Driving trip in europe, 3 weeks, advice?

if i were you i wouldnt waste my time with milan, its not worth the petrol getting there, but hey thats just my opinion, have you thought about going to spain? barcelona is an amazing place for night life culture beaches, it has everything!
there is a lake near to verona called lake garda which is beautiful but if your a group of guys you may not find it so appealing!

if your strapped for cash eat and drink out of the centre of prague, prices here are inflated to match the english, especially in their irish bars (where i had my first cup of real tea for over a month, heaven!), try to find some locals, they will show you real prague instead of "tourist" prague.

good luck trying to drive in paris!

Josh, I'm sorry to prick your bubble but car tours and cities make a horrible combination. Parking in cities is difficult and expensive; your car will be a target for any opportunistic thief who thinks there's something worth stealing inside. City navigation can be a nightmare.

European car tours are best saved for exploring smaller towns. However, if you decide to go for it, I recommend that you jointly invest in one of the several excellent guidebooks that cover Europe. They all include recommendations for places to sleep, eat and drink. You'll also need a good road atlas, one that contains city maps.

Good luck.

Cars isolate us from fun learning we do on trains.

And that´s really why we go-

14 places in 21 days plus the return drive from Amsterdam. Does that make sense to you Josh?

OK, I'm not 18 any more, but this sounds like my worst nightmare - finding my way along strange roads into strange cities (on the 'wrong' side of the road) where I don't speak the language, finding somewhere to park the car, somewhere to stay, somewhere to eat, a quick look at a couple of tourist sights, then packing up and starting it all again tomorrow.

Are you sure you really want to go to all those places in just 3 weeks? Try and convince your friends to cut back the itinerary by at least half.

My honest advice would be to shorten your itinerary. In my opinion, it is much better to see a few places in comfort and thoroughly, meeting the locals and enjoying yourself, than to spend all your time driving frantically around the continent and ticking locations off a long list! I spent nearly six months travelling in a campervan around Europe, and didn't see the number of places you and your mates are planning to see -- there's no need to aim so high.

It's natural to want to see a whole slew of places, but really if you just have three weeks, three cities is ample.

I advise sticking to the Prague, Berlin, and Amsterdam section and only that section! Spending four or five days in each of those cities would be a fantastic experience, and gives you time to get to and from each one, plus side trips. If you are on a really low budget, bring a tent or two and you can camp. Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam have great, cheap, clean, and lively campsites near to the city centre (I like Camping Zeeburg for Amsterdam and Sunny Camp for Prague, but I stayed with friends in Berlin, so can't recommend one personally there.)

Plus it's a relatively simple drive between those cities, in terms of them being fairly close geographically, and with a decent road network and signage. I didn't have a map and made it, so how hard can it be? The other cities you mention have their charms too but might be a little bit uptight (i.e. Paris) or not have enough in them to sustain your interest for more than a day (i.e. Verona, Milan). Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague don't just have oodles of sights and lots of interesting culture, they also have a thriving night life, so you would have to work really hard at being bored, even if you stayed there a month. :)

So yeah, to summarise: Keep it simple and you'll enjoy it more. I hope you have a great time.

And what happened to the OP? Absolutely nada since the original post. My guess is "timewaster". OP, please prove me wrong.

I notice that profiles no longer show when you were last logged on. Too bad, it at least let you see if it looked like the OP of a post had returned to read responses, even if they were too rude to acknowledge them.