Eurotravel Planner

Section: Itinerary Planning & Guidebooks

Flying to Europe

Itinerary planning is complex and takes time, but can be a great part of your Euro-experience. The anticipation and build-up extend the joys of travel, even before you've left the ground.

• How do I start planning?
• Where should we go?
• How do we beat the crowds?
• Is there a sample plan I could follow?

My first tip: travel against the crowds. I'll show you how.

Swimming Upstream?
The best advice given me in regards to traveling in Europe is to make the rewarding decision to consider traveling against the grain. There are several ways to get in the spirit of enjoying Europe even as you avoid the congestion that can slow down and frustrate even the most diehard Euro-Optimist!

First, consider going slightly off-season, called shoulder season. (Not during High Season: the end of June, all of July & August, or the 1st week of September). This avoids the huge crush of foreign tourists. Further, Germans and French go on vacation in July and August to Southern Europe, so they add to the crowds, and I have found Paris somewhat unfriendly in mid-August as the only locals are those left behind who can't get away themselves!

Italians are on vacation in August, so some shops and restaurants are closed in Italy, even during this high-season.

Travel in the reverse order that most people seem to. Often, people will start in Paris or London and work their way south and east. I've had great success in starting in Greece or Italia and working my way north and west. There's a further advantage in doing this - the weather remains both constant as summer moves on and is better because the good weather starts first down south and moves upwards. You'll also miss sweltering July/August heat down south by being in the north (Germany, Denmark, Sweden, England, whatever).

Many travelers, especially on a first visit to Europe, want to hit the biggies: Paris, London, Rome, Venice, Munich & Berlin. Certainly, these are all worthwhile journeys. Yet, I challenge you to consider hitting smaller towns along with the big cities.

Not only do you spend less time traveling between the big cities, their smaller brethren are often on the way, yet off the beaten path, and less likely to be visited by foreign visitors and tour groups. This means fewer crowds and a better experience in getting a feel for Europe and individual countries and peoples.

Itinerary Planning Thoughts
When you are doing planning, it's often centered around city-2-city considerations. I urge you to certainly keep firm plans, but also keep some days open. You'll likely find cities you absolutely fall in love with: stay an extra day or two and relax, it's good for the soul! This also provides you with greater flexibility and can make your trip less hectic, allowing an extra stayover day in a great location.

I strongly urge everyone to consider a mix of smaller and larger cities. It's nice to get away from big city hustle and crowds occasionally. I continually find (and have heard from many, many others) that you have a better chance of great "experiences" in the smaller locales, of which I'll be happy to name several later in the planning section.

I will also diverge here for a moment to say that oftentimes, you'll find you either love or hate a city by the weather and whether you push yourself a bit to find good eateries and experiences. General, I know, but keep it in mind. So don't worry too much about choosing one city over another. You'll find that the best of cities (say, Prague) can sometimes be a drag on a bad weather day. Thus, good and bad is partly up to you, partly to nature.

Using the guidebooks as a backdrop, start your itinerary. Get a map of Europe, find one online, we have several sources on the left-hand navigation bar of the site.

Next, think of all the places off the top of your head you'd love to hit. London, Paris, Prague, Venice, the Salzkammergut region, etc. and write them down or mark them on the map.

Then, add cities you've found in your initial research. Don't fail to add cities recommended by friends who have "done Europe." Chatting your trip up with associates has the double benefit of making everyone jealous and feeding you great suggestions and places to avoid! I find that friends often have surprisingly similar views for what makes a good vacation city, whereas co-workers can differ markedly once outside of the professional environment, so think "grain of salt" here.

Finally, I've got some suggestions of fantastic places to hit, which are listed by country from the main EuroTravel Planner page. Italia's a bit more fleshed out, since that's the info I developed first, but I've hit about 18 countries or something in Europe, so I know the Continent well enough to provide some hints.

Guidebooks
The other half of itinerary planning is getting specific - which means looking through websites and travel guides. I've used most of them, from Frommer's and Let's Go to Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and Rick Steves' guides.

Personal favorites include Lonely Planet and Rick Steves. These are the two that I consistently take with me to Europe for on-hand information searches. Choosing guides to take on your trip is critical to success as any changes in plans will necessitate that you have abundant, updated, accurate information at your fingertips. Having good information can ensure you can make on-the-ground itinerary changes when you need or want to. This can turn a decent trip into memories of a lifetime.

Rick Steves' guides are updated each year and published as close as possible to the new season for the freshest information. Lonely Planet guides are updated depending on demand. For example, Western Europe is updated frequently, I think yearly. Other titles such as Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are updated every 2-3 years.

Travel Guide Overview
The raw plethora of guidebooks found at bookstores is initially confusing and somewhat daunting. Truly, however, consider this a bountiful feast from which there will be one or two "series" of guidebooks that closely fit your lifestyle.

My best suggestion is to hit the library to save some cash, or a great bookstore with a comfy chair. Look through the different guidebook styles and decide which synchs up with the way you envision your trip happening. Buy only these!

Having said that everyone's style of travel is different, I now proceed to ignore this by giving general advice and background on various guidebook series' that I have personally used and investigated.

