Euro trip?

Question

next year after ive graduated highschool i wanted to do one thing before college to have a good finale to my childhood. so i want to go backpacking accross europe next summer with a couple of my friends. I will be seventeen when i go. I want to go for three months, and i plan on taking a few jobs here and there to make some cash along the trip. I do have alot of family that lives in europe so for about 3 weeks ill definitley have a place to stay and food . BUt for the rest of the trip i just want to know

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how much will this cost

and if youve ever gone.. where should i visit??

Answer 1

Avoid Britain - too expensive

I suggest: Hamburg, germany - hottest city in Germany

Lübeck, Germany

Freiburg, Germany

Salzburg, Austria

Rome, Italy

Paris, France

Madrid, Spain

Geneva, Switzerland

Answer 2

How are you going to take jobs along the way when you can't WORK in Europe without a work permit... .you can't WORK on a TOURIST VISA.

Answer 3

EXPENSIVE!!!!!

First of all, the airfare alone will kill you now days and then the train passes and all the little things to see and do just add up.

Here is what I would do to stay as CHEAP as possible.

1) You have the time you want to go picked out, that's perfect so now determine where you want to go. Make a list of all the places you want to see and then set a time that you want to spend in each area. There are sooo many places to see its hard to list them all, but once you pick some good starting points and start reading about the areas you will find cool little places to visit using the bigger sites and cities as a starting point.

2) Book early, buy your tickets months in advance. I usually buy mine for summer travel in January or February. With all the airline problems tickets aren't as cheap as they use to be. Figure out which cities you have a place to stay and then look up cheap hostels for the rest of the time. The earlier you book the better deals you get. Also take a look at house-sitting or other options to find free beds to camp out in.

3) Plan on a budget after you finish saving up for the next year. I normally backpack at a budget of around 40 to 50 Euros a day. Including my food and room. It's not much but you can get it even lower in some cites (Eastern Europe).

4) Read, Read, READ...the more you know about the places the better chance you have of getting a deal and not making mistakes that will cost you precious time and cash. There are TONS of great websites and books. Start with the Rick Steve's series and take a look at Lonely Planet and Fodor’s as well.

My favorite places are Italy, Germany (the little towns in the south), Switzerland, Czech Rep, and Hungary. Cheaper, a bit more exotic, and a lot of beautiful fun places to see and visit.

Have fun and good luck!

Answer 4

well

when i go to Bosnia

the airplane ticket

is like $1,200-$1,600.

Bosnia and Croatia

are really close to each other

and when yuh come to Bosnia its only 5-7

hours by car to Croatia.

and these are my FAV places to go.

there really fun and always have good food

and good adventures.

yuh wont regret it!!!

(yuh can also get a really good tan there

just staying in the sun for 1-2 hours)

Answer 5

Last year my husband and I took a road trip for 3.5 months - we did it by car though (we bought it in Vienna for 600 Euro and then sold it back for 400 - it was well worth it). I'm Polish, my husband is from Bosnia, and we have lot's of relatives living all over Europe. We flew from San Francisco to Vienna. Here are the places we visited (which I highly recommend seeing):

Austria - Vienna

Croatia - Zagreb, Plitvice - lakes, Split, Dubrovnik

Italy - Amalfi Coast (Positano, Amalfi), Pompeii, Rome, Siena, Pisa, Modena, Verona, Venice, Milan, Como

Switzerland - Zurich, Luzerne

France - Nice, Monte Carlo (that's Monaco), Eze, Cannes, Avignon, Paris, Le Mont-St-Michele

Spain - Barcelona

England - London

Germany - Munich, Neuschwanstein Castle

Poland - Gdansk, Sopot, Malbork Castle, Bydgoszcz, Wroclaw, Krakow (if you go there make sure to go to the Wieliczka Salt Mine)

We were also planing to stop in Berlin and Prague, but I got pregnant in the begining of the trip and was too tired and craving Croatian food so we had to go to Zagreb again :)

We did it on a very tight budget. What you should do first is decide what places you want to visit for sure, then give yourself some "free time" in case something spontanious comes up. Make a plan where you'll go first - making a circle around Europe would be best because then you can buy round trip air ticket to/from one city (that's what we did). You can go on www.mobissimo.com and check air fare to different cities in Europe to see which place will be cheapest. You'll go during summer so expect your ticket to be over $1000.

