Suggestions for Trip to Europe

If yall are looking to party, some of the greek isles like Ios are very much hot spots for your age and you can take the ferry between all of them, and party your arse off with girls from Australia and all over Europe. Places like Mykonos are disproportionately expensive though. If you do your research it CAN be done affordably but it can go well off the money rails quickly so maybe not this one.

What are you guys into? That kind of answers the question.

Maybe you want to drink a bunch of beer and see the Alps? Well go to Munich and Salzburg and Prague and Budapest.

Maybe you are more into eating and coastlines and ancient sites and dark hair...do a trip of Italy...from Rome to Florence and the Cinque Terre over to Bologna and then Venice.

Maybe you want to see some world war two sites and some wine and amazing cuisine and french girls...France, go to Normandy and then Paris and all the way down to the Riviera

Or well, maybe Amsterdam...

Ireland can be easier on the pocketbook and you can travel around and go to small towns. Galway is a college town

You'll get more bang for your buck maybe in places like Eastern Europe as opposed to Scandinavia or big cities like paris

Well, what are you wanting to see or get out of the trip? Is it just a party trip or do you want to see some sites, museums, nature and architecture? If that then what are you interested in seeing?
Amsterdam is great although they have been trying to reduce party tourism and tourism in general and it has gotten more expensive the last 10 years.
Croatia is beautiful and cheap with great beaches. Slovenia next door to Croatia has great mountain scenery.
Spain and Portugal are 2 of my favorite countries with great food, beautiful women, beaches and pretty inexpensive.

Rail passes are generally over ated unless you are going to be training once or twice a day basically. Train fare is fairly cheap $25-50 for most tickets, so a $300 rail pass takes awhile to burn through. They are also a little limiting, in that you buy them for just certain countries.

Set a googleflights tracker for the time period, I'd look to book around Xmas time you should be able to find good deals for early may to mid may around $600-700 round trip.

The best thing to do is to book a multi city trip, so you fly from for example Nola to London and then fly home from Rome to Nola.

The best thing to do is work in a certain direction on a multi city trip. So form north to south, or east to west.

Also, consider the major airports to get the cheapest flights will generally be: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, and Rome. A handful of others will be slightly more but you may be able to find good deals like Frankfurt, berlin, Milan, Copenhagen, etc. So to save on airfare you want to try and fly in and out of those, and work between them.

Some good points:

quote:

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Rail passes are generally overrated
Multi city trip

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I’d add
book direct and - if budget permits you to book beyond Econ class -
get fully refundable so you can always change in case something better pops up or plans change

Depends on what you like to do? Outdoors, history, touring, food, etc…. You could ride trains and stay all over the UK and see tons of stuff.

Not sure if you guys are independently wealthy or have parents financing the trip or if you're trying to do it on the cheap.

My experience when I went to Europe for 2 months between Undergrad and Grad School (I was using the Europe on $5 a day or whatever Rick Steves book it was back then after working construction to save enough money to go... and admittedly, I was there for 2 months backpacking... so I had to stretch my budget).

I constantly found myself feeling cash strapped and resenting restaurants and such that I went to in a lot of countries. I was constantly eating baguettes and nutella for half my meals. Then I got to Greece (it was really cheap then in the mid 90s), and my wallet suddenly felt big. I could eat at real restaurants and drink real booze and enjoy the hell out of myself because it was cheap, and I was on a strict budget (I could also set up my tent and cook on my cookstove for free while hikind trails in Greece then vs. having to always stay in hostels or pay for campsites).

Now... a lots changed since then. Took the family to Italy this year, and I was like, "Why did I think things were so expensive when I was younger? This isnt really any more expensive than the US once we got here." But we actually have real income, now.

Anyway, from what I know of Europe right now, if I were doing my young man trip again, I'd probably look into Croatia, as it's beautiful and relatively affordable for someone on a tight budget.

If you've got a good amount of money set aside or parents are financing as a college graduation present, then I think Fun Bunch's post is dead-on.

Mid-May is a great time to visit southern Europe, before it gets too hot and crowded.

Italy and Spain were my favorites so far.