Planning trip with 18 year old granddaughter from U.S. to Europe. Want to see Italy, Greece, France, and UK (and maybe Spain). What are your recommendations for "must sees", best way to travel, and other helpful information?

Start by getting some guidebooks and deciding what it is that you must see. Browse the destination guides on here, read some trip reports and get a 'feel' for how people do their trips.

Four or five countries in three weeks sounds a bit much for me. Four or five towns or regions in two countries might make more sense, but it is your trip and only you can decide that.

Once you have a basic outline of your trip you might want to post some more specific questions on here. At the moment everything is too 'open' for anyone to offer meaningful guidance.

@mjdh1957 We're in the process of reviewing guidebooks as we speak. Good advice. The hard part is figuring out which are "must see" as opposed to "would sure like to see."

Will watch this space and continue to ask questions as we move forward.

Thanks for your help!

You could very easily spend 3 weeks in any one of those countries and not see/do nearly everything. Or you could 'do' 3 cities, or a bit of 3 countries. Or <i>any</i> combo.

So do a bit more reading up, comeback w/ more focus, and let us know what sorts of things you hope to see. And what time of year??

I might suggest London, Paris, Rome, Venice. Fly into LDN, Eurostar to Paris, cheap flight to Rome, train to Venice, home.

Being in cities does not preclude day trips. Staying longer makes an apartment possible.

My travel motto. Less is More. And my second one, linked to first. 'Be' there, don't just 'See' there.

Every time you change locations, you lose time to'admin'. When you land, you lose time to jetlag, last day lost getting to airport.

Michael_Paris offers a decent itinerary. Only thing I'd change is not flying home from Venice. Stateside flights from Venice leave very VERY early in the morning and getting to the airport is a real pain.

So Home > London > Paris > Venice > Rome > Home makes more sense IMO. (or the reverse)

Good advice from all -- thanks so much. Plan to travel first part of June. Was thinking 5 days in London with day trips; 2 days in Paris; a week in Italy and a week in Greece. This would still be very rushed and I know we would only scratch the surface of everything there is to see. We'll keep researching and stay in touch with all of you. Again, thanks!