If your family lives in different places then plan on staying there the longest and making daily trips to nearest towns or turist attractions.

Install Google Earth (if you don't have it yet) and look at all the places you want to go. If you have a good photographic memory you can kind of memorize the big cities, so that you won't be lost.

Invest in a GPS!!! It's a life saver. We had the TomTom and for $136 we bought the map of Western Europe (you can buy for Eastern Europe as well). You don't need to use a car to use GPS (when we were on trains it even showed us how fast the train is traveling which was really cool). We had only 4 maps of 4 countries (very basic), and few detailed StreetSmart maps of big cities - they show you the downtown and most famous turist attractions. Other than that we used our GPS on foot. We would spend A LOT more money on all  the maps than we spent on the TomTom.

Read travel guides - my favorite ones are the EyeWitness Travel. "Move in" to Barnes&Noble for few days and study the travel guides - that's what I did :)

Rent travel shows on dvd - Globe Trekker is good - if you have account on Blockbuster.com or Netflix then just type "travel" and they will show you a list of all dvds.

Here is the best pice of advice - sign up for www.hospitalityclub.org!!! You have one year now to find people who live in the places where you want to go and ask if they can host you or show you around. If not, look for hostels at www.hostels.com.

We stayed with a lovely family near Avignon for 2 nights, and also left our car in Paris (while taking train to London) for 8 days with another member of this club.

If you will want to go to Croatia, and all the way down to Split and Dubrovnik (both places worth seeing) you can then take the ferry to Italy. You can look it up (and buy tickets if you're ready) on www.jadrolinija.hr.

One mistake I made - I took way too many clothes and also all my shoes gave me blisters - so make sure you take one or two pairs of very comfortable shoes.

No one will be able to tell you how much your trip will cost you. One thing you can do though - is to know your air plane ticket price, prices of trains (www.raileurope.com) and fees to turist attractions you want to see (and hostels of course).

Have fun planing your trip and if you have any other questions feel free to e-mail me. I'll be happy to tell you more about my experiences and help you any way I can.

Good luck.

ps. I speak fluently Polish, English, good Croatian, so so French and German. Before the trip I took an Italian class and also got one of those electronic translators - didn't need it at all - when people heard that I speak English they didn't bother talking to me in their language.

Answer 6

In Western Europe budget an absolute minimum of $60 per day, including a railpass but not including airfare, and that's staying in youth hostels and rarely eating in restaurants.  $80 per day will give you more leeway - some cheap hotels, nicer meals, tours in certain places, and $100 per day will allow you to stay in basic hotels and eat restaurant meals.  Eastern Europe is cheaper than Western, but Western Europe has most of the famous sights, castles, palaces, churches, museums etc.

Most European countries make it very difficult for non-EU citizens to work.  It is unlikely that you would find anything other than low-paid restaurant or bar work, especially in a country where you don't speak the language, and anything you do find would probably require you to stay in one place for at least a month.  If you don't have the money to travel for three months, you are better off working in the US for part of that time, and then using that money to travel in Europe.

Assuming you resolve the above issues and are able to travel for three months, I'd recommend something like London - Paris - the French city of Blois as a base to see the Loire Valley chateaux, or castles - Barcelona - at least one smaller French town in Provence - Florence (possible day trips to Siena, Pisa, or the Cinque Terre) - Rome - then go to the West Coast of Italy to take the ferry to Greece - Athens - Greek Islands (Santorini and Mykonos are beautiful, Ios is good if you want to party) - back to Athens for a ferry to Corfu and Venice - Vienna - Prague - Berlin - Munich - the Ludwig Castles - at least one smaller German town like Rothenburg - Amsterdam (take a day trip to a smaller Dutch city like Delft or Leiden) - Brugge - London.