Hi everyone! I've decided to take some time off after graduating from university next year and go backpacking solo in Europe :D So far I've read through many, many posts and gotten a rough idea of the places I want to visit. Hopefully this will be the first of many trips to Europe, so I'm just heading to a lot of the big and touristy cities. I'm planning on about a 6 weeks trip and I'm mainly interested in the historic and cultural sites; not very much of a party or visual arts and painting person. My tentative itinerary so far:
London, England - 3 days (1 day to get over jet lag and 2 to explore)
Paris, France - 3 days
Amsterdam, Netherlands - 3 days
Cinque Terre, Italy - 2 days
Venice, Italy - 2 days
Rome, Italy - 7 days
Athens, Greece - 4 days
Fly back to London and spend 2-3 days exploring surrounding area before heading home.
I was hoping for suggestions on whether should I be spending more/less time in any of the mentioned places and if there other small towns, that are on the way and worth a visit or ? What would be the best route to visit these places, and which mode of transportation would best? I'm budgeting about 75 euros a day for this trip, would this be enough for hostels every night and an occasional cheap restaurant meal, maybe one in every country?
North American by any chance? I ask because this is a typical 'highlights' type of itinerary (and of course Cinque Terre appears in it).
If your €75 per day includes transport as well as accommodation etc then its going to be pretty tight given that you are hoping to travel over a wide geographical area and that eats up money. Additionally, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Italy are all at the expensive end of the affordability spectrum in Europe.
You can however minimise tranport costs by booking flights with budget airlines like easyjet and ryanair - note that you have to book these early to get really cheap flights and they have pretty stringent baggage rules (ryanair for example only have a baggage allowance of 15 kg - could you cope with that little for 6 weeks?). Less quick but even cheaper is the bus outfit eurolines which travel cheaply between major cities in different countries (ie you can't use them to go from A to B inside a country). Train transport in Italy is pretty cheap and you can get good deals from Paris to Italy on the French railways sncf by booking early.
Personally I'd drop Athens from that itinerary and look at Spain instead (cheap transport inside Spain too - buses and trains). Also I'd be looking to visit some of rural France - anywhere south and or west really, its all good.
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<hr>75eupppd exclusive of transport will work fine<hr></blockquote> Where does it say the €75 is exclusive of transport?
Oh, and if I wanted to "beat the heat" Athens is about the last place I'd be headed (assuming the OP is going next summer).
Thanks for all the suggestions so far! hehehe, you're right stevegerms, I'm Canadian :) I am planning to go around April/May, hoping to beat the busy tourists season in most of the places. Will this be a good time to travel weatherwise? Originally I was planning 75 euros with transportation included, but given the responses I think I'll try to save up some more and make it 75 euros exclusive with transportation. Could anyone suggest any places other than the main cities I could visit?
OK angel how about this?
London (4 nts) - fly budget to Rome (5 nts)
Train Rome to Florence (4 nts)
Train Florence to Cinque Terre (2 nts (if you must!))
Train to Venice (3 nts)
Train to Nice (3 nts)
Train to Aix-en-Provence (3 nts)
Train to Barcelona (4 nts)
Train to Zaragossa (2 nts)
Train to San Sebastian/Donostia (4 nts - beach time)
Train to Biarritz or Bayonne - French Basque country (3 nts)
Train to Paris (5 nts)
Train to London for flight home = 42 nights = 6 weeks.
What do you think angel?
Looking at it again it would be more logical to visit Venice before Cinque Terre.
Weatherwise - although its impossible to be categoric - it should be fine the second half of April and in May. Most of the itinerary I suggest is southern europe so you should expect temps from 20C (70F) in April and higher than that in May.
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