Elise. Must confess, I've never stayed in a hostel. And I am just too organized to leave accomodations to chance. Over the years I have seen a lot of lines at tourist offices and know I don't want to spend the first hour or two or more in a new city looking for where I'm going to stay. I do my homework first and really check out the accomodation situation in each town or city, and prebook them all. In fact, I'm just a little nervous about the couple of nights in this trip that we haven't booked actual accomodations, but will depend upon where we end up that night. Where to start in the planning? The first couple of trips we did to Europe were short -- 1 week in Switzerland at Christmas (staying in Lucern the whole week) in about 1970 and one week in Spain at Easter (staying in Torremolinos) the following year. As we increased to two or three week trips, we still concentrated on one country. A week in Paris and another 10 days scattered between Lyon, Nice and Dijon, for example. Or a week in London, followed by a week driving Devon and Cornwall. Now that we have the luxury of more time, it becomes even more difficult trying to fill in all the places we still want to see for the first time or return to, so we do a combination of both. Good luck to you in your travels. Sounds like you are starting at a much younger age than I did. How I envy all you younger people beginning your travels so early. My main suggestion is to do a LOT of planning. Sometimes it is sort of eerie, as we drive into a city where we've never been and I feel that I know it from all the reading I've done. When I tell my partner, "you're going to turn left when we come to the big yellow building at the end of this street," it really gets a little weird.