Europe in June 08...advice/comments welcome

Well for starters you might want to know that the UK is in Europe and always has been.

Your time per place is reasonable and as for budget, it depends on how you intend to travel. Hostels and supermarket food say $60 per day. Hotel and restaurant food say €150 per day.

Trains Amsterdam-Frankfurt: Offers start from 39 Euro if you fix yourself to a train in advance ([http://www.nshispeed.nl/]). Upside: Highspeed-train, takes only 4 hours. Downside: You'll bypass the scenic Rhine valley. Either go there as a daytrip from Frankfurt or buy a ticket Amsterdam-Cologne (spelled Keulen+ on the Dutch site) from 19 Euro and buy an additional ticket Cologne-Frankfurt +via Koblenz (!) at [www.bahn.de/international/view/en/index.shtml], offers for this stretch start from 29 Euro, so this will turn out slightly more expensive in the end.

[www.whichbudget.com] is very useful to gather which low cost airlines fly to which airports, for Frankfurt-Florence Ryanair (Frankfurt Hahn-Pisa) often turn out cheapest.

Amsterdam-Frankfurt: train
frankfur-Firenze: Fly (Ryanair from Hahn if you dare - or a regualr fligt) OR train
Firenze-Roma: train
For the rest - with a limited time: fly

Worderful to see a programme that isn't really bad (not the "see one country/day").

The german railway site mentioned above (..bahn...) is THE site for schedules all over Europe. For prices - also use the relevant national railwas homepages.

The value of the NZD isn't bad for the time being and the GBP hasn't been lower for MANY years.
So London has actually become 10+% cheaper to visit over the last months - it needed it, BTW.

Europeans (I at least) find NZ to be a relatively costly country to visit, so although you probably will find Europe relatively costly area it isn't THAT bad for you.
That you actually pay more than one unit of your currency for one unit of another country is fully irrelevant.

try to see the "destinations" part of this LP site to get some thing to budget over. Remember that local transport costs money, and that entrance ffes to museums etc. either are extremely high - or very cheap (or even free). Just try look up Tower of London and British Museum!

www.eurostar.com cheaper if book 3+ weeks ahead to Amsterdam and Paris (art galls and museums cheaper than London)
london National gallery free..wonderful.
jumpon jumpoff bus london and paris good way to go.or you can get a pass for 1-several days for bus/underground
the food/transport/accomadation will be your big costs..if you want to stay in youth hostels get a card at home.

If you are on a tight budget, it is quite courageous to have several day stopovers in Singapore, London and New York. I think all those 3 cities are the most expensive ones in their regions.

sounds like a great trip! since you have quite a few flights to book, i would recommend looking at www.harefares.com which allows you to choose multiple origin and destination airports and then shows you all the european airlines that fly those routes. a few years ago i was looking for flights from dubrovnik to barcelona and was overwhelmed by the amount of cheap airlines in europe (most of which didn't fly that route). anyway, happy planning!