aligunter

Hello all,
After piecing together all of the advice I got from my last request, I put together an itinerary that 3 of 4 travelers were very happy with. My teenagers were on board. However, my son's girlfriend had to let go of her three bucket list spots...Greece, southern France, and Cinque de Terre. Can someone please look at what we have scheduled and identify how we might be able to fit in southern France and Cinque de Terre. Greece is definitely out because of expense.
July 12-15 Grindlewald (day trip or additional night to Interlakken?)
July 15-17 Lake Como
July 17-19 Venice
July 19-26 Slovenia
July 26-29 Croatia
July 29-Aug 1 Florence
Aug 1-5 Rome
Im thinking Cinque de terre could piggyback on the Florence trip?
My gut is telling me Croatia would be the easiest to cut out if we wanted to replace it with Southern France (sandwiched between Grindlewald and Lake Como?). Is that a good swap? Curious about comparisons of time/distance/expense/desirability between Southern France and Croatian coast. My son will be disappointed because he is teaching himself Croatian and is super excited about going, but he would also be happy with southern France. Or do you think Southern France is too out of the way/expensive and it would be wise to convince girlfriend to save it for another trip? And for anyone who might think girlfriend is being difficult, she's not at all. I'd love to accommodate her wishes if it makes sense.
I was originally not planning to rent a car. However, I've read quite a bit that suggests it might make sense to rent on in Venice to take through Slovenia (and Croatia if we keep that on the itinerary). Thoughts?
Thanks so much everyone!

jamikins

Just a tip, you are double counting days. To give you an idea of how much time you have in each place write it out like this:

July 11 - fly to Europe
July 12 - arrive, get to interlakken or grindlewald
July 13 - interlakken or grindlewald
July 14 - interlakken or grindlewald
July 15 - travel to lake como
July 16 - lake como
July 17 - travel to Venice
July 18 - Venice
July 19 - travel to Slovenia (where, this is a whole country!)
July 20 - 25 - Slovenia
July 26 - travel to Croatia (again where? What are the logistics here)
July 27 - Croatia
July 28 - Croatia
July 29 - travel to Florence
July 30 - Florence
July 31 - Florence
Aug 1 - travel to Rome
Aug 2 - 4 - Rome
Aug 5 - fly home

This is way too busy for my taste. Look at all the time wasted in transit. Each time you move you need to get everyone up and out the door, get to the airport or train station, wait for transit, take transit, find your way to the hotel...before you can venture out.

I would cut out about half of your locations to spend more time seeing Europe rather than wasting so much time in transit.

yorkshire

I think you have more legwork to do in terms of transport from place to place. If it is just the scenery of CT and the French Riviera that you are after, you can find that on the Croatian coast as well as on the Italian coast.

aligunter

Thanks for the tip. And darn, I thought we were doing pretty good about not hopping from place to place. I had previously heard not to spend less than 2 nights in a place so for the most part, we planned for 3 or more nights.
In Slovenia we plan to spend the majority of our time in the Soca River Valley. If we keep Croatia on the itinerary we would stick to Pula, on the coast. Any thoughts on whether to keep Croatia or try to see southern France instead?

jamikins

It's hard to say...where do you plan to go in Croatia? The logistics of getting to the places you want to go in Croatia and Slovenia and then getting to Florence may eat up a tonne of time.

yorkshire

To me, it's not the number of nights so much as it is the potential for long days in transit. Plus, getting a bunch of young adults packed and moved 7 times could be daunting.
Without knowing how long it will take to get from place to place, I don't think you can evaluate. RometoRio is an easy-to-use site to get a rough idea, though of course verify any results.

jamikins

I agree with Yorkshire...don't underestimate how long it takes to get everyone ready to go!

You definitely need to figure out how long and complicated your transport is going to be so you can make educated choices.

PalenQ

You may want to look at the Swiss Transfer Ticket for Switzerland trains -you can buy a 1/2 off Half-Off Pass with it and it also covers in full trains from Zurich Airport to Grindelwald and from there to Chiasso - a few miles from Como by train.

Great info on Swiss trains: www.swisstravelsystem.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

Grindelwald is a great place for a base -for a day trip Interlaken itself has nothing of great interest but a boat ride on either Lake Thun or Lake Brienz - two lakes bookending Interlaken can make a great day out. Half-Fare Card gives 50% off on everything in the area -Jungfraujoch train, boats, gondolas, etc.

Masterphil

Personally, Grindelwald (Bernese Oberland) is one of my favorite places on earth! You will be dealing with jet lag your first couple of days there as well. In Grindelwald, we got passes to take gondolas, trams, trains all over the place (Wengen, Murren, Kleine Scheidegg and Lauterbrunner. We took the train up to Jungfraujoch which was beautiful. If you like nature at its finest, you might wish you stayed a little longer.

Lake Como was a bit of a disappointment for me (I know others love it).

Venice is fantastic, but you can "do it" in 1/2 days.

I love southern France and have never been to Croatia or Slovenia. I love Cannes, Nice, Villefranche sur Mer, Eze, etc. Not to mention Monaco!

Dolomites (Ortisei) northwest of Venice were beautiful as well.

Florence is OK. Been there once and drove by it last time with no need to stop.

I have been to Rome twice and disliked it both times. (that's just me).

Good luck with your decision! It is hard to make a bad decision when planning a European trip.

Just make sure you give yourself a little time to slow down and enjoy it. When I was young, I did the "hit and run tour of Europe" (one night here, sleep on a train, another night here, sleep on a train, etc.) Now I try to stay in each place at least 4 nights.

Happy Planning!

kja

jamikins and yorkshire have given you the most important clue to planning – you MUST take transportation into account! And it isn’t just the time it takes to get from one place to another – you need time to/from your lodging, check in/out, un/pack, get all your companions in sync, get oriented, get lost, get used to a different langage, etc. Before even considering whether to replace something on your itinerary, rather than simply cutting it out, please at least look at rome2rio.com to estimate your actual travel times.

And figure out what all of YOU want to do in any place you visit. As an example, a half-day may be fine for some people for Venice; I felt rushed with 5 nights there. Viva la difference! Only you can figure out how much time YOU want anywhere. Get some good guidebooks (or spend some time with a few in your local library), identify the things you most want to see in each location, check their opening/closing times on the internet, and mark them on the same calendar you are using to mark transportation.

Good luck!

aligunter

Thank you for the valuable advice!

PalenQ

Be sure to report back!