Other than to say I’m envious, can’t give any advice since we’re taking our first trip in May.

I don’t think this is a good idea. Why would you spend the time and money to get to Greece, just to spend what will probably be less than a day in Athens. If you want to visit Greece and Turkey, then you need to cut one whole area out of the rest of the trip and spend at least a week (I normally recommend an absolute minimum of 10 days) not just shave a day or two off a couple of cities. For a 1st timer, I’d recommend spending at least a third of your time in Eastern Europe and I’m betting you’ll come back wishing you’d spent a much larger percentage there.

IMO, (Rick Steves disagrees) a consecutive day rail pass is almost never the best railpass option, but with this mass of short stays in large cities, Rick’s probably right. Does Rick really recommend this itinerary?

It’s the “Europe’s Best 2-Month Trip” on page 705 of Europe through the Back Door 2010. Greece and Turkey are not on there, so I added 5 days there and subtracted other places, including lots of Germany and 3 days in London. I want to make this a small taste of as many places as possible, so I’ll know where to dig deeper when I return. I have 15 days unaccounted for now. It’s a work in progress while I read through various books and forums.

I’m one of the ones who is always on the side of the consecutive-day Global Pass (for myself, at least ) I just like the freedom of being able to hop onto whatever train I want and not have to worry about burning a day here or there that I may need later. Sometimes it costs a little more, but it’s worth it for the peace of mind, IMO.

Anyway, looking at your itinerary now, I don’t think you have too many places really, but I don’t think I’d add many more, honestly; rather, I’d use up those 15 extra days with adding 2 days here and there to several of the places you’ve got down already. I mean, 2 days in London really isn’t enough; nor is 1 day in Stockholm, 1 in Oslo, etc. Funny enough, 3 days in Dublin might actually be TOO much, but that’s up to you.

The biggest thing to remember as a first timer (and trust me, we’ve all done this) is to try not to stretch yourself too thin. With the itinerary the way it is now, you might be spending half of your time on trains, and while I personally love riding trains, it can certainly get old after a while. Remember that while in your mind it might seem a good idea to only need one day in a certain city, you still have to GET there first, ya know? And on just a quick perusal of your sample itinerary, it doesn’t seem that there are many night train routes in there, which would really help you out. Otherwise, you could be spending 6 hours each day on a train, and you don’t want to do that, trust me.

Another thing to remember is that whenever you reach a new city, you always have a certain number of “chores” to take care of. It may sound silly to think of things on your vacation as being “chores” but it makes sense when you think about it. First step when (though ideally you’d do this beforehand) you get to a city is figure out where you’re staying. If you haven’t reserved ahead of time, this can take a while. If you HAVE, of course you still need to take some time to find the place on a map and get to it. And THEN lots of hostels won’t even let you in until 2 or 3 PM (again, this is good to know ahead of time). Me personally, I always like to get the lay of the land in every new place as well, just kind of connecting my own dots on a map between major landmarks and stuff, or even just ambling aimlessly, noting all the pizzerias and stuff Only AFTERWARD do I feel like I’m ready to check out the museums and stuff. Maybe it’s just me, but it just wouldn’t feel right to me to say I’ve been to a place, when all I did was spend 6 hours in a museum before going to bed and going off to some other place the next day.

Of course I haven’t mentioned yet the whole thing of finding the local TI (travel information center) to get info on the town too. These things can either be an invaluable resource, or a tourist trap that try to sell you crap… either way they’re almost always worth checking out. You can usually find out things about walking tours, local concert events, discount cards, etc etc. Anyway my point is, depending on what time you arrive in a place, you can easily burn the “business day” just in doing your “chores” (and I didn’t mention the part yet about backtracking to your hostel and getting “situated” either).

This isn’t meant to scare you or anything by any means, just to give you a heads up about what you’re in for! I should go dig up my first itinerary I posted on here (though it might have been in 06 before it crashed…hmm), it was pretty crazy! I seriously had no concept of how long it took to get to certain places, knew nothing about night train routes, and so forth. And honestly, some of this stuff you do just kind of need to learn on your own, because it might not make sense until you experience it first hand. I remember before my first solo Eurotrip, people were telling me to try not to cram too much stuff in, because you’re more likely to have fun with more days in a fewer number of places, and indeed you’ll be more likely to come back and see the other places in the future if you have a good time on your first big trip. At the time I thought this sounded kind of stupid, but I deferred to the advice anyway. Lo and behold, I’ve figured out a way to get back to Europe every year since then! I am so glad that I didn’t burn myself out on running all over hell, and used the experience I got then to become a better traveller.

So yeah, good luck dude!

