European travelers and backpackers, please help!

Sport ,

I dont mean to burst your bubble but 2 months is a short trip given that I've known people to visit London for a weekend and spend a month there .. dont think of countries or cities .. they wont mattter .. jot down 5 things you like to do or a thing you really want to see such as the Eiffel Tower etc .. for the like to do .. research the web for the best sites and then just use your spare time to join the dots .. not forgetting to stop to smell the grass .. seriously .. it is the people you will meet that you will remember .. the photos of yourself sitting here or there will be nice reminders.

For a 20 year old guy .. spend a bit more time in Spain especially Barceleona .. Spain is quite a large country and after 5 trips there the only towns I will say I have done is Jerez de la frontera and cadiz .. it is a less expensive country and it will give you time to organsie yourself before hitting the road .. Greece is pretty quiet by October so unless you expressly want to do the Partheon (it is special) its a LONG way out of the way for such a short trip .. ie you will spend 3 days on ferrys & train & buses just to get from Athens to Rome ..

If you just want to take lots of postcards .. take one of the package tours .. a lot more fun less stress and quite probably cheaper .. ( that will rankle a few people here) .. but its true ..

Thanks everyone for the advice - I really appreciate it. It's better for me to learn from other people's mistakes than make them myself.
Well I am doing a TopDeck tour of Greece which finishes on the 10th of Oct.
My interests include meeting new people, partying, natural sights and walking off the beaten track. I'd love to bungee jump in Switzerland too.
My to do list includes - Rome. Seville.
Switzerland. Prague. Germany. Amsterdam. And then the UK.
I understand that's a lot - but I want to try and fit in as much as possible.

Not only is it a lot. But they are all well out of the way from each other. Pick an area (France/Spain or Italy/Spain or Italy/Greece). And stick with that.

You have 7 things in your list and its a mixture of 4 cities and 3 countries. If you had 7 cities to visit in two months thatd be better but you wouldn't cover everything in switzerland/Germany/UK as well as getting to Rome/Prague/Adam and Seville.

Seriously - 2 or 3 countries would be all you need for that time frame.

but I want to try and fit in as much as possible
That's exactly what I did on my first backpacking trip, and indeed I did come home with a lot of pictures of every famous building in my guidebook.
However, my fondest memories of that trip were not seeing the Parthenon in Athens with my own eyes - to be honest it looked just like in the pictures (= impressive but only confirming my expectations and therefore not really swiping me off my feet) and after 15 minutes the horrible heat got the better of me so I left and spent the rest of the day in the shade) or exploring Pompeii on a day trip from Rome (by the time we'd finally reached the site after 3 hours, I had already lost most of my appetite), but rather the interesting people I met and a few places that I hadn't planned on visiting but ended up seeing because I missed a train or simply didn't have the energy to move on yet another day.

Build in some slack, to allow yourself a day off from sightseeing, to spend a day in a park, to talk to people, to get away from tourist hubs like Amsterdam or Prague - as if there's nothing else to see in NL or CZ! - and, consequently, to discover your very own "hidden gems".

Hi

Wow you have big plans ! Hope you have a great time !! Personally I would turn your trip upside down and start in the uk and work down but it sounds like you already have quite a few set plans that you need to work with, I have a few suggestions that may help:

Why not fly from Athens too Rome? www.easyjet.com have deals around euro 30, that way your not starting your eurail time with a lengthy journey,that from friends experiences isn't much fun, then make your way to Barcelona from Rome taking in some of the italian citys, on the way ,I would forget about venice though, as it would be a bit of a detour, an alternate to the train here may also be able to take a flight from Milan (Bergamo) to Barcelona with www.ryanair.com (El Prat is the major airport the others are regionals) . From Barcelona I would head to Madrid then down to Seville, from Seville I would probably fly to either Brussels or Amsterdam (again Ryanair do a service to charlesroi a regional airport for Brussels ) or try www.iberia.es for the major airports. I would take the first three to five weeks to do this leg of your tour, this is where I would stop running with the shedule as you will be right in the heart of europe , especially if you choose Brussels. This will allow you to do at least some of the places on your wish list the longest you would have to travel is 9 hours to Prague (this is ruling slovenia out) .

Going back to the shedule tho I would book your point of entry to the uk and also plan how your going to get around as your rail pass won't cover you here, also if your planning on travelling from London to Scotland I wouldn't rule out www.ba.com and www.flybmi.com as they fly from london heathrow and the increase in fare from the budget airlines can sometimes outweigh the costs of getting to the regional airports, having to buy refreshments etc...Also unless you book well in advance air fares are usually cheaper than train.

