Oh @janisj - sorry I was typing too fast earlier - I meant London Eye and Buckingham Palace.

So is our itinerary doable for the short time we have per city? It would be great to add more landmarks but we didn't want to set our expectations so high only to be crushed when we get there.

Yes would need to get a guide book or actually look at a map to see what we can see. Thank you so much!

If all you want to do in each city is what you have listed, then your itinerary is certainly doable because what you want to do in each city will take very little time, as Janis says for London.


Do get good guidebooks. Like the others on this thread, I am very dubious about whether your travel agent's plan will let you see much of anything except airports.

Since you are traveling in February I don't think you need to book this far in advance. You can take your time creating a wish list for each city and then pick a hotel that works best for that itinerary. If you use the website Booking.com then you can search for your specific travel dates and search using a map. It makes it easy to see (for instance) which hotels would be an easy walk to the Vatican. The website is really a useful planning tool and the hotels generally have excellent cancellation policies in case you change your mind after you've booked.

Key to making your trip work will be double checking exactly when the sights you want to see are open. What will also make things easier is if you ace the optimal way to get from the airport to the city center and back to the airport. For some place like Lisbon or Rome a taxi ride can be best. For someplace like Paris or London or Athens it might be a bus or a train. Some of those options can and should be booked in advance. However I am not sure you need metro passes for any of the cities you plan to visit just to get around the city with the exception of London. People here can help you with details about that.

One last tip: You really will need to be in Olympic trim to complete this whirl and be sensible about bringing the right clothes. I assume Canadians know how to be sensible about eating right and getting enough rest before you undertake this trip and being careful as you go along to drink enough warming soup and tea and stay dry and all that other good stuff from folk wisdom of yore. You will be passing through a lot of airports and people sneezing on you so you need a good foundation!

@sandralist - thank you for all the tips. Truly appreciated!

Yes - good thing husband and I are okay healthwise,.. would probably start taking double doses of multivitamins pronto...Thought March is not that cold in Rome, Athens and Lisbon?

We haven't used booking.com recently but will take a look. We often check trivago and hotels.com.

One thing jumped out at me. That you are planning to find "cheap" hotels but want to be in city centers. Generally speaking the better located hotels, the more expensive. The budget ones are often in the outskirts, suburbs, by the train station, etc.

If sounds like you're stuck with the plan. But I do agree it's too many places in too short a time and not in a logical order.

You can see lots more than what you've listed. For instance, last summer I had 2 days in Rome and we did a food tour (awesome!), piazza navona, spanish steps, trevi fountain, pantheon, coliseum (tour with bottom and top floors - fantastic), forum, capitoline hill (outside only), st peters (church and square), castel sant'angelo (inside - whole thing), campo di fiori markets, wandered through trastevere, shopped for souvineers, 2 espresso stops, 2 sit down lunches (one on the tour), 2 sit down dinners and gelato twice. We didn't do the vatican, but with an extra half a day we could have.

I know this pace would be crazy for lots of people - but I had a solid plan, pre-booked everything I could, and had two travelling companions who were very happy to be ducklings and just follow. We had an awesome and memorable time and for the most part didn't feel rushed (except to get to a lunch reservation from capitoline hill).

Personally with such a short amount of time I would rather have planned too much and have to drop something than be standing on a street corner wasting time and wondering what should we do now.

We also loved our food tour in Rome through Walks of Italy, it was our favorite thing for our whole vacation. I also like the view of the Roman Forum from the back of the Capitoline Museum. You can see just about everything from there and no crowds (although you won't have crowds anyway when you're there)

FYI - Our food tour was from Eating Italy - http://www.eatingitalyfoodtours.com/

@MonicaRichards - we're looking at the Walks of Italy website and they have a couple of interesting tours. How would you rate the tour guides? Are they nice and knowledgeable? Plus are there other fees we need to worry about aside from the prices listed on the website? Tips? etc?

Hez - your itinerary sounds very inviting!

Hez - Will definitely check what our walk tour can cover and then add-on the sites you've listed. Our timeline seems like yours so if it worked for you, it could work for us too!