Sorry, double post, the site was acting up.

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Feicht — when the site acts up, try using the “reload” arrow in the tool bar instead of “retry” in the error message box. Just as frustrating, but I don’t think it results in double posts….

Yeah I’ve done that before, but it usually results in losing my original message. Normally I wouldn’t care, but as you can see I had typed a substantial amount of text that I didn’t feel like re-typing

I’m more likely to lose the post with “retry” than with “reload.”

Thanks so much for the detailed advice. I’m reading through “Europe by Eurail 2010” right now, along with other stuff, and I think I’m going to heavily revise my itinerary to stay in a home location longer and give me the flexibility to stay in the city or take day trips to nearby places.

I think I need to spend more time in France, Greece and Turkey for sure. The Dublin trip is to see family/friends, hence the 3 days. Same with Porto. England doesn’t hold much interest for me. I’d rather visit a more “foreign” place, if that makes sense.

I’ll sit down with a calendar and plan it out more carefully to try and figure out where a night train will serve me best when traveling long distances.

I like Europe by Eurail’s base city/day trips style — not sure it works that well with the Rick Steves plan.

Don’t forget cheap flights as an option for long treks. Also, you might find you don’t really like overnight trains all that much. I try to limit the total of overnight trains and flights to an average of a little over 1 a week (maybe a max of about 10 for your trip??) with no more than 2 in any 5 day period.

Shaw, I get what you mean about not thinking England is “foreign enough”… I thought the same thing before I went there. All I can say though is it is fascinating to really see just how different it is from our country. Yeah you can obviously get by without having to learn another language, but I think you’d be shocked to see how “foreign” a place like London really is!

But anyway yeah, since you mentioned the Europe by Eurail thing, keep an eye out in your research for places you might want to see that are within 2 hours of a bigger city by train. This is a cool way to “break up” a stay of 3 or 4 or 5 days in one city so you don’t feel like you’ve just been in the same place for a long time. For instance there are a ton of cool places about an hour or so from Berlin that would make amazing daylong trips, just off the top of my head. Ditto with lots of the larger European cities, really.

Northern Europe (Copenhagen, etc) tends to be super expensive by North American standards. If you’re looking to stretch your money, you’d do well to cut Denmark, Sweden, etc. and spend more time in southern italy, Greece, etc (or even add some eastern european countries)

Oh heavens, you’re basing your trip on Rick Steves?

Steves barely covers Greece…not sure if it’s because he doesn’t like the country, but he’s barely covered it. And he has an offendingly ethnocentric view of Turkey…I’m sure I can just walk into anybody’s home in Turkey and demand that they break into song and dance for me (yes, it’s in one of his episodes). Kind of unrealistic and ehtnocentric. (Ironically, he encourages Americans to get to know the world better, but he promotes this narrow understanding of some of the countries he visits.) He’s not the best source on these two countries.

And if you’re more interested in London than in Welsh bed-and-breakfasts, I wouldn’t rely on him for Britain either.

The man is very knowledgeable, but his coverage of Europe is grossly uneven (lots of Italy, very little Greece, for example), and his coverage of Turkey struck me as naively ethnocentric. So, don’t rely on him too much.

It does, but it’s far more foreign than you think. Leaving your home country for the first time, you’ll come across cross-cultural differences that you never imagined, and then there will be similarities where you thought there would be differences. Right now, you have preconceived notions of what to expect -we all do to varying degrees before we visit a place. If they’re inaccurate enough, you’ll have lots of surprises. Traveling is a learning experience, and you’ll see what we’re talking about when you get there.

Thanks for the advice! I’ve almost hammered out my itinerary.

Yeah Luv has a point about Rick Steves. Still, I like his books if for no other reason than his do it yourself “orientation walking tours” of nearly every place he writes about. This is one of the first things I like doing when I get to a new place, so it definitely helps.

Oh also! Luv makes another great point re: England not being “foreign enough” for a North American. You can watch all the Monty Python you want (and, I have ) but there are still going to be times when you’re in a hostel in England, and a Brit says something to you and you will appreciate how different our two cultures (even our language(s)!) are. Even the little things still stand out in my mind. Like for instance the first time someone in England (I’m pretty sure it was in London) asked me, as we were in our last day in the place, “So, how did you find England?” Naturally the first thing that popped into my mind was “Um…well, first I looked for it on the map……..” almost thinking the lady was joking with me…until I realized she had meant (in “American”) “How did you LIKE England?”

So yeah, little things like this can be just as cool and show you how disparate our societies actually are, as can being stuck in a Swiss town where the cows and sheep outnumber the humans, and also speak better English