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21/f/solo: 2 wks in europe, help please
Wed, 02/21/2007 - 18:44
New Member
Hello. I am a 21 year old female with plans to travel in Europe from April 26th to May 10th 2007, which is exactly two weeks. I know this is rather short, but in any case, I have not yet thought up of an itinerary of any kind, and was wondering if I could get some of your input. This will be my second solo backpacking trip to europe, so i would like to visit places other than the countries I’ve visited last time (3 years ago), which were: U.K.,Germany, Switzerland, Czech, France, Spain, Italy. It was easy to plan then because it was my first time in europe and I just picked the big touristy places, but this time around I’m not really sure about my itinerary. All I know is that I am going to travel and I will only have two weeks. I have both the let’s go western europe and eastern europe guides and I’ve read through them but no place really sticks out at me (i.e. there isn’t a place that I’m really dying to see). which is why i was hoping for some of your suggestions. I have done a search with the word “solo” but I didn’t really come across anything that applies to my situation. So I was wondering, given my time constraint and disregarding the countries I visited before, are there any other places that comes to your mind that you really enjoyed, espcially if you were travelling solo. Anyway, thanks for reading. Of the places I visited three years ago, I probably enjoyed Austria/Germany/Switzerland/CZ the most. France/Italy were too romantic to see alone, I found.
“it was my first time in europe and I just picked the big touristy places, but this time around I’m not really sure about my itinerary.”
Not sure how long your last trip was but it sounds like you zoomed around a lot. Maybe do a tighter circle this time, stay low to the ground and see some smaller places too. I suppose you could do Eastern Europe. I have no particular expertise there so I’ll defer to others. Scandinavia isn’t really all that travel-friendly until summer weather hits. You do have an experience gap in the lowland countries. Why not go there? One of my best memories is biking from town to town through Holland during tulip season – when you’ll be there. Amsterdam (big city) goes without saying. Keukenhof Gardens near Leiden is pretty spectacular. Delft is great too. Belgium: Bruges and Antwerp are very good places. Brussels (big city) and Gent are good too, but make sure they sound good to you before you pen them in. And if you’re interested in WW II history, the Ardennes is the place to go. You could combine these places with a trip to Luxembourg and/or Germany’s Mosel Valley – http://www.mosel-rei… (Trier, Cochem, Burg Eltz – www.burg-eltz.de - castle) and/or Rhine Valley (Cologne, Bacharach and its castle-hostel, and St. Goar) and/or Cologne (big city). Careful though – the Rhine and Mosel tend toward the romantic. There are reasonably priced hostels in all these places and it should be pretty easy to get around solo by train – prices in Belgium seemed especially reasonable when I was there.
Have a good trip.
I’d head east. I loved Czech Rep., Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia. Romania was interesting and I also loved it, but it has a little “edge” to it that might have been a bit intimidating as a solo. Same for Ukraine and possibly Turkey, although Turkey probably is less intimidating than the others.
What do you like? I’m a mountain freak, so the Julian Alps in Slovenia and the High Tatras in Slovakia were a real hit for me. I also like sightseeing highlights which made Turkey spectacular and anything pictuesque and/or ancient interesting for me.
have you considered Ireland? Greece?
London, Paris, Tours, Caen, La Rochelle, Annecy, Genoa, Venice, Florence, Rome
Just don’t do what half the idiots here want to do and say “14 days – 14 cities”.
Pick three places (that aren’t a million miles from each other) and each one properly.
Little axis’ would be, for instance, Prague, Budapest and Vienna (or swap one for Munich).
How about Spain and visit Barcelona, Madrid then leave via Lisbon (yes I know its in Portugal).
Maybe a British Isles tour, Dublin, London and A.N Other?
If you wanted to make it into 4 destination of smaller scale then places like Luxembourg and Trier are good bets. I was just in Saarbrucken and that was suprisingly nice.
The main thing is to properly enjoy each place and not rush around like Venus with her arse on fire checking names off a list to be the big man when you get home.