Plan a European Holiday in 5 Easy Steps

Once you have decided to go ahead with the trip, and do the planning yourself, you need to get down to the task immediately.

The entire planning process can be roughly divided into 5 distinct tasks :-

• Overall itinerary

• Flight booking

• Hotel booking

• Train booking

• Local itinerary

Planning the Itinerary

This is the first decision you have to make as all further planning will be based on your itinerary.

• Region.     First, which part of the world do you want to see? In our case, it was Europe, specifically Western Europe.

• How Many Days.     Next, how many days do you have. For most of us, this would depend more on our boss and kid's school. In my opinion 10 days is a bare minimum (considering the high cost of air tickets to go abroad from India) and more than 3 weeks would become tiresome. especially with kids.

• Which Cities to Visit?     Now, depending upon the time you have, you need to decide on the cities you will visit. The best way for deciding the specific destinations within a region would be by googling the "Top ten cities in ....". The search will give you the best tourist destinations in the region. Some of the websites which are good for this kind of info are :-

• Tripadvisor - By far, the best resource for this stage.
• Lonely Planet
• The Telegraph
• The Guardian
• Condé Nast Traveller
• Fodors Travel
• Rough Guides

• How Many Days in Each City.     Which cities you will visit also depends on the number of days you have. I have learn't from my experience that you should spend a minimum of two nights, preferably three, in each place. If you are spending just one night in a place, you would dump your luggage in the room, go out for sight-seeing and when you get back tired in the night, you would have to pack your bags as you would have to check out in the morning, irrespective of when you are actually leaving town. This basically means that you would hardly open your bags. Such a hectic schedule unnecessarily adds to the stress of travel. In addition, spending more time, even 4-5 days, lets you truly experience life in the city. So assuming at least two days in each place, you certainly can't see more than 10 cities in 3 weeks.

• One way of deciding is to search for itineraries within each city. Suggested itineraries for various number of days are available in Rough Guides, Frommers, Fodors, etc (Search on Google for "Suggested itinerary for ...."). Go through the itineraries, starting with the one day runathon. As the duration increases. you will notice that at some point, they start adding places just for the sake of filling up time - that is the sweet spot you are looking for. But please remember, when you find an ideal itinerary, say for three days, which covers all the places you are interested in, add an additional day or two to the schedule. Most of these itineraries are designed for making the best use of time, without considering travel fatigue. An itinerary which looks great and easily doable on paper, sitting in the comfort of home, is not as easy to keep up with when you know that you have another 15 days of the same running around to do. In any case, at present you are just deciding the time you need to spend in the city which will also be dictated by other factors such as total time available, 

• Connectivity Options.     Another factor while deciding the itinerary would be how far apart your selected destinations are and what are the connectivity options between them. In Europe, train has always been the preferred option. However, buses and low fare airlines such as Ryan Air are also good options in certain places. In fact, low cost airlines have made it possible to include widely separated cities in your itinerary by making long distance hops much easier (We will discuss the cons in a later post). A few useful resources, especially for this are :-

• The best resource for checking distances and the various means of transport available between any two cities (including time and cost) is the Rome2Rio website. This is an extremely quick and responsive site which gives you the various connectivity options, including Air, Train, Road, Rideshare (share a car ride with somebody who is also going where you want to), Ferry, etc. The route for each means of transport, along with time it will take and approximate cost are clearly given. You can add multiple cities for specific routings. Providing the date and time of travel gives a better cost estimate.

• And then there is the venerable Google Maps. The amount of details provided by Google is astounding. For instance, the routing would include how many minutes you will take to walk to the train platform from the bus stand across the road. However, please remember that generally Google gives only those means of transportation whose data has been shared with them. Also, at present, the cost is only available for air travel. Of course, being Google, we can confidently say that it is just a matter of time before this detail is also available.

• Point of Entry and Exit.     It is always a good idea to search for the hubs of international airline activity in the area you are visiting. An air ticket to a hub such as Rome would be much cheaper than that to any other major city in Italy. So try and plan your entry and exit from a hub.

• Round Trip or Open Jaw?      Once you have decided on the cities, we move on to the actual sequence of movement between the cities. A choice we have to make here is whether we should do an open jaw or a round trip. Round trip starts and ends in the same city while an open jaw starts and ends in different cities. Your choice would depend on how far apart the cities are, how they lie with respect to each other and the cities which have an international airport. A round trip is generally the preferred option as the air ticket would generally be cheaper. On the the other hand, the difference in the price may not justify your returning to the first city. For example, our itinerary included Rome and Paris. The price for a round trip ticket from Delhi to Rome was Rs.5,000 cheaper than a onward ticket to Rome and return from Paris. The money I would spend in returning from Paris to Rome and the additional day wasted, including hotel expenses, did not make the round trip worth it.

At the end of this process, you should have the first draft of your itinerary. Of course, depending on availability of accommodation, train timings, flights, further reading, etc, minor refinements, and probably major changes too, will be a continuous process.

