Is the following a reasonable trip through Europe? I'm planning a trip to Europe during July, 2012. I have put together an itinerary for a 30 days trip and I'd like to know your opinions about it. Is it too ambitious? Is not realistic at all? etc... Let me warn you that I have never been to Europe before and although I have done some research for this trip, I feel overwhelmed by the amount of info and the trip's preparation itself. This is the tentative schedule/itinerary for my trip:
-NYC to Amsterdam (Depart from NYC on Friday, June 29 and arrive at Amsterdam on Saturday, June 31 early in the morning) Spend 3 days in Amsterdam.
-Amsterdam to Berlin, 5 days in Berlin.
-Berlin to Dresden, 3 days in Dresden.
-Dresden to Munich, 6 days in Munich, I'm thinking about using Munich as a "base" to go on day trips to nearby places.
-Munich to Ulm, Ulm to Schaffhausen, maybe 3 days total.
-Schaffhausen to Paris, 5 days in Paris.
-Paris to London, 5 days in London.
Around the 28th of July I'll go back to Amsterdam, preferably on a ferry, and I'm planning to spend the last 2 or 3 days of my trip in Amsterdam.
My ticket allows me only to fly into and out of Amsterdam, therefore I have to go back there and that is also the reason why I'm trying to make this trip as "circular" as possible.
Thank you in advance for any time/help/comments or whatever you provide me with.
Thanks everyone for your responses.
@M.D: Did you spend about 30 days on your trip as well?
@I: I'm very confused about the train system in Europe and at how expensive seems to be. Do you think that I'll be better off flying from place to place? I haven't considered that option yet. By the way, thanks for the advice on the language, I just want to share with you that I'm a native Spanish speaker, as you can see I am also fluent in English, and I speak German at an intermediate/decent level. I'll have to work on my French though!
@Zafir: I took into account what you suggested and I'm now I'm giving myself one entire day to move from one place to another regardless of how long the distances may be. I want to plan the major components of this trip but I also want to be able to do things spontaneously, I don't want to be too restricted although I have no experience whatsoever doing this kind of thing.
Thank you guys, any additional thoughts or comments w
-
I think you best travel by train, flying is a pain in a place a polite person is not going to mention. Train tickets can be bought early at prices that flights can not beat. There is also a rail pass that might be useful, but it might not be cheaper than buying tickets for each leg. Flights are only cheap when bought 2 to 4 months before traveling, about the same time you would start looking for cheap rail tickets. But on the day of travel, flights are twice as expensive as rail tickets. And rail travel is from city center to city center and does not have those anoying safety checks that make flying such a pain now. And remember that most airports are outside the cities, some with good connections but some are quite far from the city the 'belong' to and have only a few buses a day, specially the airports used by Ryanair if not all of those. This site has all information on rail travel you need, and a lot more: http://www.seat61.com/ The page on rail passes will be useful, you find the link in the top of most pages, in there you will see a lot of internal links, just read through them and read all that seem useful. And when you click on Netherlands in the list on the left you will find the options from London to Amsterdam, including the ferry you mention. A very useful site is the German rail planner, available in a series of languages: http://www.bahn.de/i/view/DEU/en/index.shtml