Rick Steves Guidebooks (RickSteves.com)
Pete Rating: Top Notch, take one with you. These best give me the feeling that I can get my hands around a region and begin to explore.
Favorite Titles: "Europe Through the Back Door" is an excellent Before-you-go guide, giving you confidence for tackling Europe. I prefer specific country guides, but spend an hour browsing his "Best of Europe" guide for ideas.

Rick's been writing and traveling in Europe for 25 years. He does much of the research for most of his guides. The emphasis is on selectivity, bringing you only the good stuff. This is fantastic and many religiously follow his guide suggestions. Of course, while he preaches independent travel and finding your own way, which is at odds with watching travelers walk through Europe saying "If Rick doesn't like it, I don't go there."

I consider his books essential pre-reading for a trip, and usually bring at least chapters with me to Europe. When I travel on a loose schedule, I always take along two sources, and I tend to rip them up a bit as I travel, removing sections I won't be needing further or have already visited, to reduce weight and volume.

Buy a couple of guide books, and flip through them. Rick Steves likes to offer itineraries, which are generally very good, so this is a good starting place. Lonely Planet also provides suggested itineraries at the beginning for each country based on length of visit. Rick is a lot more selective, so LP fills in the gaps on cities not covered by Rick.

You can see itineraries for many of the countries Rick covers in his guides on his website, www.ricksteves.com.

Let's Go Travel Guides (www.letsgo.com)
Pete Rating: Geared for young, single travelers, written entirely by university students. Good browsing before you go for hip activities. Single travelers will get a good sense for where to find other travelers en route.
Favorite Titles: "Europe" is their preferred title for a long European backpacking trip.

These guides are geared toward the high-school, college and younger independent traveler. They are focused on extreme budget travel, from lodging to sight-seeing, from entertainment to food options. They don't have the range of listings that, say, Lonely Planet has (both budget and higher end) and focus on budget train travel destinations.

Let's Go is great for understanding where the young party-minded traveler will be spending their time. I use it selectively, and will often bring a few chapters with me if I can get them from somebody. I don't worry about updated versions as much, I'm just trying to get a feel for where the traveler routes in Europe are.

Lonely Planet Guides (LonelyPlanet.com)
Pete Rating: My favorite overall guides, if I had to choose one. They cover most cities you'll have heard about, but you have to dig a bit, this is the encyclopaedia of guides.
Favorite Titles: Tough to choose. LP overlaps Western and Central Europe, so make a choice based on where you'll visit. All guides are otherwise equal based on where you'll be traveling.

Probably the most formal looking printing style, I truly enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of LP writing and choices (LP is based out of Australia). They have a very full listing for all areas and tons of small, out-of-the way cities I suggest reading through for nuggets of great travel possibilities.

They provide excellent low, medium, and higher-end suggestions for all areas and have a good personality that stresses understanding and enjoying the culture of where you are visiting, without getting too "60's free lovin'" on me. The only issue is that the writing is sometimes a bit too dry to get a feel for whether you want to visit a small town they list.

Frommer's Guides (frommers.com)
Pete Rating: Background reading
Favorite Titles: I don't have any specific ones. I've used a few in the past for pre-travel browsing. Very traditional, there's nothing I've found not effectively covered by the other three guide publishers above. However, Frommer's can have coverage of areas not covered by other guides, so use them in this case.

Frommer's always seems less informational and a bit stuffy and choosy, usually geared towards older, more sophisticated travelers looking for very specific things in each city, with nightlife focused on the local opera and stuff of that sort. At the same time, it's the original budget guide that started the "Travel in Europe on $5 a day craze" decades ago...

The Rough Guides (roughguides.com)
Pete Rating: Good, a mix between Let's Go and Lonely Planet
Favorite Titles: "First-Time Europe" is another great before-you-go read. They have excellent city and regional guides.

Rough Guides are certainly quite polished, so don't let the titles from this British-based guide series confuse you. They are geared towards a heartier traveler, one who doesn't bring a suit-jacket on vacation. Very nice, I haven't traveled extensively with them so can't provide too much information, but use of their city and regional guides has been helpful. For example, I recently used their "Dordogne and the Lot" (southern regions of France) guide for local planning with good results.

I've effectively used them in pre-travel itinerary planning and in a couple of European cities. It's a different style, so compare against LP to see which style grabs you.

Eyewitness Travel Guides (DK publishers)
Pete Rating: Picture perfect! These guides are the show-and-tell of the travel realm. I think their motto is "More pictures than words."
Favorite Titles: "Top 10... City" guides. Their "France" guide was wonderful.

Updated annually, they have done a wonderful job creating massive, full-color guidebooks to peruse. For example, the France book, about 670 pages, probably has more than 2,000 pictures and images. They do nice "Popular Mechanics"-style graphic descriptions of activities such as wine-making and driving in Europe, they have dozens of illustrative pictures of items such as important road and safety signs, and they also capture the essence of each region with hundreds of full-color images to fuel the imagination. They are not much more expensive, and the only guides with full-on color throughout.

Flying to Europe