Two Months in Europe

For pretty much my entire life I knew I wanted to spend the summer across graduating university travelling across Europe. I just thought it was the perfect opportunity to see and understand the world outside of the books I read in school. Many years and a bachelor's degree later I am now being able to realize this dream, with friends from University in tow!

This trip is the culmination of 10 years of dreaming and over one year of planning my perfect European adventure. Two months is a long time, and Europe is a large continent so planning a trip of this size and scale can be very overwhelming so I thought I would start this blog to share my plan for this trip (and all the other trips I manically plan for). As I mentioned earlier my love for planning is a little obsessive so it would be a shame for all those hours on Pinterest to go to waste on just one trip. 

Below is a map of my intended route, dotted lines mean flights and solid lines are trains. The blue line is my ingoing/outgoing flight from Paris.


I didn't intend at all for this trip to be a circle though it did work out well. The planning process was a little difficult as I was travelling with different people at different points of the trip, the first 38 or so days are with two of my best friends from university (with a third friend joining us in Eastern Europe) and then the last 16 days are with my boyfriend and were planned later (hence the jump back to France for the Brittany region). The planning process was of course further complicated by negotiating time in cities, length of trip etc among everyone- however I am beyond happy with the itinerary and am so excited for our trip to begin!!

The Plan: 

The entire trip (including travel time) is 56 days spanning from June/July/early August. Each city is hyperlinked to the corresponding blog post! 
  1. 6 Days Paris 
  2. 4 Days Barcelona ( Day trip to Montserrat) 
  3. 4 Days Nice ( Day trip Eze/Monaco) 
  4. 2.5 Days Cinque Terre
  5. 4.5 Days Florence ( Day trip to Pisa) 
  6. 5 Days Rome
  7. 2 Days Venice
  8. 3 Days Vienna
  9. 3 Days Prague 
  10. 3.5 Days Budapest 
  11. 6 Days Berlin 
  12. 5 Days Saint Malo ( Day trips across Northern Brittany and Normandy) 
  13. 5 Days Quiberon (Day trips across Southern Brittany)
  14. One last day in Paris before flying home 

The Process:


We started by narrowing down where we wanted to visit- all of us are history/politics nerds so cities like Paris/Rome/Berlin with all their museums and historical sites held a lot of interest to us. We tried to break up the hectic city plans with stops in smaller cities or along the sea so we could slow down and focus on soaking up the European vibe. We scoured Pinterest, Instagram, travel magazines and guidebooks for places that caught out eye. I choose starting and ending cities by the cheapest flights along our itinerary, booking two separate flights as I was unsure where my trip end. Paris ended up having incredibly cheap one-way tickets both times which was perfect!

The reason we planned so much ahead of time is that "going with the flow" like many backpackers traditionally do can be extremely expensive ( Especially in high season. Especially in high season in major cities Western Europe). Based on where we wanted to go and our time constrains booking last minute just wasn't really an option. Because we booked in advance we were able to get amazing deals on Airbnbs across Europe, saving a ton money, and were also able to get lower prices on a lot of our flights and trains.

So far the planning process has been a ton of fun and I would 100% recommend others to plan their own trips and forgo packaged tours as you can save a ton of money and do exactly what you want without too much hassle! All in all I am beyond excited to get started on this adventure and beyond excited to document it all online here and on my Instagram feed! 


xoxo






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