So much goes into planning a once in a lifetime trip. How are you going to get there? Where to stay? How do you get around? Where do you eat (that’s good)? Here are my tips of how I planned our first trip to Europe! This is part 1 of how to plan your trip, make sure to check out part 2 for the more nitty-gritty details! I will break down each location we visited in different blog posts as well so keep an eye out for those!

1. Locations 🗺️

To start planning your amazing trip you need to figure out where you want to go. There are SO many places all over Europe, so narrowing down where you want to visit can be a difficult choice. Don’t take for granted the other countries in Europe that aren’t as mainstream (I have SO many on my bucket list). For our first trip to Europe we decided we wanted to go to Switzerland and Italy and I have a friend who lives in Germany so we added Germany to our itinerary to visit her!

2. Flights ✈️

When looking at flights make sure you look at different airlines and what they have to offer. Flights from the U.S.A to Europe can be expensive. I used Cheap-O-Air to book our flights and Icelandair was the best flight deal with our budget. Make sure you check out other websites to make sure you are getting the best deal. We flew from Denver, USA to Reykjavik, Iceland and then Reykjavik, Iceland to Zurich, Switzerland.

If you want to have an amazing flight, bring your flight attendants a small gift. We bought a pack of big candy bars and $5 Starbucks cards for the flight crew (about 10 people). They were SO grateful and treated us SO well on our 8 hour flight with drinks, meals, snacks and extra attention to our needs.

-Kylie

3. Hotels 🏨

Booking hotels, hostels or BNBs can be stressful. Let me tell you, my best friend for months while planning this trip was Google Maps. I poured over all the things we wanted to do and where the train-station was compared to where local meet ups were for our excursions. I used Orbitz to book our hotels and I got hotels that were within walking distance to all the places we needed to go. Orbitz was great for us because it shows you on the app how far away local popular tourist things are, so you can match that with your Google Maps record. I looked at the reviews and if they offered breakfast and A/C (most places in Europe don’t have A/C and you definitely will want to have it if you go in the summer) and they were close to where we needed to be, I went with them. We were on a budget so I tried to do $100 or less a night and it was manageable. We stayed at some great locations with amazing views and wonderful people. The smaller mom and pop bed and breakfasts we stayed at were the best! Most hotels and BNBs don’t allow you to check in until after 3pm so make sure you plan accordingly. Also, the smaller mom and pop places don’t have full time staff so most of the time they left us a code for the lock box to get our key.

4. Activities 🚶‍♀️

There is so much to do and see all over Europe and it can be very hard deciding what you want to do within a short amount of time. I made a list of all the places and things we wanted to do while in each country and then I went back through the list and narrowed it down to the absolutes we had to do. I used TripAdvisor in order to find deals on tours of the things we wanted to do and places to see. Tours are great if you don’t want to worry about renting a car because all you have to do is get to the meeting spot and then they take care of the rest. We did day trips out of Zurich, Switzerland and Florence, Italy to go explore the country side in both countries and it was the best thing we ever did. I will write in more detail about each location in another post. Also, make sure to look to see what popular things there are to do in each location you go. While I was planning for what to do in Venice, Italy on TripAdvisor, I came across a food and wine walking tour through the city and it was highly recommended so I signed us up. Best decision I’ve ever made! The food was fabulous with lots of rich history from our local tour guide and we made friends with people from all over the world, that we plan to visit very soon, while eating our way through Venice!

If you are an introvert it is SO worth it to tap into being an extrovert while you are traveling (especially during tours) because you can meet so many new people from different backgrounds and it might just change your life. We now have new friends all over the world from just getting out of our comfort zone and talking to people.

-Kylie

5. Getting Around 🚊

Europe’s train system is AMAZING! We have nothing like it in the USA. We never rented a car on our 3.5 week trip and we only took a taxi twice (in Rome), otherwise we used the train system. I bought all of our train tickets on the app Trainline in advance and ticket prices were not bad at all. We went from Zurich, Switzerland to Venice, Italy then Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome, and then Rome, Italy all the way up to Stuttgart, Germany. Our most expensive ticket was $254 (included both of us) and our cheapest ticket was $50 (included both of us). Most tickets cost around $116 so about $58 a person. There are restrooms on the trains, most of them provide you with snacks and most have a place to purchase food and drinks. They also have charging stations at your seat in most trains. Zurich has the most amazing inner city train system and they have their own app called ZVV (I’ll talk more about this in my Switzerland post). Switzerland had the cleanest and most spacious trains and a spot for your luggage. Italy’s trains were the most crowded and were dirty. You also had to place your luggage up above where you were seated and did not have luggage compartments on the main level. This was difficult since we had two huge suitcases but thankfully my husband is strong and lifted it for me. In Germany, the trains were designed like Switzerland’s with luggage compartments but they were not as clean. All of our trains were on time in Switzerland and Italy but we had multiple train delays in Germany. So make sure to plan according and allow for extra time between trains in case their are delays.

Check Out Part 2 of Planning Your First European Trip! You’re so close to your once in a lifetime trip, are you ready?