Our Itinerary

All of the above leads to the first draft itinerary. The itinerary below is actually what we finally followed - our first draft was much more ambitious with more cities and the timings were in AM/PM.

• PM 11 May - Arrive Rome from New Delhi

12 - 14 May - Rome

• Rome (16 May/ 0630) to Naples/ Pompeii (16 May/ 0930)

15 May - Pompeii

• Naples (16 May/0430) to Florence (16 May/1030)

16 - 17 May - Florence / Pisa

• Florence (17 May/ 1300) to La Spezia (17 May/1800) Via Pisa (03 hrs stopover)

18 May - Cinque Terre

• La Spezia (19 May/ 0730) to Venice (19 May/ 1600) Via Milan (03 hrs stopover)

19 - 20 May - Venice

• Venice (20 May/2100) to Vienna (21 May/0830)

21 - 22 May - Vienna

• Vienna (22 May/ 2100) to Switzerland (23 May/ 1000)

23 May - Lucerne 

24 - 26 May - Interlaken

• Interlaken (26 May/ 1900) to Basel (26 May/ 2100)

• Basel (27 May/ 0700) to Titisee (27 May/ 0900)

27 - 28 May - Black Forest, Germany

• Freiburg (29 May/ 0700) to Paris (29 May/ 1000)

29 May - 02 Jun - Paris

• PM 02 Jun - Return flight to New Delhi

Commentary

So here are my thoughts while deciding the itinerary :-

• In my opinion, the Big Three of Western Europe are Rome, Paris and London. These are cities with so much to offer that seeing just the major sights would make even a week seem too less. Going to all three would mean that we wouldn't be able to do justice to them. In any case, the decision was made easier for us as UK is not part of Schengen. Thus we would have to take a separate visa for going to London. So it was only Rome and Paris.

• 3 full days in Rome is the minimum if you want to do any justice to this ancient city. 4 days if you also want to go to Pompeii.

• The other big draws in Italy are Florence and Venice. Pisa has just the Leaning Tower to offer. So a few hours stop-over should be sufficient. The rest are Tier 2. But of course, Italy has much much more to offer. However, beautiful cities such as Siena, Sorrento and Positano (Amalfi coast) do not lend themselves well to a day to day sightseeing itinerary. These are places where you stay for more time, relax and soak in the atmosphere.

• All of us are keen trekkers. So Cinque Terre, made famous by Rick Steves, seemed an ideal stop. It would also be a good break from the overdose of palaces and museums we would have had by now - and a breather before the next round of art and culture.

• We had a few ardent music lovers among us. So the choices were Salzburg or Vienna. There are a lot of discussions on the net regarding which is a better place to visit. Basically Salzburg is the charming and quaint small town while Vienna is the Imperial capital; Salzburg if you love 'Sound of Music', Vienna for Mozart. But the clincher for us was the fact that the train from Venice, which leaves at 09:57 PM, reaches Salzburg at the god forsaken time of 04:30 AM, while it reaches Vienna at 08:30 AM. To top it, the ticket costs the same. So Vienna it was.

• We had only 4 days in Switzerland. So instead of trying to see the entire country, which is also possible considering it's size, we decided to concentrate on one region. The region we chose was the Berner Oberland as it was most representative of what we think of Switzerland - the Alps, cows in the meadows and mountain trails.

• The next stop was the Black Forest region of Germany. This was added to our itinerary because of one members love for cuckoo clocks.

• And finally, though even a week in Paris can seem far too less, plan for at least 4 full days.

In Hindsight

After having actually implemented the itinerary above, what would I change in it? Not much really. But here are a few tweaks to consider.

• We stayed overnight in Naples for our visit to Pompeii thinking it would be easier. However, the stress of packing up and shifting rooms for two consecutive days and lugging our baggage along was completely avoidable. We could have simply gone on a day trip and returned to Rome for the night. An added advantage would have been that any journey further north could be started that much later - the train to Florence which we boarded in Naples at 5 AM passed through Rome at 7 AM.

• I would cut out Black Forest. Save it for a later trip to Germany. The two days saved there gives you an additional day in Venice and Vienna, greatly reducing the hectic pace.

Now that we know where we are going, we can move on to the next step of how to get there.

Please don't hesitate in asking if you have any queries. Just leave a comment and I will get back at the earliest.

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Other posts in this series......

Eurotrip 2015 - Our Grand Tour

Eurotrip 2015 Episode 1- Genesis
 
How to Fly to Europe on a Budget

Hassle-free Bookings to Stay Within Budget

Planes, Trains and Automobiles - How to Travel Across Europe on the Cheap

Low Cost Airlines in Europe : A Budget Travelers Guide

Places to Visit - A Guide to Creating your Own Local Itinerary

How to Move Around Town Like a Local

Visa - The Key to the Beckoning Gates

Golden Tickets, Magic Passes and Hidden Entrances