I'd start looking for hotels now because the sooner you book, the more choice you will have, and you're not really that far from departure.

Best first source for me is Tripadvisor.com. You might find some bargains because of the time of year, but, as discussed above, you will want to be near the attractions because you haven't much time for "commuting" into the cities. And those are more expensive.

Don't ignore Best Westerns and Holiday Inns. They're sort of "infradig", but they provide solid lodging for pretty good rates.

I'd book through booking.com and choose the "refundable" or "cancellable" option for now. Then closer to the trip--maybe two weeks before departure--search again because hotels will be starting to get desperate and you might get bargains.

For Rome, start looking in the Piazza Navona area--close to the Vatican, close to Spanish Steps, pretty close to the Forum, not too far from Termini train station.

For London, I'm seeing two Best Westerns along Belgrave Road both under $200. That's somewhat close to what you say you want to see, and not far from a Tube station so you can get to the airport. Don't know the area, though.

For Paris, there is a Best Western right at the St. Michel metro stop. The St. Michel location would be great for your interests. We stayed at another hotel in that area our first trip to Paris and loved it. Walking distance to many things and easy Metro to the rest.

Never been to Lisbon or Brussels, and it's been so long since I've been to Athens that I can't help with it.

Bon Voyage

@ dwdvagamundo - Thanks a lot for the wise tips. And thank you for the suggestions regarding accommodations in Rome and London. Yes $200 is just about our max limit for an overnight hotel stay. We wouldn't want to overspend on a place to sleep and then not have money for souvenirs, etc.

How much would be a decent FOOD budget per day for two people? Woud $100 each person a day cut it? Thinking of just having coffee and croissants in the morning, perhaps sandwich and soup for lunch and then a nice dinner with drinks in the evening?

Sorry for sounding very naive but we're on the early stages of planning and needless to say, other than our flights being booked,the drawing board is still pretty much blank. But with the suggestions I've received from this forum, plus us drilling down on our must-see landmarks, I think we're not too shabby...

if you want to manage the food budget, you might want to reverse the lunch and dinner. Have a nice lunch, especially the fixed meal of the day, would give you almost as good meal as a dinner at a fraction of the full dinner cost. If you are not into eating late like locals: respectable restaurants don't even open until 7:30pm or later, having sandwich for dinnner at cafe type of place solves both the earlier-than-the-local meal time issue as well as the food budget.

Many accommodations in Italy and Greece include breakfast, so trying to save BF cost may not even be an option. If you want to eat breakfast really early outside the Hotel, you would need to go to a cafe at places people would go at such hours such as transportation hubs like railroad stations or near squares where morning market would take place.

I agree on staying near Piazza Navona - that's where we were and it was perfect.

$100/day per person is plenty for food.

Personally I would skip Brussels as a destination and go to Amsterdam.

I always think the suggestion for a main meal at lunch should be looked at carefully.

1 - I don;t want to spend 2.5 hours in the middle of a sightseeing day having a big meal - rather spend an hour and just have a sandwich or a pasta

2 - I tend to fall asleep after a big meal - so would be dragging all afternoon

3 - In Italy enjoying a nice dinner and a romantic walk back to the hotel through piazzas with floodlit fountains at 10:30 or 11 is one of the ways of enjoying la dolce vita

If it works for some people that's fine - but not for us. And who eats dinner before 8 anyway?

Is Brussels a compulsory stop?

It's 1.5 hours by Thalys from Paris. (train)

I'd drop Amsterdam, but others have said that already.

In London, also consider Southbank, in Paris, also consider Bastille, Republique, Canal St Martin. If you're near a metro stop, inside the Peripherique, you'll be mostly fine.

thank you for all the tips! Husband and I booked a hotel in the Piazza Navona area -- $460ish for 3 nights - not too shabby !

Next is looking for a place in London area... Hopefully somebody can suggest a particular location accessible to most tourist attractions. Walking distance would be great!

Can somebody please suggest what area in Athens can we find cheap hotels (hopefully close to Acropolis)? Thanks...