Summer Backpacking Trip! Help?

[castillo823]

First backpacking trip, but fairly experienced traveller otherwise. I've been looking over how the eurorail system, etc works. Just want to make sure our plan is practical. Both my friend and I have done backpacking trips within the States and I will have been living in Europe for 5 months and I'm fairly familiar with the train system.

From May 22 to June 27 (day we're flying back from London; already booked). Planning on using the 10 day flex pass.

Here's the plan:

- Florence, Italy
- Munich, Germany
- Salzburg, Austria
- Budapest, Hungary
- Krakow, Poland
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Berlin, Germany
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Bruges, Belgium
- Paris, France
- London, England


I'm currently living in Florence and my friend will arrive on the 21. I'll probably show him Florence in day or so and leave for Munich on the 23.

We have (on average) one travel day to a location (unless we take a night train) then two full days without travel. We don't plan to take any day trips from the cities we visit except to hopefully visit Auschwitz while in Krakow. We added a couple extra days for London and Paris because we know we'll want to spend some extra time there.

We've tried to optimize the route and pick locations geographically in order, though we're aware we have some long train rides ahead of us.

Main concerns: should we drop a location or two? And geographically speaking, is this the best route? We're flying out of London for sure so we thought having our second to last stop be in Paris would be easy and then chunnel or bus it over to London.

Any help, feedback, etc. would be appreciated! Thank you!

[madamtrashheap]

castillo823, welcome to GFE.

You're living in my favourite city so make the most of every day there!

You essentially have 36 days of travel, including your time in Florence (think you might need more than a day to show your friend around...one day only will only cover so much food!), so break down how many days you are consider in for each city and go from there. It's good that you are aware of some long train rides ahead of you, but even though you are planning on using the 10 day flex pass for train travel, look at flying some routes (eg Berlin to Amsterdam, Transavia or Florence/Pisa to Munich although this may involve a change in Dusseldorf) if that helps with time.

And if you can book your Eurostar tickets for Paris to London now, or at the very least 1 month in advance, you'll find them far more affordable. Bus is annoying (have to take the ferry or sit on the bus as it drives on the train to go through the tunnel) and flying a waste of time - take the Eurostar and you can have lunch in Paris and dinner in London, only spending 1hr30m travelling.

As far as route goes, it's certainly doable. I'm curious that there are no other Italian cities in your itinerary.