figg

Hi all! Newbie here. My husband and I are planning a trip to Europe for the end of August/beginning of September next year. We are in our early 40's and haven't really traveled before; our interests are art, history, and food. We will have about two weeks and aren't sure if we want to do a whirlwind tour or plant ourselves in one or two spots. Budget is moderate. We were thinking maybe the UK, Italy, or Greece. Perhaps the French Riveria?

sparkchaser

I vote against whirlwind tour. It would be exhausting and expensive.

A few questions to help the members help you better:

1. Define "moderate".

2. Do you speak any languages aside from English?

3. Do you plan to rent a car or rely on public transit?

4. Home airport?

5. Dislikes?

greg

I doubt you actually have that many options.
Even if we spit out several itineraries, if you then check flight cost, flight timing, accommodation cost, etc, you would find many of what we recommend are not acceptable to you.
You can actually do much investigation on your own for your benefit as you will get the sense of what is possible and what are deadends. You will get better responses to close ended questions.

Whirlwind and "moderate" budget probably don't go together unless you compensate for the cost of moving around by staying in cheap hotels and eating cheap meals -- contrary to what you want to do.

August or September make difference at places that have distinct holiday and business cycles. Accommodations and flights to "vacation" destinations are more expensive and less available for August, while the opposite is true to business oriented places in September. Convention heavy cities might be cheap during summer months, but jumps up in price with reduced availabilities once September roles in and the conventions pick up. To see if this is the case, you have to run booking engines such as booking.com to probe availabilities and price pictures across the time period of interest at target destinations.

Since your trip is next year and since you would probably be making your arrangements around this time next year (unless you are using award miles), start collecting airplane fare trends, accommodations availabilities, seasonal ground transportation time tables (especially boat schedules) now. For flights, sign up to receive fare alert like kayak.com and set alerts to ALL possible destinations and ALL possible dates of travel. In few months, you might find certain destinations not meeting whatever is your "moderate" budget. You will have your own data to answer typical questions "is there a possibility of airfare to get cheaper later?", "do I have to book accommodations now?", "when do I have to buy train tickets", etc.

Hez

Personally I would probably do something like fly to London, take the Eurostar to Paris, fly to Rome and then fly home from there. That will give you sufficient time for an overview of each city, be quite varied, and not involve too much rushing around. All three cities are great for art, history and food (with London at the bottom of the three in the food category).

In case you were unaware, flying into one city and out of another from the US to Europe is quite common and rarely much more expensive than a straight out return flight.

Sassafrass

No whirlwind. Like fast food restaurants, it becomes a blur with no experiences to remember.

Tons of options, but some ways to start.

Pick the top five or six places you have each dreamed of seeing. If there are any matches, you have it. If not, pick your top two or three and see what you can combine. DH and I are always making top ten lists and each of us prioritize our choices. It is amazing how often the same places are at/near the top of both lists. Sometimes, we make a primary choice for a trip, then see what else would work well logistically with that.

Example: Paris pairs well with London for another city because of the Eurostar. Paris also pairs well with Provence for a more countryside, smaller town, village experience because of the TGV trains.

The great thing in Europe is trains and local flights that will take you almost anywhere. However, you don't want to spend more time getting from place to place than seeing anything.

If Art is at the top of your interests, you could spend two weeks savoring Italy. Do the big three with day trips and one coastal area. That also serves your interest in history and food.

The same would be also be true for France or the UK.

OTOH, for a taste of different countries, you could pick two or three major cities, spend a week or so in each and do day trips, flying into one and out of the other (multi-city on booking sites).

Once you narrow your personal choices, people here can tell you the easiest or fastest or cheapest or most interesting way to do things.

figg

Thank you so much for your replies! It is going to be difficult narrowing it down...I want to see EVERYTHING! To answer some questions: we speak English, dont mind renting a car unless there are hazards we are unaware of, one of us will be flying from east coast US and the other from the middle east. We would like a mix of sightseeing and relaxation; I realize late Aug/early Sept will still be hot and crowded most places, but that is the timeframe we have to work with.