As soon as Sara and I got some free time on our hands, we decided to go on a trip. First we went on a short trip to Iran, Tehran to visit our family. On the way back we went on a 17 day trip to Europe: Italy and France. We had transited through Europe a couple of times before, this was the first time we were actually visiting Europe.

Before we go on the trip, we started planning where to go and what to see. It’s interesting: as soon as you open the map of Europe in front of you, you realize there are just so many places you want to see but you can’t do it in one turn! So we decided to limit our visit to only two countries (!), Italy and France. Starting from Italy, first thing came into our minds was Rome (Roma), then Venice (Venezia). Next day we realized that the beautiful Tuscany is also in between these two, so we added Florence (Firenze) to the plan. Naturally I added the city of Pisa as it is pretty close to Florence. Couple of days later Sara told me about this Island, Capri, that they say is extremely beautiful, located in the southern Italy close to Naples (Napoli), so was added in.

In France we wanted to visit Paris for sure, just needed some cities to link between Venice and Paris. It was simple, just look at the map! We decided to go to Milan (Milano), then have a glimpse of Switzerland in Geneva (Geneve) where my uncle and his family live and then end the trip in Paris. The map below shows how we ended up routing our trip:

According to what we expected in every city, we assigned a duration for each stay which I believe was a good choice for the time we put for the entire trip:

• 4 days Rome, one of those days we would visit Capri through Napoli.
• 3 days Florence, one half of those days we would visit Pisa.
• 2 days Venice
• 2 days Milan
• 2 days Geneva
• 4 days Paris

I can’t say these times were enough. Some people just stay in one place for a whole week to relax. But we were not there to relax, we were there to see!!

I really liked to rent a car, at least from city to city to enjoy the intercity road trip with the option of going off road and see unexpected things. We would do that if our budget was not limited, maybe next time! So we realized that using the Europe train is a cheaper way to go. Tickets are way cheaper if you purchase them online from North America, so that’s what we did.

I can say it was a fantastic journey. It was a heck of a hike each day but it was worth it. This was the first time I really felt that I needed a foot massage at the end of the day, but we would do it the next day anyway. So much to see, so little time! Of course we are two free souls without kids otherwise it wouldn’t be easy, maybe impossible. So kidless people, take the opportunity! Later I will post a page for each city we visited, I can’t include all in one post, it’s just impossible!

Travel Tips

Here I sum-up my experiences in Europe that would be useful for travelers to know:

• When traveling to Europe, if you are not planning to stay in hustles, book your hotels in advance. It’s hard to find one when you are there. There are just billions of tourists in high seasons and things won’t be easily available.
• Consider traveling in lower seasons like in September when the visitor’s rush is less. Even then some ticket lineups take over two hours. For many of those you can pay somewhere about 10 Euros to book your ticket a day in advance and you can bypass the entire lineup.

• Traveling with train is very easy: they are easily available everyday and come around every half an hour to a couple of hours. Here’s what you should know about trains:
  • Make sure to purchase your ticket in advance from outside of Europe online, in a website such as www.eurail.com. They will mail you your tickets with a map of Europe train paths and a book of schedules and it’s way cheaper than buying tickets in Europe.
  • The book of schedules is not very complete but it doesn’t matter. In every station schedules are posted on boards you can look up.
  • In every city you enter, make sure to look up the schedule for your next train on the schedule board.
  • Some trains are more crowded and therefore you will have to reserve your seat in advance. If you need to do so, to save time, buy it for your next trip when you arrive in a station. The reservation fee can vary depending on the time of day. Usually the more crowded it is, the fee is higher. Only express trains require reservation, mentioned on the schedule board. You can get away without reserving, but if you do so and take a seat, you might have to move frequently to give your seat up to the people who reserved. Some passengers even stand in hallways. But there are some fancier and faster trains that you must reserve seats for, and if you don’t, they will charge you double the money on the train, so beware!
  • Trains go as fast as 180Km/h, so they are a faster way to travel than cars. Slower trains have more frequent stops in the cities in between. You might want to randomly get out in a city and have fun, and afterwards get on the next train and go!
  • Tickets you get have a number of days for traveling via train. You can travel any day you like in a period of for example two months, but only up to the number of days you purchased. In the days you choose for your trip, you can ride as many trains as you like!
  • If you are allowed to go to all European countries, your tickets can take you everywhere almost without any limitation.
• If you are renting a car instead, it’s worth it if you return it to the same place.  It will be much more expensive if you are going from one city to another and returning the car in the destination city, and even more expensive if you are crossing a boarder.
• Make sure you know European city names in their local language, as well as words and phrases you see on the signs. This helps you to get around easier.
• If you are booking a hotel, of course it is better if it is in the center of the city (European cities are circle like with the main attraction or oldest part in the center). But let me tell you that it’s not hard to use transportation, and you will have to use it anyway if you are not renting a car.  So you can book a much better hotel a bit further from the center for a lower price. Transportation is very well available.
• In every city you enter, after checking in your hotel, make sure to take a map of that city from the hotel. What they give you is very good as it highlights all the attractions on the map as well as metro stations if available. Don’t hesitate to ask them to mark good spots on the map, such as where to dine or to shop.

• Before going crazy and buy a 6 day transit ticket, see what is available in that city such as a city pass. In a city like Rome you can purchase a Roma Pass for about 22 Euros. With that, you can see your first two attractions for free and the rest for half the price. Also it comes with a three day transit pass, which is worth over 12 Euros itself. Let me mentions that attractions are about an average of 11 Euros. So I think this and similar passes are worth it.
• You get some benefits using your Euro train pass. Make sure you know what they are. Especially traveling with trains connecting parts in a large city like Paris, you can use your ticket to ride them for free. Ask station clerks about that, although it’s a bit hard to talk in English there.
• Make sure to quickly familiarize yourself with the city transit system. Some have metro and some don’t. Some have very fancy metro system like Paris. It’s so fancy that you don’t need to take the bus, metro takes you almost everywhere! It’s the biggest system I’ve seen in my life. It has five different zones, but you won’t need to get ticket for more than zone 1 and 2. If you want to go to Versailles gardens which is in zone 5, you can use your Europe train ticket to go for free.
• There are Europe travel guide books such as “Frommer’s” that can really help. We leaned some of the benefits we could get in every city from this book as well as places to see, dine in and shop.
• Beware of thieves and pick-pocketers! You see many signs similar to the one below everywhere:

• Beware of the people who volunteer to help you all of a sudden, the help doesn’t come for free! If someone offers you free stuff, it’s not usually free either! You will know who they are when you see them.
• Having a GPS can be very helpful. I purchased the map of Europe for my GPS and was very happy as it can help in complicated cities like Venice.

Now only one thing remains: walk baby walk! This would be the best walk of you life, maybe after walking the isle to get married! You will be reviewing what you saw for years!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 10:52 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.