All of the places you’ve mentioned are big cities. Try to include smaller towns too (you should have time). One city that I’d drop is Frankfurt; it’s important as a major financial center, but I think there are better places to spend time as a tourist—- for example, Mainz or Heidelberg, which are both close to Frankfurt.
   Try to work out a route that would allow you to move in one direction, without a lot of backtracking. Look into “open jaws” flights. That means a flight from your US departure city to an arrival point in the Europe area (maybe London, in your case), and a return flight from another city in Europe ( perhaps Paris or Rome, for example) back to the same US city from which you’d departed.
  Think about how you’ll travel during your trip. You could go entirely by train, or you could use low-cost airlines such as Ryan Air or Easy Jet for long hops ( but read the fine print about extra fees, luggage weight restrictions, and which airports are used). For the most part, train travel in Europe is very convenient and avoids many of the hassles involved with modern air travel, but flights may make sense to cover large distances.
  Get a good guide book or two, and read a lot to get a better idea about you’d like to see. Look for a good map of Europe, and get a very rough idea of your possible route, then read about some of the smaller towns that might fall along your route. Many first-timers have never heard of smaller European towns that are really worth seeing, yet these places might be the most memorable of your trip.
  Finally, use this board as a goldmine of information/personal opinion about places you’re thinking about seeing!
 

Thank you so much for your input!  I would really like to do some travelling by train for the experience…mainly because it will all be so new.

Are there some smaller towns you’d reccomend?  I just don’t know about much over there.  I’ve been researching my little but off but it doesn’t beat true experience of talking to someone who’s been there.

Also do you have a guideline using the places I’ve listed how to pick a starting route to move in one direction?

Thanx again!!! []
 
Also is there sort of a ball park budget for going for 2 months?

a good way to do research on smaller towns or even the big ones is wikitravel.com. I only went to europe for 2 weeks and i spent about $1500 on hostels and other expenses,its easy to spend money out there. I was pinching pennies toward the end of the trip.

Another great way to see some places outside of major cities is to do day trips. Most places you are going have some great sites just a short train ride outside of the city. For instance, in Berlin you may want to check out Postdam, in Munich take a trip to Dachau.
 
I also agree that you should cut out Frankfurt. There’s not a lot to do there in the way of tourism. Instead, perhaps visit the Rhine region (Cologne, Mainz, Bonn).

There are so many places to recommend. I’ll list only a few in France that might be along your likely routes, and there are many more places in Italy and other countries.
If you travel between Paris and Italy, as you go south you’ll pass through Dijon, Beaune, Lyon, Avignon—- and near Arles and Aix-en-Provence—- before passing through Marseille and then the Riviera, where there is a string of small towns such as Juan-les-pins and Antibes before you reach Nice.
On the other hand, if your travel is between France and Germany, you’ll pass through the Alsace region of France, where you could see Strasbourg and Colmar. If you’re able to rent a car, you could drive out from Colmar about 5-10 miles and see some beautiful wine villages nestled in the folds of the Vosges Mtns., places like Riquewihr and Ribeauvill, for example.
The problem is to give you only a few names of places within just one country, and to confine recommendations to places that would be along your likely travel routes; there are many, many more places just within France alone, but that would take pages. My main intent is to inspire you to do some reading, and look at pictures, and actually think about stopping in a few smaller places.

Shawna,

I hate your itinerary.

Everyone&nbspretty much already said what I wanted to say: Consider smaller towns…browse books, pictures, websites…study a map of Europe….etc.  Most importantly: have fun with it.  Have fun researching Europe and dreaming about your upcoming trip, and discovering new places online or in books: various places in Europe you haven’t heard of before, but they look very intriguing in pictures, and sound very interesting when you read about them.  Also, as part of our research, use the search function here at Eurotrip.  Many previous posters just like you have planned their first trips, and have been given advice that you amy also find very useful…see what you can dig up on the countries you plan on visiting: France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Britain, Austria. Have fun with this, and then see if you can come up with a revised itinerary.  And span>of course always feel free to ask us more questions. []

Also, try and figure out how much time you’ll be away from home, for this trip.  If it’s, like a week, then you’re already being too ambitious.  If it’s a month, you can do a lot more, for example.  How much you’re able to see and do in Europe depends on the length of your stay in Europe.
 
P.S.
 
Here’s some advice I gave a previous poster in a similar position as yours:
 
http://www.eurotrip.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=124997