Hi, we are heading to Frankfurt, Germany in May 06, picking up a leased peugeot car, which we will have for the entire eight weeks we are away. We plan to go to Frankfurt-Cologne-Amsterdam-Berlin-Warsaw-Krakow-Prague-Munich (Bavarin area)-Innsbruck-Salzberg-Vienna-Bratislava-Budapest-Ljubljana-Bled-Venice-Rome-Florence-Italian Riverina-Morocco-
Nice-Interlaken-Paris-London-Brussels then back to Frankfurt for home in Australia.
Is this wishfull thinking, what about parking, we were thinking of doing some camping - any suggestions would be appreciated.

What will you do in your spare time?

Well - first of all I would double check on any restrictions as to where you take the car - Morocco sounds unlikely - don't know about Ljubljana/Bled.

Second - you have listed 25 places in 56 days. That's 2 days per city - not counting travel time - so really gives you one day to visit each place.

Now - I know 8 weeks sounds like a lot of time - but not for 25 places. Also - t's unclear how you would get to Morocco (you don;t mention Spain) and your order of places makes litle sense - if this is the order you're planning you're jumping around the continent in circles.

I would start out with first a good paper map, second spend some time at mappy.com to get info on travel times - and mostly - lay out a day by day itinerary - which will show you how little time you're allowing for seeing anything vs just driving around. (You need to allow for time gettig in and out of cities, finding your way around, locating hotel or campsites - moving between almost any two places takes a whole day.

As for camping - we don;t - and certainly wouldn;t in europe - so can't comment on how realistic this is. Are you planning on living in the car? Bringing full camping gear with you from home? Finding commercial campsites where you can rent a tent or something already set up???

Also - you don;t mention how many of you there are - ages etc - which could have significant effect on the plan (will you have multiple drivers? have to deal with kids?) nor your goals in going to these places - which would make a big difference in the minimum time you need to stay.

IMHO your planned itinerary is very nearly impossible. &quot;<i>Parking through Europe</i>&quot; is the least of your worries.

Way, waaaay too many destinations over too wide an area in too short a time. And besides the Morrocco issue already mentioned -- you want to take a LHD continental car across to the UK. I know you are already used to driving on the left - but have you driven a LHD car on the left?

Also, you have mentioned major cities almost exclusively - driving is rarely the best way to travel between and w/i European cities.

Now if you mentioned rural and off the beaten path areas, that would be a different amtter. But it seems you have decided to drive on a totally urban holiday.

Maybe he lives in Alice Springs (waaaaaaay in the outback) and wants to see what cities look like.

Then take trains (or fly) - faster, and often cheaper

Robespierre, you slay me.

ksch2004 - we fully expect a trip report of how far you got and where you found parking once you got there.

I think I'm having a psychotic episode just trying to comprehend driving that much in 8 weeks and calling that a vacation.

Jules

Ok. Assuming that you insist on going to London, go firwst to Brussels, drop the car off in Calais (you save on the drop-off fee)and take the ferry to England. Return to Australia from London, or if you have already booked to Frankfurt-Australia leg, look for a cheap flight from London to Frankfurt. Why spend money for a car ferry when you can do it cheaper and more conveniently? But generally you are trying to do much to much, and Morocco is probably out with the car, which you would have to drive through Spain (not mentioned on your itinerary) and pay for a car ferry to Tangiers.

Do central Europe this time and plan for another trip to cover western Europe.

Welcome to this board. You'll find it a terrific resource for getting precise answers to specific questions (like &quot;how long does the vaporetto typically take from the Piazzale Roma cat park to Rialto?&quot.

You'll also find vaguer questions will generate a torrent of vaguer (and, IMHO, quite usless) advice: mostly from the Vacationally Correct.

Your plans are, of course, Vacationally Incorrect. Whether you accept the advice from those more enlightened than you is up to you. Personally, I'd put most of it into the same category as advice that the word &quot;history&quot; is sexist.

Your fellow-Australians have been getting in a bit of OE in much the way you're contemplating since the first of you got his ticket of leave. And you can get all the &quot;don't do it&quot; stuff you want down the pub - with some semi-drinkable beer at the same time.

You can have a great time driving the Great Circle route you're suggesting, and you can pack most of into the time you're envisaging.

