Need Help With 1 Week Europe/Itinerary

Question

Hi All!

I am planning my first trip to Europe in mid-October of this year and am just trying to gauge travelers opinions on my planned itinerary. We will be flying in from Boston and are hoping to go to a few different places as we may be moving back to the west coast next year so want to take advantage of living significantly closer to Europe. The supposed itinerary is as follows: • Amsterdam (arrival city, 1-3 days) •Belgium (1 day) •Copenhagen - including day trip to Sweden possibly? (2-3 days)

Thoughts on how doable this would be? Should I X any places and replace with others? We are aiming to do Northern/central europe as it is much cheaper than western and southern

in travelby alybr22

67%

13d

RNRS001

13d

These places are not easy to reach from eachother and take a relatively long time to get there, so you lose a lot of time traveling. A day trip to Sweden sounds utterly random, as does 1 day in Belgium.

Amsterdam, Paris and London are all a few hours from eachother when traveling with a high speed train. If you've got a week, that'd be your best suggestion.

lazylittlelady

🍰

13d

I doubt Copenhagen and Sweden are cheaper than Spain or Italy. What are you trying to do/see?

alybr22

13d

we mainly just wanted to hit a few different countries and scratch that european travel itch. while there is nothing in specific we wanted to see in a certain place, mainly just explore new countries

terminal_e

13d

Sept would be better for northern Europe. If you are locked into October, I would hit southern Europe (probably 70-75F daytime highs).

pantaleonivo

13d

What do you want out of your trip?

Trains and cheap flights mean it’s doable but you want to keep your ultimate goal in focus. Also, I believe you are mistaken about northern europe being cheap, unless you mean for flights or something. By reputation, southern europe (balkans) and western (spain/portugal) tend to be very inexpensive. GDP per capita is usually a good indicator of affordability.

alybr22

13d

Yes i meant flights, much cheaper to get to northern europe from boston than southern!

pantaleonivo

13d

Makes perfect sense!

alybr22

13d

thank you for suggesting checking out the GDP.. i’ll definitely look into it and see if going northern europe vs southern would end up costing about the same just money spent in different ways!

pantaleonivo

13d

4 countries in <10 days sounds like a whirlwind adventure

Shepherdless

United States

13d

1 week....no need to leave Benelux. You have enough time for Amsterdam and a small city, maybe 2.

I would leave 3-4 days to Amsterdam, then hit 1-2 of the cool cities around there - Ghent, Bruges, Lueven, Dinant, Hague.....

americanatletour

13d

Adding Copenhagen and Sweden is tough on that timeframe if you're planning to travel by train. Amsterdam- Belgium- Paris is much more humane in one week while maximizing your passport stamps. Realistically, Sweden and Copenhagen is a separate trip, which I highly recommend combining with the Baltics and is also an affordable flight from the east coast of the US.

EmotionalPassage7807

13d

You don’t want to be all over the place that you actually don’t get to enjoy any of it. For one week I would do London or Paris then Belgium and Amsterdam. They are connected by the Eurostar. I loved Bruges in Belgium and recommend that over Brussels.

PenSillyum

13d

We are aiming to do Northern/central europe as it is much cheaper than western and southern

Huh? Do you mean the flight tickets? Because otherwise travelling in Northern and Western Europe are definitely more expensive than the Southern counterparts.

My suggestion is to see the map and group your place of interests together to make it easy to move around with trains. Amsterdam -Belgium (which city??) - Copenhagen- Sweden (which city??) are too all over the place for a 1 week trip. To me it'd make sense if you choose to combine Netherlands (choose a city) + Belgium (choose 2 cities, but stay in 1), or Denmark (choose 1 city) + Sweden (choose 1 city). You can add Germany (choose 1 city) to any of those combinations if you want.

alybr22

12d

yes i meant cheaper by flights!