 yo female from Australia. Planning on taking some unpaid leave to do a decent trip before I settle and get into debt trying to buy a house. The reason I am wanting to do as much as possible is that it costs so much to get from here to Europe so there is no way I can afford or justify $2500-3000 several times over (and I have enough flyer points to get 1 free airfare this time).

As for interests, my reasons for going to Italy/Greece is the ancient ruins - Colosseum, Pompeii, Olympia, etc. Switzerland is the scenery I guess, and the rest of the cities/countries I am mainly interested in seeing 'the main sights' - things you often hear about...Eifel tower, Berlin Wall, etc.
The Scandinavia/Russia bit just caught my attention - if I can't do this I will leave it for now.

Hi tricg,

If you are going to Switzerland for the scenery, you need to get away from the cities. The Swiss Alps are in the Berner Oberland (Wengen, Muerren, Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen), the Valais (Zermatt, Saas Fee), and the Engadin (St. Moritz, Samedan, Zuoz, Scuol). I'm just listing a few towns off the top of my head -- There's also the Titlis peak outside Engelberg near Luzern.

You can use those towns as a starter to plan this portion of your trip.

Use www.rail.ch to get the train schedules.

We can help you more once you know your itinerary. To hack out a basic itinerary, you just need to look at a map and plan a general routing -- For instance, from its geography, Switzerland would fit best between France and Germany or France and Italy.

Good luck!

s

I understand the idea of trying to spread an airplane ticket across as many sites as possible.

But if you're taking time off work and losing income, are you really coming out ahead?

Even if you do come out ahead, you have to consider the quality of the experience, trying to jam so much into a compressed period of time.

Even if you do travel for that long, you might consider cutting out some of the areas, leave some time to decompress, maybe watch the world go by a bit.

You've listed 22 places without even including Scandinavia and Russia. Not including transit times in between that's 4 days in each place, if you go the full 10 weeks. Add in transit time and time to do things like getting settled in a hotel, doing things like shopping for incidentals, laundry, etc. and that doesn't leave as much time as you seem to have.