Morocco really isn't on: and if you were confusing it with Tunisia (which I think is reachable by ferry from Italy) you still need to check whether your insurance allows you to take the car to Africa at all. You should also double-check before making any more plans what the hirer's position is on taking the car into what we used to call Eastern Europe. And you'll find the Channel ferry almost certainly spectacularly expensive. If your only plans in Britain are London, there are planes to one or other of London's half-dozen airports, charging little over &pound;1 (in theory), almost every five seconds, from practically every strip of concrete in NW Europe. Some of these strips - like Beauvais from memory, though these things change - have very cheap (and safe) long-term parking. There's little you can do in a day or two with a car in London, so you may as well leave in on the mainland, though obviously if you're thinking of a week or so driving round, the rules change.

Driving on the proper side of the road with an LHD car isn't a particularly big deal. Thousands (literally) of Eastern European lorry drivers do it every day, bringing in virtually all Britain's food and clothing from the neighbouring countries. Accidents involving them are extraordinarily rare.

Parking in Europe's cities is a mostly free doddle in some, some times (like London on Sundays): messier in others (like Florence). But often (as in central London during the the week) mind-numbingly expensive (including congestion charge: a minimum of &pound;30 - yes pounds - a day)

The general rule for you has to be to stay on the outskirts, finding a hotel you can park overnight for free, then tracking down the local park + ride. Doing this is easier in some countries than others (they're usually well-signed in Germany, for example).

Which brings us to the real value of this forum. I've forgotten the specifics of parking in Innsbruck, though last time I drove there I can't remember having a problem, or paying anything. But you'll get real value from the forum - as opposed to yet another dreary lecture on Vacational Correctness - if you paste a thread asking, with a clear title, for practical details for each area you plan to visit.

You'll also get a lot of advice (without the VC rants, often with less knowledge of the practicalities of driving, but almost always with deep knowledge of low-cost accommodation) from the W Europe or UK board of the Thorntree site.

Enjoy yourself. A huge slug of my teenage hitchiking round Europe depended on lifts from your predecessors. Most weren't hanging around as much as you're planning to: they really did pack the miles in back then. None of the Antipodeans giving me lifts expressed a nanosecond's regret about 37 countries in two and a half days.

I can't see any reason at all why you should materially change your plans, except to junk the two car journeys off the European mainland.

Hi K,

Have you checked driving times at www.mappy.com and www.viamichelin.com?

Some of your transits are a day of driving on motorways - eg, Amsterdam/Berlin is 7 hrs, Berlin/Warsaw is 9 hr, Krakow/Prague is 7 hr, Nice/Interlaken 6hr.

You might want to consider making your loop from Frankfurt through Germany, Italy, the Balkans, Central Europe and back to Frankfurt via Berlin, leaving out Amsterdam, France and Morocco.

Even so, you are going to have to plan for a few days downtime between each long leg.

Look forward to your trip report.

I believe ksch meant MONACO since that is right close to the 'Italian Riverina'. I suspect this posting is a joke.

First, I can't believe it took more than 10 responses to realize the Original poster mean Monaco and not Morocco!

Re the parking question. Parking in European cities is usually doable if you don't mind the expense. It can get very expensive. You'll almost always have to find a parking garage and pay by the hour. Free on street parking for a non-resident is almost nonexistent. But there are garages and there are usually fairly good signs as you drive into the cities telling you where they are. They most likely won't be right in the center of where you want to be. So there may be another expense (metro/bus) in getting there. Are you pre-booking hotels? If so, you can easily find out what they offer for parking and choose your hotels based on that. In some cases driving and parking is really a major hassel - like Rome. In that case you can do something like park (for free in this case) in Orvieto and take a train into Rome. If you are staying three days or so it will be cheaper to do this than to park in Rome and you'll save the nightmare of driving there. Venice is no problem as there are several fairly cheap garages right by the Mestre station.

You will need to do some research if you want to not spend all your time and a forturne in money in driving into and finding parking in all these cities. I don't think you can expect to just show up and have a pleasant experience. But by asking this question you are starting to do some research.

But now, as the others have said - that's a lot of places even in eight weeks. Go to viamichelin.com and you can get driving times and distances between any towns/cities in Europe. Then make a pretty detailed plan. Remember that driving times between cities does NOT include finding the parking,finding the hotel, etc.

If you do decided not to drop any areas you might want to rethink a few things. Amsterdam would fit better at the end of the trip after Brussels. Interlaken would probably fit better between Inssbruck and Salzburg than between Nice and Paris.

But it sounds like a great adventure. Have fun.

