Travel Muse Magazine

From fairy-tale castles to ancient ruins to authentic foods, Europe’s beauty and traditions calls to many of us around the globe. Initially, you may think, “Yeah, let’s get as many countries as possible crammed into my trip there so I can say I’ve been to a bunch of places.” I get it. There’s a fear that creeps in that you’ll not for sure get back to Europe, as it is “all the way across that big ocean.” Been there. And it’s understandable. It’s expensive and a long flight.

But Europe is a pretty big place and it’s not actually possible to experience all of the varied cultures that fall under the European vacation heading in a compressed time period… if you want to leave the airports. But the good news is you can go back. And you’ll want to! You’ll wish you stayed longer everywhere, though that isn’t always possible, of course. That said… if you want to visit several European countries at once and still get enough of a taste of them to know where you may want to come back and spend a week or more the next time, here’s some planning basics to start you off on your journey. You can apply these basics as a starting point to any European vacation planning.

Read this suggested itinerary for a European vacation by train starting in Italy and ending in either Amsterdam or London.

First – think trains!

Americans sometimes think, “I’ll just rent a car and put my bags in there and have the freedom to get to a bunch of places, just like a multi-state road trip.” But this is a bad idea for many reasons. One, it’s super expensive. Two, it’s super stressful. And three, it’s really an anti-European idea. Doing a vacation that’s only a week or 10 days or two weeks even is a very un-Euro idea to begin with, but we don’t get the same amount of vacation time and have to work with what we’ve got. It often isn’t even allowed to take rental cars one way or in same cases across borders, so if you *have* to rent a car, look ahead and read the fine print first! Trust when I say don’t unless there’s a strike and you must. Then, you can. I’ve done it. But it isn’t preferred.

Trains are going to give you more time to enjoy the places you go and they’re easy and also very fairly priced. There are a lot of options for booking, which can make things more unsure for anxious people. But they really can give freedom. Start simple, just look at the routes between places you want to go and look at how to book them directly with the train company you want to ride on. That simplifies things for me and is how I generally do it. Some trains, like Paris to Versailles or Lisbon to Sintra, for example, work more like metro/subways. You just hop on and off with no reservations needed or allowed and you can just buy the ticket that day. Others, like the Eurostar, you need to purchase a specific seat on a specific train and should try to buy ahead of time to make sure you have a reliable schedule.

How long to plan *minimum* in each place

Two nights is the absolute minimum you want to plan in any location you even remotely care about. That gives you morning for traveling to that location, then the rest of that day and the full next day to experience things there. The third morning, you can push off to the next place on your list.

What Two Nights Gets You

Two nights in a location means one full day plus travel days on either sides. You can consider that translates to one museum visit plus a walking excursion plus an evening activity (like a dinner cruise or visit to a jazz club or whatever the local thing to do is in your wheelhouse). So before booking hotels and train tickets, definitely look at what you think you may want to do in each location and not vice versa.

Small Towns Between Places Can Be One Night

Small towns, you can get by with one night, if they’re not far from your last location. You can definitely stack up small towns along a train line with lunch and a walking tour or small museum visit in “Town A” and then dinner plus walk about with hotel stay in “Town B.” Do stop in small towns, you’ll be delighted by the rich experiences and cool things you’ll find.

One Week Per Major City

That said, if you have only one week I would really pick one great city (like Paris) and stay in one hotel and do day trips to experience other nearby places, like the Palace of Versailles or Monet’s home in Giverny or a wine tour in the Loire Valley or even a trip up to Brugge, Belgium. Note, I say OR here, as if you only have a week you could spend that all in Paris proper and still not have enough time. So with a week, pick a max of two day trips, and one of those should be more like a partial day where you can still do dinner back in the city.

I’ll do a whole separate post soon with some good Paris plans for 7-14 days. Stay tuned!

Pick places on the High Speed Train Routes

If you wanna go “more places” and by that you mean multiple countries, consider what all are on the high speed train route and pick those cities for at least two nights per city. This reduces travel time so you get more time to enjoy your location.

For example, we’ve never been to Amsterdam but found a great direct flight from Detroit there with a direct flight back out of London. So we’re taking the Eurostar between the two. If we had more time, we could add on places “in between” like Brussels or even Paris. But again, you’d really need two weeks to do Amsterdam plus Paris plus London and get a decent experience in each. We’re already cutting things tighter than I’d like with only 10 days and these two amazing cities with so much stuff to see that we’ll barely scratch the surface.

Check out my sample multi-European country itinerary next to put this train plan into action!.