Budget once you've paid all your travelling expenses divide your remaining funds by the amount of days of your trip, I would probably then take off about 20 euros a day for when your in the cheaper countries Greece, Italy,Spain any eastern bloc countries you visit that way you'll have extra money for the more expensive countries and I wouldn't count on the uk being cheaper because you won't have to pay accom costs , its quite expensive here and plus it will be Christmas and New Year so you'll probably want a bit extra money .

Finally enjoy have fun, don't stick to a shedule too much if you arrive in a city you've dreamed of visiting for years to think actually I hate this place , you have your eurail pass just leave you never know what you might find in a place you've never heard of and only go to because its an hour away or because it had a funny name. When diaster strikes, don't panic deal with it, nothing can't be solved, if you do visit Seville the locals will think your crazy for visiting so late in the year and tell you to come back for the feria's or when its warm,

have a great time and hope this helps !!

So many places, so little time.

Congratulations you have posted the 100th post this week that fits the title above.

When I was younger I discovered the ‘so many women, so little time’ problem. They say that with age comes wisdom. I’m 65 now and hope I will discover the answer to that problem soon as the pace is beginning to tire me out.

Fortunately, for the travel equivalent, of so many places and so little time I discovered the answer some years ago. So read on.

Trying to see as MANY places as possible in a given period of time is not best use of travel time. Quantity does not equal quality and in travel, less is more. The way to ‘see as much as possible’ is to move less and spend more time IN places.

While it is understandable that someone wants to see as many places as they can, the trade off is seeing less of everything. Or in other words, you can see a little of a lot or a lot of a little. Theoretically, you could spend an hour in each place if all you wanted was to check places off a list but obviously that would be a waste of time. That’s an extreme but spending a day here and 2 days there is not much better. You still see very little and spend too high a proportion of your time going between A and B.

So what then is a reasonable amount of time to spend in a place, I hear you asking. Well you could use the rule of thumb known as the ‘Rule of 3’s’ to guide you. That says that you should never spend less than 3 full days/4 nights visiting a place unless it is just an overnight stop between A and B. That gives you a MINIMUM to shoot for. Depending on the place and your interests you may choose to spend longer. Most would agree for example that a week would be a minimum for Rome.

Consider that even using the Rule of 3’s will result in 25% of your time being lost to moving and only 75% of your time spent actually IN places seeing/doing things. Far better of course to get to that point in your travel life where you don’t consider moving at all and spend ALL your time other than your arrival and departure days IN the one place.

But that comes with age too. Slower is not necessarily a bad thing. Ask my wife.

A week in Amsterdam? BIG waste of time and one hellova lot of money!
Very expensive city.

If you're after a pot holiday you can do that cheaper anywhere in Holland *which is only part of the Netherlands.

If you stretch yourself so thin by "seeing" (only) and not experiencing the feel, pace, nice people (who can teach you a lot about different p.o.v.), you may never be back. The cost of travelling long distance, while not tasting Europe, and making yourself more vulnerable to theaves, by not paying arrention to your stuff and surroundings. That would almost kill the valuable lessins by just being a familiar face to locals at different places. blah blah...

Its the experience and simmering wisdom for the future you should be after. Not the score card.

Thanks travelinstyle and gawkabout - I've placed your comments into consideration and am planning a new itinerary; focusing less on 'checking things off' and more on the experience. I know what you mean - it's just that I am keen to try and do as much as I can. My transport's via train (Eurail). And in Amsterdam and the UK I have accommodation sorted.
My itinerary goes something like this..
Paris - a week
Greece - a tour for 10 days (booked)
Rome - week
Florence - 4 days
Milan - 4 days
Nice - 4 days
Barcelona - 6 days
Seville - 6 days
Madrid - 5 days
Have 3 days to travel across to Bern - 4 days
A week in Switzerland
Munich - 5 days
Prague - 5 days
Berlin - a week
Amsterdam - a week
Then I'm off to London for 10 days and around the UK until I fly home from Paris on the 10th of January.

Thats a whole lot better. There are still a a bit of distance between some destinations. Madrid to Bern for example. And even Nice to Barcelona. I would say for such an itinerary you need a combination of trains (for those shorter journeys) and planes (for longer journeys like Paris to Greece etc).

I would probably drop Madrid. And spend a bit more time in Tuscany or go to the Cinque Terre in the Italian Riveria.

s just that I am keen to try and do as much as I can. We all want to see and do as much as possible. Its just not physically possible. Especially when time is a constraint.