My goodness I go to work for 12 hours and come home to many wonderful responses. Wow, where does one start - hmm. Firstly, I did mean Monaco, I wondered why the comments about Spain &amp; Africa.. Secondly, us Aussie are used to driving long distances, the drive from Amsterdam to Berlin 7 hours, is nothing for us. We drive two hours to get to work each day and two hours back. We have travelled a lot through the US, Alaska, Canada, so are comfortable with driving on the wrong side of the road! But yes, it will be a challenge driving a LHC on the correct side of the road. We are two middle 40's women who like to keep on the move, like to get a glimpse of lots and then return for greater experiences later on. The route I stated was due to not being able to get connecting flights to London from Frankfurt at the time of booking (World Cup), so we arrive and leave from Frankfurt, plus the car is leased for the whole time. The route is all over the place, because there are some &quot;must sees&quot;, which include Amsterdam, Prague, Krakow, Budapest, Salzberg, everything in Italy, Paris, Interlaken. We will probably knock out a few places, such as Warsaw. For us, sitting around a pool all day would be terrible, we are also not conventional in terms of having to see &quot;all the tourist attractions&quot;, always have to leave something for next time! Thank you for some really useful tips, I was thinking about staying in a hotel on the outskirts of towns/cities and using public transport. Some of our 'special memories' from travelling have come from riding on the local public transport systems. I shall look at the link for the map and driving times. Thank you all again. Kris PS: the camping ideal is shelved totally, we do like our comforts too much!!

Wow!! My wife and I are Canadians living in S.Korea. We are doing almost the same itinerary except not quite so many stops. Our trip is starting in June though. I think doing yours in May and June is a good idea as the weather wont be quite as hot in Italy. (hopefully). You shouldnt let people change your plans about camping. Im 52 and we are camping the whole way. There are many wonderful campgrounds all through Europe which offer a lot of those comforts you like except AC. Anyways, I hope you have a great time. Oh yes, what car did you get from Peugeot? We leased the 206 CC. Just have to feel the wind in my ever thinning hair one more time at least.

The main difference between driving great distances in Australia, Canada, US and Europe is the amount of traffic (traffic density) and state of the roads. In some countries, there is very high traffic density and it's not unknown to be stuck in a gigantic traffic jam for hours on end for any number of reasons - roadworks, accidents, start/end of holiday seasons and local festivals/attractions/sporting events. And while there is a good network of motorways and other multi-lane highways, a very heavy commercial traffic means you are confined to just one or two lanes and you cannot make rapid progress, and there's often just one motorway linking two major cities and everyone uses it. When you come off a motorway onto all-purpose roads (normally single carriageway), your average speed drops to around 40-45 mph (and 20-30 mph in mountainous areas). A reasonable, and comfortable driving distance per day is around 200-300 miles, which allows you a leisurely start in the morning and chance to stop for a nice lunch and a bit of sightseeing en route.

As Alec says - one simply cannot compare driving in Canada or Australia w/ driving in Europe. Sure there are Autobahns and motorways. And you can make reasonably good time on them. But who wants to spend a trip to Europe looking off to the side of a high-speed major highway and just rushing city to city? On scenic and secondary roads you will be very lucky to average 40 mph. And when you factor in stops at any of the hundreds of sites/villages/attractions/photo ops, etc I would not count on even the 200-300 miles Alec mentions.

You've received many valid comments about your itinerary but I will address your parking issue.

What I've found useful is to go to the city's website and look for city maps or stadtplans. They almost always indicate where there are parking lots or garages. When I find a parking area close to the sights I will be visiting, I then go to viamichelin.com and get driving directions directly to that parking location.

If you can't find the parking information easily from the city's website, then do a search on google.com by putting in Frankfurt car parking or something similar.

Why not hire a local driver/guide?

Do the math: 8 weeks is 56 days. You list 26 city and country names (some of which are vast regions like Bavaria and the Riviera) - that's two days per geographical item listed.

Deduct the time to pack in the morning, check out, find your car and drive to the next location, find the hotel, park, check in - you will hardly be doing anything else. Most of the locations you name cry out for more than a day's visit, and you'll be running yourself into the ground repeating this routine on average every two days.

Sounds like a business trip from hell that your boss makes you do, visiting all clients in Europe and Northern Africa in 56 days because, well, why?

Mate, if you're game to put your new car on a ferry and drive around Morocco, you're a better man than gungadin!

WK